The Reasons – 1
Let’s start with the basic question. Why do more CMOs not become CEOs?
A 2015 Spencer Stuart report discussed the route to the top for CMOs. I asked ChatGPT to summarise why CMOs don’t often become CEOs:
- Ambition and Perception: Not all marketers aim for CEO roles, and marketing is sometimes not seen as part of the core general management group within companies.
- Transition Challenges: Moving from CMO to CEO often involves leaving the marketing function and sometimes the current organisation, facing internal competition and skepticism.
- Lack of Broad Experience: CMOs may not have the broad operational or P&L experience often seen in CEO backgrounds and might be viewed as too specialised.
- Financial Expertise: A potential gap in deep financial understanding and management, which is critical for CEO roles.
- Strategic Influence: While marketing’s role has grown, CMOs may still need to prove they can contribute beyond their domain to strategic decision-making at the highest levels.
The report quotes a few CEOs:
- You can be siloed as a marketer and taking a broader view of the business can be quite difficult. You need to gain additional experience, either as a bolt-on or outside marketing.
- A lack of P&L management experience and a lack of experience in making decisions beyond marketing, especially strategic decisions affecting distribution, purchasing and people.
- Only commercial marketers will be able to become CEO. You need to be experienced in both marketing and sales.
- If the projects you are working on are not of strategic importance to the CEO and the board, it is a waste of time — you will not progress.
Nick Reynolds wrote in a LinkedIn post:
HBR July-Aug 2017 has an interesting article on this entitled “The trouble with CMOs” by Professor Kimberley White from the University of Virginia, Darden School of Business. Her summary is that the top marketing job in the company is a minefield where many executives fail. Why is it so risky? She maintains there is often a mismatch between CEO expectations and CMO authority. We need to address this and eliminate the shortfall. What happens is often the CMO role is considered important in helping to lead the company’s efforts for growing revenue and profit, but the overall scope is limited to ‘traditional marketing’ areas like events, communications, advertising, and social media. When the CMO is not in control of product launches, pricing, store openings, channel strategy and website e-commerce – they are disempowered and not as effective as they could be.
Interestingly, the HBR data from Professor White reinforces this, as she cites that 57% of CMOs will spend three years in the role, and 40% will spend just two years or less. There seems like a missed opportunity for businesses here. This lack of tenure will severely limit the opportunity for CMOs to be considered for the CEO position when boards look to promote from within an executive team.
Here are some quotes from a Raconteur article entitled “What’s stopping marketers getting the CEO role?”:
- The experience that I’ve had is that a CMO has to try a bit harder to show real interest in the metrics that matter to an organisation, to lean into the CFO and the CFO’s language, to not rely on marketing jargon and expect everyone else to understand it.”
- Marketers don’t spend enough time communicating with people in smaller groups and we don’t spend enough time understanding the different personalities, drivers, pressures and benefit barriers of people in the rest of the C-suite.
- [Marketers are] talking about metrics, numbers, outcomes and what we’re driving. It has to come back to the language that business partners speak.
