*BONUS* Best Of: 'Leadership' - Insights from TOP Chief Marketing Officers

Ben Kaplan  0:00  

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups. Three ideas packaged a certain way want to spread, they want to be told us someone else's simple, surprising and significant. Unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is top cmo with me, Ben Kaplan.

Tom Cain  0:26  

Welcome to Top CMO. Today's episode is a special one, as we bring you the best bits from past top cmo episodes on the topic of leadership. for managing teams to driving growth, these marketing leaders have navigated the complexities of leadership and emerge stronger for it. So sit back, grab your notepad and get ready to learn from the best. This is top CMOS Best Bits leadership.

Greg Hoffman, Nike,

Greg Hoffman  0:59  

what was more about the fact that so much of my early career was me, figuratively speaking, speaking through my hands, because I was a designer, so I was creating my work and letting the work speak for itself, right. And so, you know, I'm a lifelong introvert. So finding my leadership voice, there were many starts and stops, right, because I was in a very kind of personal pursuit as those early days of creating, designing stores and posters and logos and building world building, right and launching innovations. And so I was basically keep in mind that one day, I'm an intern, and then seven years later, I'm responsible in leading the very team I was interning for. So you could imagine the learning curve, there, maybe a little bit of the cynicism I had to deal with as well. So it was really trial by fire. And I that's what I mean by Nike, and brands, like them taking risks on their people, stretching people into positions, maybe even if they're not ready. And so I was allowed to really find my, my leadership, voice refined my leadership style, over those years of as my scope of responsibility grew, and I had to lead through not just my actions, but through my words more and more. So that's really, you know, I could have just said, you know, what, I'm not up for this, I liked the safety of just the drafting table, if you will, or my Mac computer, and I just want to geek out on those designs. But I'm just a big believer that, and I've said this before, right? I mean, complacency is is not only the enemy of creativity, it also prevents you from realizing your potential as a leader, and you have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, right, you gotta leave the safety net. Otherwise, you'll never know, if you can make that shot.

Ben Kaplan  3:01  

It almost sounds like the message of a Nike ad, right? Have a great one, right? Have the willingness to take the shot, the willingness to try to be great, the willingness to go beyond and do something that you haven't done before and extend it, it seems like you've approached your career at Nike very much with the voice and the identity of Nike, which speaks a lot for the company, if the team is embodying the values of the company, even in their own personal trajectory.

Greg Hoffman  3:28  

That's right. It takes a willingness to take the risk, and it takes a willingness for the company in the company culture to put you in those championship situations, if you will. Right. So I do think there's a lot of that brands, large and small can can take from that. It I can't say this enough, because it's easy. You know, we are coming certainly coming out of the pandemic, in this this world of optimization and efficiency, and rightly so, right. It's been a rough ride for a couple years here. But I guess where I'm going is within a team culture, those traits of risk taking curiosity and empathy are just so so important, right to achieve, I think exceptional results as a brand. And as a business,

Tom Cain  4:13  

Vince Vendetti, American Residential Services,

Ben Kaplan  4:17  

you're not going to get further along row on the boat yourself, you're not going to be in your small little rowboat row on real, real hard, even if you're real strong. Even if you're real determined, you're just one person in a rowboat, you're only gonna get so far. So you have to start thinking differently and complimentary. And you have to start enabling teams to do it. And it sounds like you've done that and excited to kind of see what's next for events because I love your trajectory. I love how you've clearly risen fast and been very successful. But you've done it in a humble team building in a way that allows others to rise with you. And besides all of that, besides that, it's good business and good karma. And it just makes sense. It's a heck of a lot more fun to do it with other people. Right? It's just like let's succeed. Let's Do with other people? And what's the point of being like successful or accomplishing goals? If you can do it by yourself? Do it with others, so why not have everyone rise up?

Vince Venditti  5:07  

I so so so resonate with that. And I have had a lot of very strong mentors throughout my career and I've been very blessed in a right place. Right time. Right Action. I feel deep down like I don't mean this to sound rehearsed. I mean, I think oftentimes people say, and it is, but like, I feel its strong obligation to pay that forward, right to recognize the tomorrow's talents that that want to grow, and to help arm them in doing that, right. You don't do it for them. But like if they want to be pushed, and they're looking at one of the funniest things a long time ago, a mentor of mine told me that you don't find a mentor, a mentor finds you. And I always thought that was so powerful, because I thought man, like I've had people spent so blessed with this. But so what that means for me is it's so important for me to find these people who have what I call the three eyes, it's Can you come up with an idea? Can you influence that idea? And can you implement that idea. And if you can do pieces of those three things, you are going to go very far in your career, and with the right mentorship, you can grow very quickly. So it's all about giving back and everybody grows, right? Everybody grows together,

Tom Cain  6:14  

J G, Chirapurath. SAP,

Ben Kaplan  6:16  

one of the challenges is this idea that at the minute you stop having for a smaller organization, and you know, and there's SAP, I think last market cap, I think it was worth $140 billion. There's a lot of CMOS of companies that are listening that are worth 139 point 9 billion No, less than that, or smaller, right. And one of the things that happens is in your example, is you stopped meeting with everyone, so you don't even know who's being hired. So the issue is that not only do you have the channel to challenge, these are your values, I need to impart them, I need to be consistent, but someone needs to hear and receive that and impart it to someone else you're never gonna meet. And so how do you think about that in your message to where you don't want it to be kind of like, I'm gonna use a very analog example, but like a photocopy of a photocopy, like someone has a photocopy of the message, they make a photocopy of that something gets lost in the translation, and your run simple or radical prioritization becomes something totally different than you intended. And that's the message they get. So how do you do that? And how is this relevant to the smaller organization?

JG  7:18  

Look, I think whether you're in a small or large organization, there's one thing I think is the most vital thing and you have, and this, what I'm going to tell you here has to come from inside you, right, and you have to absolutely believe in it. And I absolutely believe in what I'm about to tell you. Leadership is about sacrifice. Leadership is about connections. Leadership is about bringing people along for the ride in a way that you believe in them. And you believe in yourself, right? That you can lead people through all of this, I say that there are three things that everybody needs everybody, you need it, I need it, you know, people that work in any organization needs it, it's something to believe in, it's someone to believe it, and someone who believes in that, right and you the act of leadership, the duty of care that goes with leadership is working hard, right day and night, obsessing about your organization, how big, large or small, in figuring out the different ways you can sort of motivate them and give them those three things. Right. So one small, you know, sort of vehicle I use and giving of my time, right, so I am ready to meet anyone in my organization at any time, I will make time for them. Sometimes it may not be during the you know, the working hours, but I'm able to make my time available to them at any time of the day. Right. The second thing is I also use things like open office hours, where I host a forum, anyone can walk in and ask me anything that they desire, right? And if I can answer it, I will answer it. You know, so part of this is keeping the communication going, you know, it's part of it is keeping the dialogue going. So people understand what you stand for. Now, if I were to show up in a new organization, say, Hey, guys, this is who I am, these are my values, believe me, because I told you that these are my values. To me, it's hollow, how leaders are experience is through the day to day actions. When you say I'm going to do this, and they experience it in that way. Right. So part of this is the hard work that you have to put in to make sure that people understand who you are as a leader, what's absolutely critical for the organization, what your values are, and what your values are, what you'll stand for what you won't stand. And that to me is, I will tell you, it's a daily process in

Ben Kaplan  9:29  

you alluded to the fact that earlier in your career, founded a technology firm it was acquired by Intel is that where you learn this from? And do you recommend like as an experience for a CMO to like go start a company is that important in your views on leadership and marketing? Is it something that that's just unusual and kind of makes you unique? How do you rate that experience and and do you recommend that to others?

JG  9:52  

Look, I have been a seeker, so I don't know and so those things that I've sought may not be fit for everybody out there you contemplating a journey are on the same journey as I am, right? But what I will tell you is I have always sought out one singular thing how to scale. Right? And I got to you to be a student of scale. Right? So what makes you successful as you go from, say $5 million in an annual run rate to say $100 million? How do you take 100 million and grow it to a billion? How does a billion get to be 5 billion, so on and so forth, what you learn about yourself the skills that you bring in the kinds of things that you have to do changes at every level of scale. And so all I've learned, right, so I can't tell you that there was a pivotal moment where I learned all of these things, I can't even tell you, I've learned all of these things. What I will tell you, though, is that I continue to learn, and the greatest gift the startup places like Microsoft, and now SAP has given me is they have given me the patience and the space to sit back and reflect on different levels of scale, and how I can apply myself to help these companies or these organizations be successful, and above all, to help grow the people so that they too, in that time, can step up and continue to scale and continue to build. And ultimately, when you think of this, had there been well, the one thing I'll point out is, do you know what I want more than anything in this world? I want the folks that work together with me that I had the pleasure of partner collaborating with to go on and do even bigger things. That to me is a movement. Right? So to me, I wish that to be my my legacy.

Tom Cain  11:34  

Diana, Massaro, sky high security?

Ben Kaplan  11:37  

What do you look to, for each of the people on your team? How do you know if you need to make sure that that one like they don't leave that you retain them? They make sure that they have the sort of psychological security that you said, What do you look for in the individual people to make sure and then how do you do it? If you're concerned about someone? What do you do in the context of a high performing marketing team?

Diana Massaro  11:59  

And then answer a slightly different question. You said, how do you retain them, and and I'm gonna get, I'm gonna give you my view on this. I don't. So my goal is for my employees to grow and be successful. It's not that I don't care if they stay on my team, but I don't they if they want to go to another role in the company, I will 100% support that. If I don't have the job for them to grow to the next point in their career, and they need to go outside the company, I've helped people do that, too. So I've decided that I make a commitment to the human and the person. And then I help them with how we grow their career. I find it makes everything so much so much clearer. And the Pact of that is that people want to stay with me. I know, it's a little counterintuitive, but I'd really think it works.

Ben Kaplan  12:55  

And then someone like you know, Reid Hoffman, who now is an investor, but you know, was kind of famous for LinkedIn and being the CEO of LinkedIn. Well, the thing is, he talks about is, this alliance that is formed between the company and a person and without alliances is that, you know, the person signs on and says, I agree to sort of put my time and efforts and skills into advancing the company forward. But then the company has to also say, we agree to do what we can to help you move forward in your career for where you're going to go. And at the best companies, especially with critical people formed this alliance. So is that some of what you're saying to because if you look at their holistically where they're trying to get to, you know, very few people are going to stay in a job for life, people are going to shift even during this, I guess, this time of the great resignation, there was a lot of shifting. So you're saying it might just be better strategically, overall, to center yourself around helping the person get where they go. And in fact, that might, in fact, be the thing that causes them to stay.

Diana Massaro  14:09  

The other thing is, people will come back, though, I was I was looking for a specific role. I went to LinkedIn, and I saw someone who used to work for me a long time ago, 18 years ago, and I contacted him, and he's one of the people who's going to start on my team, people will come back to the same company. I tell people when they leave, if somebody says, Hey, I'm gonna go some work. So I'm like, I'm so proud of you, congratulations. If it's not what you want, or your current proposals, and you want to come back, just let me know. And in the end, they sometimes do and you get these wonderful people who then have gone out and had different experiences and come back and they're even strong. And so I find that it's like, I don't know, it's like, it's like business karma. It comes back and I didn't always feel this way. And by the way, your quotes on on Reed Hoffman, like obviously, he's thought much more about this than I than I have I'm still just doing what I think is right without sort of sort of thinking all the way through. But I do, I do know that I can't be successful without great people. And the way to recruit and retain great people is to treat them holistically with respect and trust them, and listen to them and understand that there are people first and part of their part of their their experiences work.

Tom Cain  15:33  

Jean Foca Getty Images,

Ben Kaplan  15:36  

what is your superpower? As a marketing leader? What is the ability that you have that allows you to be successful that maybe others don't quite have that power in the same way that you do?

Gene Foca  15:49  

Well, I don't know that I have a superpower, Ben I, I'm a pretty confident person. And I always have been. But I, I guess I like to think that one of my superpowers is that I hire very carefully, I tried to instill in my team, that it's their responsibility to fill important roles in their in their team, it's not the people organizations role, it's their responsibility to fill important roles. And when you hire talent well and carefully and you develop talent well and carefully, you have the ability to lean on a team of people to fill in knowledge gaps that perhaps you don't have. And so if I have strengths, I would say that they're in the area of hiring and developing the best. And I would say that I ask good, specific and probing questions to get at the heart of what an issue is. And I hold my team to high standards. And as a result, they hold me to highest standards as well. So we keep each other in shock, because I'm not perfect. None of us are. And we have to be surrounded by really good and capable and thoughtful people in order to execute the way that we need to. But I believe that executing great business plans and great marketing plans starts fundamentally with having the right organizational construct in place, and hiring talent that has the behaviors and the functional expertise that you need, and is willing to be a part of your culture and work within the guidelines of your leadership principles. And when all of that is working together. That's when your marketing plans really sing. And that's when you're really supporting your business model because you're serving your customer. So I would say that my superpowers are in the areas of hiring and developing the best and really asking probing questions and requiring a certain amount of rigor and data to support our decisions so that we're not making a motion based decisions, but we're making decisions based on quality information, as much information and data that we have

Tom Cain  17:49  

Catriona Walkerden Logicalis

Ben Kaplan  17:51  

Is there any other advice you would give to another marketing leader about navigating similar challenges, but also empowering your team to navigate those challenges? Marketing generally, is a team sport, not an individual sport. And so what parts of this can you tackle as a global marketing leader? And what parts of this? Is it about empowering a team to tackle some of these challenge?

Catriona Walkerden  18:15  

Yeah, I would say it's all about empowering the team. So you know, we couldn't do the things that we do without the team of experts in the individual areas, you know, specialist areas that that we have in the team. I'm very much and have always been a marketing generalist, though I've worked in channel in product in branding, sales enablement, but I've never really kind of honed in on one particular area. But I've got an awesome, you know, senior go to market person focused on a product or solution side of what we do got an amazing content person, and amazing analyst relations person, and, and a great digital person as well. So without I don't have depth in any of those areas, but I do have a good eye for a vision and you know, collaborative leadership style, that I think can bring those things together in something really powerful. But it would be nothing without those skills that we've got in the team that we're very lucky to have. So So yeah, I was a bear completely empowered because I don't know how to do their job.

Ben Kaplan  19:26  

Is there any specific moments where there was a disconnect between global and local that clued you in that this is something we need to solve that this was a pressing issue that needs to be dealt with now because there was some kind of disruption or something that happened that that was unintended but was consequential?

Speaker 8  19:43  

So for me, I went into this role knowing how I felt about global marketing which was that on fine Thank, you know, I'm pretty self sufficient here on my own in, you know, in the domestic market that I was running, and global influence was kind of like Ah, okay, we'll do what you need us to do. So So I came into the role thinking, and this is no reflection on the previous global marketing team, it was more that I saw myself as self sufficient in in the Australian market I was looking after. So I came in with the mindset, knowing that it would have to be a lot of value add to to influence their world. And that's what we've tried to do in kind of adding a layer that they may not be able to do at a local level. So I tried to kind of distinguish, okay, what's the role that global needs to play versus what local authority doing, because stepping on their toes and doing what they're already doing really well is just going to annoy people. So we tried to actually focus on Okay, bringing that global grand level messaging, creating, you know, full buyer journeys for the global solutions, and bringing that thought leadership like the CIO survey, the CIO Summit, to elevate that relationship with the sea level, and adding things that that are global in nature that that the readers on their own just couldn't do, versus trying to do their jobs for them.

Unknown Speaker  21:09  

Isabel Guis, Commvault,

Ben Kaplan  21:11  

as you think about kind of problem solving as a marketing leader, now you're in the CMO role. And in many other roles you had you were a vice president of marketing, or you're a marketing leader, but but not necessarily that title, what is different about being a CMO versus just being head of marketing, or a very senior marketing person that has similar marketing, oversight, what's different when you think about being a CMO as an evolution of that,

Isabelle Guis  21:37  

I think it's a business impact and the ability to help teams the lines, I think that my only value actually, you know, I'm not really doing the work, I've got fantastic people doing it. But my value added is to connect the dots between them. And I think a multiplier effect. So for instance, you know, when we have a new product coming in, and our communications team is ready to launch it, making sure they know about the event we're doing. So they can say, hey, if you want to see this product in demo, come to this event, making sure our sales team are being trained before we launch, making sure the website is ready, making sure that there is a webinar to follow up on that and that our Field Marketing team will reach out as a follow up. So I think all those function coordinated, and instead of individual activities with smaller return, having a bigger coordination and a bigger business impact. That's really what as a CMO, I feel my role is, is making sure I empower all the team to work together to align towards a bigger goal and, and to achieve it and back to the events. We were discussing this roadmap and a big event we saw in at a time when I talk with my peers, and they are struggling to reach the same level of attendees than last year. We so 40% More registrants to our event online this year, and 50% more attendees, because we really had a very integrated marketing. And as a CMO, I think that's my role as the flammer.

Ben Kaplan  23:10  

Reich estar. how ruthless Are you saying that half jokingly, but you referenced ruthless priorities is what you said. And so that's actually what I mean it how ruthless Are you because being a CMO is a big job. In some ways, you can make it as big as you want. Because if you're growth oriented, any marketing channel that contributes to growth, it's fair game, you know, the kind of the world is your oyster with that. So how do you focus? How do you ruthlessly prioritize and what does that mean? That's different than just okay, yeah, I've got some priorities. I have my quarterly objectives. What was it mean to be ruthless?

Esther Flammer  23:46  

Yeah, it's a great question for marketers in general, because I think as marketers now, there is a never ending list of things to do and things to fix. And everyone considers themselves a marketer. Everyone is sending you Hey, well, look what the competitors doing or the website needs to change or you need better brand or the positioning, you know, a messaging isn't working. I mean, there is just a never ending list, no matter how much you fix it, no matter how much you know, you can be successful, there's always more. And so oftentimes, I've seen myself or my teams get stuck in this always saying yes, right, or really kind of trying to figure out how do we determine what we should do and what we shouldn't do? Because there will always be more asks sales is always going to ask for more, more tools more, you know, enablement components, better, better leads you're gonna have products that's coming to you around launches and differentiation and competitive analysis you're gonna have, you know, their CEO coming down. So there's always more requests for me it is about actually looking at there's only so much we can do, right as an organization. And when I say ruthless priorities, it really is like, where will we are we as a business will fail, if we do not do X, Y, and Z, and I always try and bring it down to about three major initiatives, kind of like a three by five, right, three major kind of big rocks that we need to, as a company achieve, and be able to move forward. And then kind of, you know, five initiatives or five big components of that, that we can potentially, you know, actually move the needle on, in order for us to move those those big rocks. And so I really think through it in that way, and then, you know, even and I've coached my teams on this as well, because even at an individual contributor level, oftentimes you feel overwhelmed with the amount of asks that are being put on you. And so again, it say, Hey, here's how much here's what we're doing. If you want us to do take on this fire drill, or do Do you know, another campaign or another initiative, what do we need to move off of, of these top priorities that we already have? What do we need to replace in order for us to do that? And then what will the actually do? What will the outcome be or the end result be for the for the business? So I think it is always asking yourself that question and understanding what truly is a priority? What do we have to do in order for us to be successful as a business? And I do bring it up to that level, which is not just me, myself personally, or my job, or my team or even marketing itself? But how do we make the business successful? And be able to answer those questions, specifically, Julia golden,

Tom Cain  26:27  

Lego,

Julia Goldin  26:29  

but I think I'm very privileged. And what my role allows me to do is to bring my team together so that they're not thinking linearly between creating a product and then figuring out how to market the product, but product and marketing come together from the very beginning. So the process is very different, I think, from the sort of usual kind of linear process. And the engagement is very strong. So at the end of the day, I always believed in marketing, being a real cross section between art and science, you need to really understand your consumer, you need to really need to understand the data and the insights. But then there's also creativity that's involved in actually creating something that will surprise and delight them. And that's kind of the that intersection is still really important when you're starting to develop products. But the power is that the marketers are have a seat at the table from the very beginning. It's not that I have designers that paid product marketers to take it on and go figure out how to market them. It's marketing and design, this is together to figure out what are going to be the themes, what are going to be the really interesting trends, what are the things that we want to tap into which who is our audience, you know, the which passion points we want to bring to life, then the products as the products get designed, you can start thinking holistically about content about the different marketing levers that you might want to use, and the experience that you want to create. So marketing becomes much more around experience and content and not just straightforward advertising. So that's a big opportunity that I have, because I have a team that works together,

Ben Kaplan  27:58  

do people kind of stay in their own lane in these kind of sessions, where let's say it's early on development of product, and marketers sort of say, you know, Oh, and here's an insight about, you know, some social media listening, we've done and other things, and they kind of talk about that and the product, people talk about their role, or does it? Does it all blend together? Am I a marketer might have an idea for a product? And do you encourage that? Or do you encourage people to kind of stay in their domain of expertise,

Julia Goldin  28:23  

I see marketers are as much more business owners, so I feel that they have full ability and opportunity. And actually, it's part of their job to actually have a perspective on how to develop their product lines, and how to tap in the audience that they're looking after. But design has also played a big role because they can bring a more of a creative slant and look at things differently. And so the process is very symbiotic people don't need to stay in their lanes, they need to work together as a team. That's the power the power is in a team and the fact that people can bring different perspectives.

Tom Cain  28:58  

That's a wrap for today's top cmo best bits on leadership. We hope you enjoyed hearing from some of the most insightful marketing leaders in the business, and that you found some inspiration to take back to your own leadership roles. Thanks for joining us today. If you'd like to hear more from these marketing leaders and others like them, be sure to check out our previous episodes and stay tuned for future ones. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for joining us today. And until next time, keep leading with purpose, passion, and a little bit of personality.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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