Human-Centered Actions Should Drive Transformation Efforts
By: Janet Balis, Partner and Marketing Practice Leader, EY
If transformation is an undeniable imperative for organizational growth, then driving successful transformation, for the business and its people, is crucial. Despite this imperative, 67% of senior leaders have been part of at least one underperforming transformation in the last five years. How can transformations be more consistently successful?
Success requires the C-suite put six human-centered actions at the core of their transformation efforts:
Collaborate, care, inspire, empower, build, and lead.
Companies that do increase the likelihood of transformational success by 2.6 times. Given this, and because of the natural alignment of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) to these success factors, CEOs and boards would be well served to look to their CMOs to play a broad and integrated role in organizational transformations.
For CMOs, the attributes required for transformation success are skills they deploy regularly and that can be readily applied to cross-functional transformations to capture broader value across the organization. But these same skills— and CMOs themselves—are often underleveraged.
EY and the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business school collaborated on research to identify insights on how to successfully deliver large-scale transformations. A survey of 935 senior leaders and direct reports, as well as over 1,100 members of the workforce, from 23 countries and 16 industry sectors, suggests that human emotions are a key determining factor in the success or failure of a business transformation. Based on this research, here are six ideas for unleashing CMO leadership in company-wide transformation efforts.
1. Collaborate: Unlock the power of CMOs as Chief Dot Connectors.
CMOs have long served as chief dot connectors, and they can use their cross-functional and often cross-geographic relationships to help drive effective change. Successful transformations require prioritizing the collective good across the organization. In high-performing transformations, more than half (52%) of respondents say leaders made decisions that were best for the whole organization, not just their area of responsibility, compared to only 31% in low-performing transformations.
CMO accountability for the brand promise and the need to deliver that brand promise across a customer journey owned by many other functions – from supply chain to customer care – forces marketers to become strong experience integrators across the organization. The very nature of the CMO’s job requires strong leadership and cross-functional collaboration, preparing them uniquely as leaders for broader transformation efforts.
2. Care: Take advantage of CMOs as transparent communicators.
In major transformations, human emotions often breed skepticism and organizational mistrust around leadership intent and key communications. Half of workers who experienced an underperforming transformation were more likely to agree that “transformation” is just another word for layoffs.
In transformation, where trust is bred through transparency, CMO skills as transparent communicators can be effectively applied to craft clear messaging that can be understood throughout the whole organization. The same persona-based creative strategies used in brand marketing can be deployed in internal communications to be sure that messaging is tailored to different constituencies, inspiring employees to believe and trust in the transformation.
3. Inspire: Tap CMOs as human-centered leaders.
Leaders need to create a vision that everyone can believe in, compelling teams to commit to the change experience. 71% of employees agreed that leaders needed to clearly communicate why change is needed, not just what the employee needed to do. It is critical to foster genuine belief as opposed to passive understanding of the tactical steps of transformation.
Given their roles as human-centered storytellers, CMOs often create compelling, memorable brand experiences across platforms, deeply rooted in human emotions and insights. In the context of broader enterprise transformations, CMOs can apply their powers of persuasion to help transform negative emotions into belief in transformation initiatives, helping people feel supported as they adapt to change. Experts in messaging, CMOs can also collaborate with other executives to provide guidance on what will resonate within the enterprise to drive positive impact.
4. Empower: Embrace innovation through the CMO’s affinity for testing and learning.
46% of the research respondents in high-performing transformations shared that the process encouraged innovative experimentation and new ideas versus only 29% in low-performing transformations.
Change is a constant for CMOs. Consequently, they are inherently testers and learners, always seeking new ways to effectively build brand equity and performance. For broader transformations to thrive, they must embrace an innovation mindset, as the marketing function does, and get comfortable with experimentation. A CMO’s test-and-learn orientation, which constantly seeks new ideas (and proof points of results), is well-suited to help empower others throughout the organization to do the same.
5. Build: Use CMO expertise as digital transformation leaders to create value at scale.
As digital transformation leaders, CMOs who have long championed the value of a more connected, intelligent, anticipatory customer experience know the value of technology intimately, and technology is highly correlated to success here. In fact, nearly half (48%) of respondents from high-performing transformations say their organization invested in the right technologies to meet their transformation vision versus only 33% in low-performing transformations.
Broader transformations require the connective tissue accelerated by data, automation, and technology. The CMO is well poised to serve enterprise-wide transformations applying lessons learned in marketing, and now those lessons can be applied to supply chain, procurement, R&D, and beyond, many of which hinge on capturing quick wins while executing on a longer-term technology roadmap to drive value.
6. Lead: Driving successful change by tapping into CMO’s ability to be a powerful cultural ambassador.
The “people agenda” clearly fits squarely at the heart of transformation and successful adoption of change hinges on managing a shift in culture. Not surprisingly, data revealed that 44% of respondents in high-performing transformations say their organization’s culture encouraged new ways of working versus only 28% of those in low-performing transformations.
CMOs are powerful cultural ambassadors, steeped in culture and trends externally and well-attuned to internal dynamics. Throughout the marketing “funnel,” CMOs drive impact through an optimized mix of message reach and frequency, and the CMOs is often an organization’s expert in behavioral change. CMOs also tend to embody more adaptive leadership styles, embracing change and showing vulnerability themselves as they “walk the walk,” another critical mindset for driving transformation success.
Unleashing the power of CMOs in transformation
Transformation is never easy. However, the EY-Oxford research provides vital insights that human emotions and insights are at the core of driving them successfully. CMOs understand the need to empower people and connect with them in the context of who they truly are, while harnessing the power of data and technology to drive strong connections. They are powerful communicators and innovators, blending creativity and experimentation with the right level of rigor and discipline to drive successful execution at scale.
By putting CMOs at the center of transformation initiative, we put human motivations at the center of change on multiple dimensions, dramatically increasing the likelihood of delivering on the ambitions sitting at the heart of the transformation.
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Janet Balis is EY’s Marketing Practice Leader focusing on the CMO agenda and data-driven commercial transformation.
