Part two of three. This series is for senior marketers getting their arms around what AI means for the next phase of their careers.
Read in any order. Forward whichever one hits to the person on your team who needs it. |
A recent conversation with a group of senior marketers stopped me in my tracks.
Someone observed that the last few marketers promoted into significant leadership roles inside their organization all had something in common. None were known for their best campaign, breakthrough strategy, or creative brilliance.
What they were known for was making things happen.
They could get decisions made when everyone else was stuck in meetings. They could align teams that normally worked against each other. They could simplify complexity and move initiatives forward when momentum started to disappear.
The more the conversation unfolded, the more uncomfortable the observation became.
Most of us built our careers on a simple assumption: if we became better marketers, we would become more influential leaders. Increasingly, that assumption appears incomplete.
Marketing expertise still gets you in the room. It just may not be what gets you promoted anymore.
Most Organizations Don’t Have an Idea Problem
Modern marketing has become remarkably good at generating ideas. Most organizations have no shortage of strategies, campaigns, dashboards, data, or technology. What many lack is the ability to turn decisions into action without losing momentum along the way.
We hear versions of this constantly. Initiatives stall because approvals bounce between departments. Reporting arrives after decisions have already been made. Teams optimize their own objectives while nobody owns the larger outcome. Processes designed years ago continue to shape decisions long after the business has changed.
One marketer recently joked that their biggest competitor was not another brand. It was their own internal workflow.
Everyone laughed. Nobody disagreed.
The organizations moving fastest today are not necessarily the ones with the smartest strategy. More often, they are the ones that have removed the most friction between strategy and execution.
Influence Is Moving Closer To The Business
For years, influence largely followed expertise. The strategist who understood the customer best. The marketer who spotted trends first. The leader who consistently delivered successful campaigns. Those skills still matter. But expertise alone rarely creates momentum.
Many organizations already have enough people who can build a campaign. What they are short on are people who can align competing stakeholders, accelerate decisions, and move initiatives from PowerPoint into reality.
The marketers gaining influence are often the people connecting functions that do not naturally work together. They understand how finance evaluates investments, how analytics interprets performance, how procurement approaches vendor decisions, and how marketing translates all of it into action. They have become translators as much as marketers. That may sound less exciting than building campaigns but increasingly, it is proving more valuable.
Resourcefulness Is About Removing Constraints
This observation feels especially relevant right now. AI is accelerating execution. Teams are being asked to move faster across more channels. Expectations continue to rise. Yet many of the delays marketers experience remain remarkably human. They come from unclear ownership, competing priorities, outdated processes, and decisions that pass through too many hands before action can happen.
For years, resourcefulness in marketing meant squeezing more output from limited budgets and teams. Today it may mean something entirely different. It may mean recognizing that the biggest constraint on growth is no longer media, technology, or even budget. It is organizational friction.
The marketers creating the most influence seem to understand this instinctively. They focus on identifying the constraint that matters most and removing it. Sometimes that means simplifying a workflow. Sometimes it means challenging an outdated assumption. Sometimes it means taking ownership of a problem everyone else has learned to work around.
What To Do This Week
If this observation resonates, don’t start by looking at your next campaign. Look at your last delayed initiative.
Most organizations spend enormous energy analyzing performance after launch. Far fewer spend time understanding what slowed progress before launch. Yet that is often where the biggest opportunity sits.
Follow the friction. Where did momentum actually stop? Was it strategy, or was it approvals, ownership confusion, competing priorities, or reporting delays?
Pay attention to what nobody owns. The highest-impact opportunities are often the recurring frustrations everyone acknowledges but nobody feels responsible for solving.
Become a translator. Learn how finance, analytics, procurement, sales, and operations define success. The leaders who can connect perspectives and create alignment across functions are increasingly becoming indispensable.
The uncomfortable reality may be that many organizations already have enough good marketers. What they need are more people who can help the business move. The marketers who learn to create that momentum are not abandoning marketing. They are expanding their influence beyond it. Increasingly, those are the people shaping strategy, leading larger teams, and earning the next opportunity.
Make it you!