Every CMO inheriting a digital operation asks same question in first thirty days. Why is attribution model broken and why has nobody fixed it. Why is technology stack expensive but underutilised. Why is team large but velocity slow. Why do channel reports show improvement whilst revenue is flat.
New CMOs discover problems previous CMO knew existed but could not address. Not because previous CMO was incompetent. Because fixing these problems requires forcing uncomfortable conversations about decisions made before they arrived.
Easier to work around problems than force conversations that make predecessors look bad. The cost is that problems compound whilst everyone works around them.
If you know what your successor will fix in their first ninety days and you cannot fix it yourself without political cost, you need an external partner forcing conversations that create change whilst you are still CMO getting credit for it.
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