Your CMO has been in post for fourteen months. The commercial system they were hired to improve is producing results that are within the range of the previous CMO's tenure. The team has changed. The agency has changed. The budget has been redistributed. The system is producing the same output.
I want you to sit with that observation because it contains the diagnostic finding you have been avoiding. If changing the person, the team, the agency, and the budget allocation does not change the commercial output, the commercial output is being determined by something that none of those changes touched.
The thing those changes did not touch is the architecture of the commercial system itself. The measurement logic that determines which decisions look right. The incentive structure that determines which behaviours the teams optimise toward. The handoff design that determines where commercial value is created and where it is lost. The reporting framework that determines what leadership can see and what remains invisible.
Those things were in place before your last CMO arrived. They are in place now. They will be in place when the next CMO arrives unless someone examines the architecture rather than the person occupying the role that sits inside it.
The CMO is not the constraint. The system the CMO is operating inside is.
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