Culture and leadership
There is no ‘right’ model for marketing’s organisational design, but there are many wrong ways of working. Changing reporting lines alone and expecting them to fix deeper issues will likely lead to frustration and continued disappointment. I know its unpopular to say but many dysfunctions of teams come back to their leaders. Many leaders reach a place of leadership due to some inherent strength that they were able to apply, but strengths can easily become weaknesses. The leader that was able to make decisions where others couldn’t becomes the over-dominating personality behind all decisions. The leader that was highly rational but lacked EQ becomes the unemotional face that no one connects with or feels motivated by. The leader that built their experience growing brands lacks fundamental understanding of process or integrated marketing. Whether an attribute is a strength or a weakness depends upon circumstance.
Common organisational design failings that can exacerbate problems:
Lack of measurement framework and performance review cadence.
Lack of accountability and commitment.
Lack of conflicts resolution.
Lack of trust.
When teams struggle to work cross-functionally it can be because they have little reason to, or little that they can agree on. Clear, indisputable measures of success that mandate cross-functional partnership push teams towards better collaboration. When two teams meet to achieve a shared goal they must be able to see how both their individual and their collective activity contributes to success, and they must commit to each other to accurately represent that partnership when they report back to the business. Teams and leaders that attempt to claim credit or who fail to give credit for work delivered in partnership need to be called out and the behaviour rectified. A focus on egos or the success of a department can cause leaders to overstate their impact rather than recognising the integral nature of other’s work in their joint success.
Commitment and predictability are essential to partnership. Some organisations create environments that unintentionally prevent teams from being accountable, by not allowing them to make commitments. When leaders insist upon being the final decision maker for any output from their team or when team culture becomes one of escalation until the most senior person decides, no-one can be empowered, decision making and innovation grind to a halt and measurement becomes meaningless.
Typically, failure to resolve conflict comes from attempting to move forward without addressing the underlying problems. Those fabled ‘elephants in the room’. These underlying problems could be personal disagreements, misalignment on strategy or just failing to share concerns about working styles. Failure to provide feedback or to address problems can make unproductive working styles feel acceptable and condoned and these problems are unlikely to be fixed simply by changing reporting lines.
Lack of trust is perhaps the most pervasive challenge for teams to get over. Trust is earned. It is gained in drops and lost in buckets. When teams don’t trust the intent of others, don’t value the experience they bring or believe in the integrity with which they operate they cannot partner effectively. Trust, respect, recognising competence and understanding other’s needs are all necessary to be a functional organisation. Without measurement, accountability, commitment, equitable conflict resolution and trust within teams, across teams and through leadership no organisation design can be successful. But org design, combined with an operating cadence and evaluated through a marketing scorecard can help embed these behaviours effectively.