Meredith Madden, General Manager of NotCo US
Many marketing leaders have aspirations to advance beyond being a functional leader to becoming a general manager, division president or company CEO. Well-rounded CMOs who have managed multiple levers of growth are often in a great position to lead companies to the next level. Meredith Madden is a recent example of this career progression. She recently joined NotCo, a company dedicated to replicating animal-based food products using plants and vegetables, as general manager of the expanding US business. Previously Madden had a ten-year career at Chobani where she advanced through the ranks of category management and consumer insights to become chief marketing and category officer. Here are three lessons for other marketing leaders who have similar career ambitions.
1. Learn the business beyond marketing – Looking back on her time at Chobani, Madden felt she had gained a good grasp of the overall business and its levers for success. She observed, “The thing that I've noticed that helped me the most was just how involved I was in my last role in the overall finances and operations. In the CMO role, you're very connected commercially to sales, and you understand R&D and innovation and how to how to make that work, you understand your consumer, you understand the category, but you might have a narrow focus on your budget and your finances. You might hear of operational things that may impact how you are marketing your brand. But if you don't really understand the entire chain of how a company works, then I think it might be a little bit difficult to launch beyond the more commercial side of the role.” What parts of the business might marketers want to learn more about? “Pricing, forecasting and demand planning. Understand the entire distribution network of demand planning, and whether that is partnering with somebody in your supply chain, to align with them on plans and understand the impact of choosing to support one product or over another in a certain timeframe. Understand where the ingredients are coming from, the lead times, all of that just to help you make better decisions in the CMO role. And getting that knowledge while you're in the CMO role is going to help you open up to a more general manager-type role.”
2. Deliver collaboratively – As Madden reflected on her new role as GM, she observed the importance of CMOs’ building trust with their bosses. What can CMOs do to build that trust? She advocated, “Deliver. It’s your proof [that you can be trusted]. In the short time here at NotCo, I've let go of design decisions and creative direction decisions. I'm a more trusting person in general, and I enjoy being in the weeds, but I have expectations that people who are in the roles are the expert at their roles. It's establishing the right amount of inform versus decision, and not strictly from a RACI-standpoint. But here is what I need to be involved with as the GM. And here what I trust you to do.” Beyond forging a collaborative relationship with one’s boss, which other relationship are critical to delivering and building trust? “The CMOs best friend should be the head of sales. If you have you have a traditional sales versus marketing, field versus corporate, head of sales versus head of marketing, they should be lockstep at all cost. Spend time getting to know each other’s roles. A marketer can go out in the field and get on sales calls, at the higher level to understand the intricacies of each other's job. And then when you have a challenge, work with each other. Don't rely on the general manager or the CEO to be the decision maker for the tiebreaker.”
3. Understand the context – “I think in the general manager role, the most important thing I can do is provide the context and the clarity behind why a decision is being made or why a decision needs to be made,” said Madden. “The fallout I see constantly is when things are just asked of somebody, and there's no understanding of where it's coming from, or why it's needed. Set the context, and then let the teams find the solution or create the decision. That's the way it needs to work. If they don't have the context, they're not going to get to the right solution.” So marketing leaders should get good at understanding context as well as providing context for their teams. But getting the broader context is often hard for CMOs. Madden shared, “I thought a CMO role was one of the most narrowly focused roles because you have huge responsibilities, but you might not be the one sitting in the board meetings, discussing the implications of growing the company and the P&L and making difficult decisions. You are oftentimes executing a vision, on a budget that's been agreed upon, sometimes with or without you. I do believe a CMO who has the experience with some of those other cross functional teams, that is in the room, that does understand the full P&L top to bottom, that does understand the operational scale, they will be primed for moving into that general manager or CEO role. They have all that operational experience, but they also understand the consumer, they understand how to talk to consumers, and they understand how to present their brand and the company's mission.”
Is advancing to a broader general manager role worth it? Madden believes so. “I feel the sense of responsibility for the entire US. I am part of a larger organization, but I'm also the leader of the US, and I take personal responsibility for the success of our business. But I’m having so much fun!”
