Marketing = managing by influence

Guess which C-suite execs quit their jobs after just a few years?

Chief sustainability officers, chief diversity officers, and… chief marketing officers*.

The common denominator?

They are all accountable without authority. They’re required to report on business results, but have zero power or rights to give orders.

A CSO is obliged to update shareholders on how sustainable the business is. But, they can’t order employees to stop driving their cars to work or end contracts with polluting suppliers.

A CDO is expected to make the business more inclusive. But, they can’t just fire all white, male managers and instruct HR to only hire people from diverse backgrounds. 

A CMO is tasked with delivering leads, maybe even sales or revenue. But, they can’t order the firm to stop developing services nobody wants to buy.

Don’t get me wrong. It would be a crazy world if they could give orders like that.

However, when you’re responsible for sustainability, DEI, or marketing, you need to realize that you will be held accountable for results that are not directly driven by your efforts.

And thus, you’ll have to manage by influence. 

As a marketer or business developer, I believe you need to consider 2 things:

1. Many of the projects you’re running, are in fact change management projects. Not only are you trying to convince prospects to behave differently. You also want your colleagues to act in another way.
   
2. For each project, there are quite a few internal stakeholders you’ll need to manage.

When it comes to change management, I like the Lippitt-Knoster model for Managing Complex Change. Because it can be used as a checklist:

1. Vision – Is there a vivid description of the desired future that we can easily communicate?
   
2. Skills – Does everyone involved in the project, have (access to) the skills required to make it a success?
   
3. Motivation – Are all stakeholders provided with the right incentives to participate?
   
4. Resource – Do we have enough people, money, time, and tools to achieve the desired outcomes?
   
5. Plan – Is there an actionable plan that tells people what to do and when?
   
6. Consensus – Is everyone on board?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to these 6 questions, you’re on the right track to delivering an actual change and business results.

When it comes to stakeholders, it helps to map them into 4 categories:

1. Users – The colleagues who play an active role in your project. If you’re running a thought leadership project, ‘users’ could be the figure heads selected from the different service lines in your organization.
   
2. Decision makers – Colleagues who can decide in favor or against your project and financing it. They could be a global marketing director, CEO, CFO, or all of them together.
   
3. Influencers – Colleagues who influence the decision makers. They could literally be anyone within (or outside) of your organization. Uncover who influences your decision makers, and it could massively boost your project.
   
4. Support – Colleagues who don’t play an active role in the project, but are responsible for its support system. Think: HR, legal, IT, and/or finance.

For each project, make sure all stakeholders buy into the vision, have (access to) the required skills, are motivated, have the resources they need, understand the plan, and are on board.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for reading MBD Boost #024, sent to marketers and business developers on December 3, 2024.