I want to say something that most Digital Directors in a scaling business already know and are not in a position to say clearly.
The CMO above you is solving a different problem to the one you are looking at. You are looking at the system. They are looking at the strategy. And in a digital business, those are not the same thing and the strategy frequently cannot see what the system is showing.
The strategy says the funnel is working. The system shows you where it is leaking and at what rate and what the downstream commercial consequence of that leak will be in six months. The strategy says the channel mix is right. The system shows you the attribution assumptions underneath that conclusion and whether they hold.
The gap between what the strategy thinks is happening and what the system is actually doing is where the commercial performance you are being held accountable for is being lost. And it is a gap that the CMO role as currently designed is not built to close.
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