The board meeting where someone first asks whether the CMO model is the right structure for the commercial problem the business is facing is a different board meeting to any that preceded it. I know because I have been in that room and I know what the conversation that follows produces.
It does not produce a comfortable conclusion. It produces a more precise understanding of where the commercial system is actually underperforming, a clearer picture of what the role at the top of the revenue function needs to be able to do, and a set of decisions that are more likely to produce a durable commercial improvement than the hiring decision that would have followed the previous board meeting format.
The businesses I have worked with that moved from the CMO model to a genuine commercial systems function did not do so because the CMO failed. They did so because the leadership was honest enough to recognise that the commercial architecture of the business had outgrown the organisational model built to manage it. That recognition is not a criticism of anyone in the building. It is an act of commercial maturity.
The Marketing MRI is the examination that makes that board conversation possible. Six weeks. A senior read of the whole commercial system. The specific findings that change what the room knows before it makes the structural decision.
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