December 14, 2018
Why Successful Marketing Teams Are Crucial in Today's Environment
By
Marketing, Sales & Communications Officer Practice
“Hero leadership” is passé. Today, successful marketing functions work together as teams — but creating and managing successful teams isn’t easy. Here are four thoughts on how to create a thriving marketing team.
In today’s shifting business environment, the days of “hero leadership” have gone the way of the three-martini lunch. Successful organizations now rely on teamwork to help them adapt, innovate and thrive.
Leaders from Spencer Stuart's Marketing, Sales & Communications Officer Practice recently participated in Spencer Stuart’s West Coast Summit with Deborah Yeh, senior vice president of marketing and brand at Sephora, Vineet Mehra, former executive vice president and global CMO at Ancestry and current CMO at Walgreens Boots Alliance, and Robert Chatwani, CMO at Atlassian, which got us thinking about the importance of teamwork in helping organizations achieve results, and what makes a successful team.
Four thoughts on teamwork and ways teams can reach the next level:
1. Strategy no longer beats execution. In a world that’s been fundamentally turned on its side over the past five to 10 years, a good strategy is no longer enough to succeed. In the past, strategy was the name of the game, the competitive advantage. But now, with information as free-flowing as it is, ideas can be copied in minutes. That leaves us with execution — good old-fashioned getting it done — as the primary means of success, and that tops strategy. And when you’re looking at how to execute, it often comes down to people and teams.
2. The executive team is key to an organization’s success. According to one study, the executive team can account for up to 40 percent of the variance in an organization’s performance. How that team works together (or doesn’t), how they communicate (or don’t), and how they align, inspire and mobilize people — that can all account for a big chunk of an organization’s performance. And it’s not just the leadership team’s ability that affects the business; rather, their effectiveness permeates the rest of the organization. Imagine how the executive team’s dynamic cascades down and creates an impact all the way to the front lines.
3. Strategic and cultural alignment is imperative. A team is much more likely to succeed if its culture is aligned with the overall business strategy. Our research has found that you’re up to six times as likely to accomplish your goals if your culture and strategy are aligned. So culture, which used to be considered an afterthought, is actually an essential element of success.
4. The five elements of a successful team. In our work studying team dynamics, we’ve found myriad issues that vex teams and many ways that they prosper. Looking at this work all together leads me to this overarching question: What makes a successful team?
We have found five common elements that are typically shared by productive teams:
- A strong commitment to purpose: When everyone on the team is on a mission, and everyone is united behind one common goal, it can be extremely powerful.
- Plentiful feedback: A successful team typically has a high level of communication. Feedback is rich, and everyone knows what’s going on — and that includes the good, the bad and the ugly.
- Diverse voices: When different points of view are coming in and different backgrounds are represented, a team can assimilate several varied perspectives to make something greater out of the parts of the equation.
- A lack of silos: Successful teams work across functions, without unnecessary barriers.
- Agile culture: A strong team has a sense of curiosity and can respond nimbly to challenges. Typically, a successful team is learning oriented and can move quickly, figuring things out and responding fast.
In the end, marketing teams are especially important because they tie together so many disparate elements within a company. Marketing leaders operate at the intersection of the entire organization, and if a CMO’s team isn’t operating smoothly, that can have wide-ranging repercussions. So it’s very important that marketing leaders show up at their best and bring their best to their teams, every single day.