Not My Job Man

CEOs: how do you feel when you overhear one of your people say this line?

"It's not my job."

You see red, don't you? Or how about when you hear a sales guy say,

"That's manufacturing's problem."

I've witnessed that last one a lot in my career. The attitude is, sales will sell it, and engineering will have to figure out how to fulfill their promises. Or marketing will promise it, and customer service will have to handle the cascades of disgruntled customers who have basically been lied to. Or the company will produce it, and the resellers, or dealers, or channel partners will have to field all the service complaints because the product is deeply flawed.

Am I hitting a nerve? Is this something you, as CEO, have dealt with? Or maybe, something you are dealing with now, or something you always deal with, and have since your first days on your first job decades ago?

Earlier, I posted on the tension I've noticed in just about every organization between Marketing and Sales. Basically, they are coming at the same task from two very different perspectives. They often don't respect each other. Worse, they typically see each other as vying for the same finite resources, including the CEO's time, attention, and high regard.

Yesterday, I suggested that the problem was with the corporate pyramid itself, rather than with Sales or with Marketing.

Here, finally, is my humble solution. Well, my radical solution. But it's not one I made up myself. W.L. Gore has been using it for decades, and they are a highly successful privately held company. My guess is you, Mr. or Ms CEO, would be lucky to have their financial or operational success at your own company.

The answer? Do away with titles. Eliminate roles, and areas of responsibility. Instead, institute this culture shift: One company, one goal, with everyone working toward it.

Think about any organization, and what do you have? The very highest-ranking leader is a generalist: she is responsible for every function of the company, every single one!

Then, right below her on the org chart, what happens? Speciality. There's a head of finance. A head of manufacturing. Someone else in charge of sales, and a different person in charge of marketing. You've got Bob heading up IT, and Wanda in charge of people or "human resources." Don the legal council keeps you out of jail. Juan the sourcing guy deals with all the vendor contracts. I could go on, but I think you probably see my point.

Something goes wrong at your main data center? Everyone blames Bob. "Not my problem," the rest think, with a combination of relief and disgust. "Geek," some mutter under their breath. "What do we pay this guy for?" mutter others.

Sales start to tank? All eyes turn to John, the Senior VP of sales. "Let's get on it!" the rest of the company brays - as if the quality of the product doesn't matter at all, as if fulfillment of orders in a timely manner isn't a consideration, as if wild promises made in advertising have no bearing, as if employee churn and poor morale have nothing at all to do with why customers are wising up and fleeing the company in droves!

"Not my job" is completely unacceptable when uttered by a front line worker. So why is it so prevalent in the C-suite?

Think Outside the Pyramid

In an earlier post, I posed a question to my readers: How do we reconcile the seemingly inherent conflict between sales and marketing within an organization?

The replies were of the highest caliber, both in the comments section and in the tweets I received. They've helped me develop my thoughts further to solve this possibly intractable problem.

I'm not claiming to have a cure-all for the turf wars that plague just about every company out there. But I do have a suggestion, and it requires some "out-of-the-box" thinking - or as I prefer to call it in this case, "out-of-the-pyramid." The root of the problem, it seems to me, lies within the very nature of the corporate pyramid itself.

That's all I've got for you today. I just wanted to keep you thinking, and commenting, so that I can continue to develop my suggestion.

Please come back tomorrow for part 3 of this series. Or, subscribe to this blog, and the post will come to you.

Build a Talent Magnet!

I am honored to be guest blogger on my friend Shawn Murphy's blog today. I hope you read my post there, but then explore the rest of Shawn's blog. This month, Shawn has invited a number of world-class leaders to share their thoughts on how business will change in 2011. He calls the theme Revive & Thrive. I've read each of the December posts, and they're phenomenal!

Writes Shawn,

Our Revive & Thrive in 2011 continues today with Ted Coiné and the topic of building a Talent Magnet. Pay attention leaders. Though the lesson is simple it’s one that can no longer elude managers as we recover from the Great Recession. The lesson is this: employees want to be a contribution and want work that is meaningful to them.

http://achievedstrategies.com/blog/build-a-talent-magnet/

Enjoy! - and please, leave a comment on Shawn's blog. Your thoughts help me develop my own.

On Marketing, Sales, Cats, & Dogs

You don't have to be a business guru to pick up on one of the deepest tensions within most companies: Sales and Marketing rarely get along - and when they do, it's often grudgingly.

Is it because these two disciplines are coming at the same task from such different perspectives, one using science, the other art? Is it because they're insecure of their positions within the organization, like two siblings with an aloof, judgmental parent?

I've observed companies where the head of maketing, often the CMO, reports to the CEO. I've seen others where the head of sales does. I've seen orgs where sales reports to marketing, or marketing to sales. Rarely have I seen heads of both report directly in to the CEO as true peers.

Now, add to this mix head of corporate communications or public relations. Head of investor relations. Chief Customer Officer. If you think that last, CCO, is new and different, here's one that many companies have yet to even consider: Chief of Social Media or Social Networking.

All these folks can't report to the CEO! Seriously, they can't! One leader can only concentrate on so many ideas and projects until the very idea of "concentration" flies right out the window. Aside from all these disciplines, there are the old standbys to consider, such as manufacturing, R&D, supply chain, people (or "human resources" or "personnel" in 20th-Century parlance), IT, finance, legal, and on and on....

No wonder sales and marketing can't get along! They get, intuitively, that the Big Cheese simply lacks the bandwidth to focus on them both. And since their roles are ostensibly so redundant, well, who better to push out of the nest than your closest rival for attention and resources?

Marketing is a cat. Sales is a dog. Both look around and say, "This family doesn't need two pets. I'm all my master needs to feel fulfilled."

It's natural, and it's wrong. There is a profound problem here, much deeper than just making room at the table for two equally-useful disciplines. I have a solution in mind, but before I share it, I'm very interested to hear what you, my reader, has to say. This blog attracts an inordinate amount of attention from some very savvy minds in business, and I always learn a lot from the comments you leave. I don't want to influence your comments now.

So part two of this post is coming. But first, let's see what you experts have to say.

Experts? It's your turn. Fire away in the comments, please!