You may remember that in our previous column, Andrea Dietrich and I wrote about how ambidexterity is one of the most important skills that the contemporary CMO must work on if he or she wants to meet the expectations of companies and customers, especially in the fast-paced digital age in which we live.
And speaking of agility, the exponential acceleration of the world does not allow us to centralize control, or we will be left behind. We're seeing big businesses going under or losing value significantly because they haven't kept up with consumer transformations and advances in technology. Behind these businesses, there is a team that unfortunately didn't see these opportunities and remained in their comfort zone - this is where the CMO needs to act.
To make this path easier to see, we've highlighted eight virtues of the new age professional, which can be translated into attitudes and behaviors:
- Empowerment
Speed is directly linked to autonomy and decentralization in the organization. To do this, we need teams to be much more aligned with business objectives, allowing leaders to give them the freedom to deliver what is best for the context they are living in. Out goes micro-management, which holds back innovation and people's creative power, and in comes alignment and empowerment.
2. Courage
Knowing how to navigate uncharted waters is the mantra of the leader of the future. You need to have the courage to step out of the box and do what no one else has ever done. New technologies, consumers changing all the time and less predictability are the backdrops for organizations to be truly customer-centric. It's about building your unique path of differentiation, delivering value, and not following fads. It's about doing what has to be done to serve and delight your customer, in line with what your business believes in. Out goes fear, in comes courage.
3. Humility
Understanding that we don't know everything and that we can learn new things every day brings us closer to innovation. Humility and a willingness to learn will be two of the most valued characteristics of this new professional. The speed of the world means we have to be more open to learning about everything, from everyone, at any time. Everything we've learned has brought us this far, but it won't guarantee that we'll go any further.
4. Creativity
Uncertainty requires us to be more creative and faster every day. The highly competitive market, with technology opening up new scenarios all the time, makes us constantly question the status quo and try to do things better and differently. There is no longer one way or another, there are several! With creativity, focus on results and enthusiasm, we will discover the best of them.
5 . Discipline
To be more creative and efficient, we need processes. Even the most creative and disruptive areas need a management and governance model to be effective. But not management that shackles; on the contrary, tools that liberate. Agile culture is based on a structure that allows teams to be self-organizing, fast, productive and flexible. One of the best-known agile frameworks, Scrum, has very well-defined roles, rituals and practices so that we can operate in short evolutionary cycles, focusing on the customer, bringing results and adding value (and especially learning) to each iteration.
6. Adaptability
When everything is so volatile, we need to be highly adaptable. Command and control give way to flexibility, compassion and empathy. The big strategic plans that tend to bog us down give way to an ambitious vision, but with plenty of flexibility to get it right or correct it. This is where the ability to test, make mistakes, learn and evolve continuously comes in. It's about having a clear destination, but the freedom to change course if necessary in order to achieve the expected results.
7. Generosity
This virtue is related to the attitude of collaboration and sharing that is so fundamental in these new times. Groups of people, companies and even countries that act for the benefit of others and in a collective way are more successful. Individualism, ego, silos and closed doors give way to collaboration, the exchange of knowledge and integrated work towards a common goal. The pandemic has brought unprecedented facts, such as major competing players who have started to work together to do good. We will see more and more of this within organizations and between organizations (we hope!).
8. Entrepreneurship
At this point we're talking about the attitude of making things happen, of taking care of things as owners. It's about being driven by a greater purpose and sticking to it to put it into practice. Initiative, passion and faith in the business are some of the attributes of entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs, who mobilize their surroundings to make their ideas happen.
We can then add to this new list of the CMO's roles and attributions the responsibility of fostering the development of these virtues, since the marketing area is the great link between the client and the organization's internal environment.
And how do we do that? More efficient than dictating what not to do, is to encourage what we want to see. In this way, the leaders of the organization also become the "culture hackers": people who, through their actions, behaviour and words, will "viralize" these virtues in the organization.
Text originally published in HSM Management*
