Category: Growth Strategy

Early Bird ends May 16

Let’s make marketing music in Nashville
Let’s make marketing music in Nashville

Our theme – “The Innovation Songbook” – will help you craft new strategies to outpace competitors, think more strategically, and thrive in the year ahead.

Hype cycles take us—and our stakeholders—on a wild ride. Without strategic guardrails, our brand may be forever damaged. Yet here we are, diving into countless ChatGPT and other generative AI use cases and experiments, skipping the strategic questions and downplaying the consequences of unfettered use.

Marketing innovation is about applying creativity to improve your stakeholders’ condition. It requires us to challenge our established beliefs and assumptions. It often also demands that we learn from our past as a way to inform our future.  We often need to set aside the past, and begin with a clean slate. This process helps us design an empowering narrative to guide us forward. It bolsters our resilience.

That’s the underlying theme of our 6th annual CMOs Leading Innovation Conference (CLIC ’22): “Growth Curves Ahead: The Resilient CMO.”
We’re gathering in historic Charleston, South Carolina at the International African American Museum….

Did you encounter a silver lining from the past pandemic era?

I certainly did. I witnessed an extraordinary number of people who paused, and confronted their existential crisis head-on.

In The Earned Life, Marshall Goldsmith and co-author Mark Reiter meticulously capture the existential moments that we endured. In Section One, Marshall describes how CEO clients become goal-obsessed. It leaves them feeling empty and deflated. He has witnessed these behaviors at the highest levels;…

Hiring an executive coach is a personal choice. Use time to build the right set of screening questions during your vetting process.

  1. Does this coach have a track record of ensuring that my actions, ambitions and aspirations are aligned with my company’s key goals, vision, and values?
  2. Can she point to measurable results from her coaching engagements (versus smile sheets)?
  3. Can I rely on her to help me dramatically grow my external and internal networks, or is she isolated from business communities?

Relationships trump hands-on skills as I climb the career ladder. Will she show me a way to reach beyond the “do good work” model, and help me build a dedicated team of stakeholders?

Jason just saw five years of hard work go down the tubes.

As a CMO of a public company, he has invested five years of emotional capital and energy into team development and recognition.

Yet his team wasn’t immune to the spoils of The Great Resignation.

He just reported 47% turnover within the marketing team. Other departments weren’t proud of their turnover rates, either.

That’s turmoil in a nutshell.

How can we tame turmoil when world events swirl around us?…

Looking back at 2021, career shifting became the norm. Marketing leadership roles are abundant right now.

I’m not surprised–PwC’s 2021 Future of Work survey revealed that 65% of employees are looking for a new job. Also, in 2021, over half of my clients were either promoted or changed jobs.

Landing that new role or promotion can be very energizing. You typically have just 90 days to make your mark as an innovator, not just a doer….

Feeling a bit sluggish as we welcome the new year?

Are you bombarded with inbound requests and priorities?

Catching yourself multitasking to keep up with demands?

You’re not alone.

My top clients are saying the same thing. They secretly wish the holiday break was JUST a bit longer.

In lieu of my normal news approach, I’m going light on the word count this week.

I invite you to take a 2 minute breather and enjoy this Forbes article….

Two years into the pandemic, things still feel heavy. To cope, some professionals have turned to self-medication versus meditation (or other healthy habits).

For many of us marketers, our creative candles have flamed out.

Instead of focusing on discussing the theme, “The Great Resignation,” what if we made 2022 “The Year of PLAY?”

In Episode 51, we explore the connection of PLAY to performance with my colleague, Gary Ware.

You may think I’m glossing over the severity of the pandemic….

For marketing leaders, 2021 was a year to remember—and not repeat! 

Customer expectations shifted rapidly. Some great marketers left their lofty roles to be their own bosses. In fact, recent Labor Department data show that the number of unincorporated self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the pandemic

Many top team members either resigned or re-tooled, leaving costly gaps.

One of my top clients, for example, had to delay a new product launch valued at $1B because of talent gaps and burned-out teams.  …

How digital-ready is your team?

Take our 3 minute quiz to find out.
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