Morgan, an experienced VP of Marketing, contacted me because she wanted to go further faster. Her boss gave her very positive performance reviews for her marketing and brand building abilities. But that’s where she stopped short.
Morgan’s peers considered her a masterful marketing adviser. But she had very few internal champions. Peers told me “Morgan always wants to have the last word. And if that means interrupting me when I’m sharing my ideas, she will do it.” This incessant need was holding her back.
As many of you who have attended my Marketing Growth Leaders peer groups know, building your influence skills and strategic thinking muscles are essential to evolving across the CMO growth spectrum. You cannot shift from “marketing order taker” to “growth champion” by building stronger email marketing, MarTech, or PR skills. Most likely, you need to build your relationship and strategic thinking skills. These are the areas we often overlook—much like Morgan.
My mission is to help you make the leap to that next stage in the CMO Growth Spectrum by building allies. This journey starts with your ability to ask great questions. To keep building those critical thinking and curiosity muscles, you need something I call “strategic scaffolding.”
This concept starts with asking questions that help you build not only your understanding of the business, but your ability to grow.
During my recent Mindful Marketer Life Stream, Strategic Education’s Chief Strategy and Customer Officer, Amy Shioji, shared these simple questions that you can use to structure your thinking.
- What is the problem we’re trying to solve?
- What does success look like?
- What is good enough?
- What is it we are not going to address?
Here’s the 4 minute video explaining the scaffolding concept.
You can ask these questions in a variety of scenarios, such as:
- Building new strategies to redesign your office environment
- Refining your hybrid or “return to work” strategies
- Reprioritizing
- New product and service idea generation
- Preparing for a customer support meeting or a sales call
- Designing a new role within your team or division
With the gigantic talent shortage in the USA (over 9.1 million open jobs as of this writing), you have a unique opportunity to spread your wings and impact. Why not start the journey by building stronger scaffolding?
Want to go further faster and contribute more directly to your company’s top line growth? Let’s talk.
Join me on my Mindful Marketer Life Stream the first 3 Fridays of the month at 1:30pm ET. Just follow me on LinkedIn to be notified when I go live. You can also visit our events page to view past episodes and check out our upcoming schedule.