The first thing a new CMO does in almost every business I have seen is audit the existing structure and propose a reorganisation.
Not because the structure is necessarily wrong. Because the reorganisation signals authority, creates early visible activity, and positions the new leader as someone who has assessed the situation and is taking decisive action. It is political theatre with a commercial costume on.
The second thing they do is renegotiate the agency relationships. Same rationale. Visible action. Signals that the old way is changing. Generates enough motion to survive the first board review.
By month six, the same underlying commercial problems that existed before they arrived are still running, now wrapped in a new org structure and a new set of agency relationships, and the business has spent six months and a significant portion of the CMO's annual salary generating motion rather than diagnosis.
A systems operator does not reorganise first. They read first. Everything else follows from what the read shows.
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