5

Leading the Analytical
Organization

From Responsive to Agile

Now that we've examined the big changes to organizational mindset, structure, and talent, let's look more closely at what it means to lead an analytically driven organization. What kinds of leaders does the marketing organization need? What type of leader do you have to be? How does analytics affect your interaction with your company's C-suite? We'll dig into these questions next.

Depending on the industry, marketing leaders may have come from the brand, creative, or more traditional ranks in marketing. While that is still the case for some leadership positions, marketing leaders also emerge from more technical or analytical backgrounds. It's simply not enough to do things the way we used to. Today's marketing leaders need to be technically savvy, know the value of data, and be analytically oriented. I'm not saying that the visual or brand components aren't valuable as well. That's still a big part of the job. But just having those skills is no longer enough. To lead today's modern analytical marketing organization, you need to understand how to assemble the multiple skills and disciplines inside your organization and, by playing together, create beautiful music in the form of superior engagement with your customers.

Because you now have the data and the analytics to bolster what you're pitching, it's easier to back up the stories you are telling your team and peers in other departments. Everything we are doing in marketing now is more measurable than ever, which means we can truly analyze the effectiveness of our methods. Our level of accountability is also much higher. The data, numbers, and results allow us to set, track, and hold people to objectives in a discrete and deliberate way. The insight and prediction that marketing now provides influence change and strategy.

Leading a modern marketing department also requires tenacity and the willingness to embrace constant change, because we're bombarded with a constant, daily stream of new information and emerging channels. You need to encourage your team to change with you by being honest and direct with them. Don't allow complacency; reward risk taking, and empower your team with change management support. That means encouraging them to take risks—and to fail—while also having the courage to ask what went wrong and why, so they can learn from the experience and try again.

But it's also a constant balancing act between not being complacent and not freaking out about the constant, overwhelming sense of change. A leader needs to let people know that change is OK and necessary. But it can be difficult to find a balance between pushing people too hard and giving them time to get where they need to on their own. I learned the value of understanding how each leader in an organization processes change. Everyone has a different style in communicating and consuming information. Some people talk to think; others need time to absorb, process, and then talk. Some people are energized in chaos and brainstorming; others are overwhelmed. Know your leadership team members—how they process, how they communicate, what their strengths are, and where they need a different style, especially in contrast to your own. When implementing change, be sure to overcommunicate and allow for opportunities so folks can test assumptions and share their concerns. During a recent effort in globalization, I held regular sessions called “Ask Me Anything.” These were WebEx audio sessions that were offered at different times to accommodate global time zones, and my entire organization could tune in to ask anything (or submit questions in advance). I had to be honest in my answers, especially when I didn't have a good answer; it is OK for a leader to say, “I don't know yet.” The entire leadership should have consistent talking points and FAQ-type documents to avoid confusion or miscommunication.

That challenge can become even more complex when you begin to push change into other countries and cultures. The Internet culture and social media use in China are very different than in the United States, for example. So how do you adapt and change to those differences instead of coming up with strategies that are standardized across the board? There's no one answer to that question, and it's something we are constantly adjusting to as we move ahead (see the discussion in chapter 3).

Leading by Example

As a modern marketing leader, you need to lead by example and use the same technology, data, and analytics tools your team members are using to tell your stories. Your job is to make them look good.

What's probably more challenging is effecting change across the entire organization, including the leadership, by defining a clear set of objectives and then utilizing the right technologies, tools, and processes to enable accountability and consistency. Some people have a system that shows the reports and gives the information, but they also have spreadsheets that don't match up. A long time ago, I told my organization, “You can keep all the spreadsheets that you want, but don't show them to me.” All the data, all the analysis, all the information goes into the system of record, so that's the place where we're going to make decisions. There is a behavior shift along with the technology, the tools, and the expectations.

The other big issue we've faced, especially in the last several years, is tight budgets and limited resources. We have to be very selective with our investments. When people come with new ideas, approaches, or investments, my first questions are: Where is the data that supports your direction? How are you going to know that you've been successful? What can you show me to indicate this is the right direction? Are you willing to fail? What does that look like? When you have to be selective, you have to have metrics in place that really analyze what you can expect. The only way to answer that question is with the right data, analysis, and testing, followed by the ability to measure results and initiate change.

As an example, figure 5-1 shows a report that I look at every few weeks to understand how our different channels are performing. This report, which we call “Response by Channel,” tells us the total number of responders across channels in our marketing mix. When we dig deeper into the analysis, we gain insight into how each channel is performing and get answers to the following questions:

• How is e-mail performing (clicks, conversions, opt-outs)?
• Is content syndication providing the expected value on investment?

• How many impressions and conversions are we getting from online advertising and paid search?
• How many net new contacts are coming from marketing campaigns?

 

Because of the power of our data, we can also dive deep into any of these channels to look at performance from many different lenses. For example, if we are running a campaign on data management, we can drill down to see what channels are responding best to the campaign. We can also look at which channels are underperforming and then try to find out why.

I look at this data every two weeks or so, but it's always updated and available, which makes it even more valuable to the team members who are measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns and constantly adjusting them to boost their results. For me, this report is an example of analytical information I can use to influence our overall mix of investments and to identify areas where we might need to make changes. It's not about assessing whether something is right or wrong. Everything is fluid and always changing. Rather, I am looking at indicators in order to try different angles to drive results.

Much of my career in marketing has been directly tied to sales organizations. I learned a long time ago that sales leadership is motivated by results, metrics, and targets. So, in turn, we as a marketing organization have also embraced a marketing metrics approach.

For example, figure 5-2 shows another report we use in our conversations with the sales team that monitors the volume of leads and conversions for new sales. The report, “Lead Conversion to New Opportunities,” gives the total number of leads sent to sales and how many convert to new opportunities. It also provides insight into overall lead volumes and quality and helps us answer the following questions:

• Are we tracking to our overall lead goals?

• How many leads are converting to new opportunities?

• What are the year-over-year trends?

The report also exemplifies how, as a part of our organization's marketing leadership team, I use data, analytics, and metrics in marketing to have conversations, demonstrate impact, explain outcomes, justify investments, and gain credibility with my colleagues on the executive team. And, not just with sales, but with finance, IT, and many other constituents. My use of analytics in marketing is both deliberate and necessary. I need first to demonstrate my expectations for marketers when being analytical. Effectively using data, analytics, and the corresponding tools is core to my leadership role. Consistently utilizing the systems, applications, and reports is part of a communication strategy, and it serves us well in building business cases as well as continually demonstrating value.

Our financial approach is centered on forecasting and regular budget management, but a few times each year, I meet with the CEO and the CMO to review large-scale investments like advertising or events. Advertising discussions have changed over the years, increasingly shifting to digital investments and a broader set of offerings. In order to gain approval for continual growth in these investments, I have to demonstrate value.

Historically, it's been difficult to measure the direct impact of marketing on revenue. But by putting analytics into the picture, I'm injecting fact-based decision making into what used to be purely a creative process. That gives more accountability to those results and more certainty about how to mitigate risk and manage costs.

The real power is in tapping into those insights through reports like our “Pipeline and Revenue Impact by Sales Business Unit” (see figure 5-3). From this report, we can see the percentage of the overall sales pipeline and revenue affected by our marketing campaigns across all sales business units, with the dotted line as our target. The percentages show to what degree marketing touched a prospect or a final sale with our campaigns, thus providing a real connection between our efforts and the bottom line for the organization. They also help us answer the following questions:

Figure 5-3

• Are we tracking to our overall pipeline and revenue impact goals?

• What's our overall return-on-marketing investment?

 

I use this tool to talk about the overall pipeline, where gaps might be, and where we can shift investments to best support sales. Marketing has traditionally been seen as a cost center, so in that view, analytics and reports like these help ensure that you're not overspending in the wrong places and enable you to make informed changes along the way. In a more current view, marketing is seen as a potent driver of profitable growth, even as the customer's digital footprint becomes more complex.

Consider how much business is conducted in the digital realm, where just about everything generates data streams. In today's world, marketers are in the best position to capture customer insights from those data streams with analytics. Those insights will have an impact on the role that marketing plays as both an owner of the customer relationship and a steward of the customer experience.

Analytics has always been a part of marketing in particular industries. CMOs need to show value and revenue impact, and can't demonstrate either without some level of analytics, preferably a sophisticated one. Today it's not about a single department or a single person or a group doing analytics; it's about changing the entire culture in marketing. If you want to encourage critical thinkers and problem solvers, you have to change their mind-set and show them that analytics will deliver higher value and help them be more competent and more accountable. But that has to change across the organization.

How to Demonstrate Value

My approach to demonstrating value as a marketing leader is twofold:

1. Measuring the specific outcomes across

   – Exposure

   – Reach

   – Pipeline and revenue impact

2. Demonstrating the use of data and analytics in decision making through

   – Targeting and segmentation

   – Optimization

   – Predictive analytics

When I meet with my CEO and CMO, I spend a lot of time showing them outcomes: how our pipeline has grown, for instance, or how many leads we have turned over to sales. But I also explain how I am using analytics in my own decision making to help improve those outcomes. I balance the amount of time I talk about outcomes with my rationale for what I'm doing to improve them. It can't be too much of one or the other, if I really want to get leadership behind my plan.

 

Telling Your Story

Sometimes our team needs to engage in shameless self-promotion. We need to tell stories about the interesting things and projects the team is involved in to ensure that the rest of the organization understands our value. We have to deliberately build credibility for marketing. My job as a marketing head is to ensure that sales, IT, finance, and other departments know the value we are delivering by communicating early and often about the efforts that are affecting our shared success.

Brenda Hodge, a marketing executive with a leading health-care innovation company, agrees that we need to be responsible for building our own credibility with other leaders and departments, and that's something we can do through storytelling. She said, “You can share the big-picture numbers, but then you need to bring it down to the level where you are giving them examples of deals that you closed and the activities those prospects engaged in before they became customers or renewed their contract. You have to make the data come to life. When you can connect the dots for people and share those stories, you'll start to see light bulbs going off.”

We also engage in some joint storytelling with other department heads we are collaborating with to drive new sales and deeper relationships with our customers. For example, my counterpart in IT and I share the story of how we are working together to help drive bottomline results through our partnership in providing the data and tools that are landing new deals. We objectively show that the investments we have made in a certain technology are empowering us to a particular result in our sales pipeline. Both departments show that we are more than just cost centers and are absolutely critical to the success of the organization. With the help of the data, we demonstrate our impact.

One way I know for sure that this approach has value is when leaders use what I gave them to tell their own stories. If you can get your CMO or CEO to tell the data and analytics marketing story for you, then you know it was highly valued.

Setting Objectives

You can only change behavior when you change someone's objectives, and then make it very clear that you are going to measure that person against those objectives. Of course, we have always had performance metrics. But in order to track our own performance objectives as a marketing organization, we have established a set of reports we can monitor daily via a dashboard. We can look at how team members are progressing toward their individual performance objectives, and then the channels, campaigns, and departments to see how we are tracking against our goals at each tier. Figure 5-4 shows an example of the global-level goals and metrics that we track.

The key is to ensure that individuals don't chase their own goals at the expense of our goals as an organization. We want team members to care deeply about their channel or area of specialty, but we also want them to care about the rest of the business as well. That's why our managers work with people to use the internal human resource management system, setting performance objectives whose outcomes trickle through the organization.

We continue tracking our targets and seeing what levers to pull and adjustments to make to hit the targets over time. We've learned to be careful about setting what you might call “hard” targets, because so many factors can affect them. We also think about different indicators in different ways. I might not care about our click-through rates on an ad, for instance, as much as I care about how many sales conversions we ended up with. But if the click-through rate drops, I may need to investigate what caused that change. You need to be constantly evolving and learning as you monitor your results. That's what will help you keep things fresh and give you reason to look for things you may not have noticed before.

FIGURE 5-4

Moving Forward as an Analytical Leader

Another key aspect of “leading by example” is your approach in inspiring others. Your approach to continual change as you embrace the principles of becoming an analytical marketing organization is especially challenging. Change can be threatening to some, and a different level of engagement is needed to be part of a continually changing environment. My leadership approach to inspiring agents of change is actually pretty simple. I believe leaders should be genuine and authentic in order to build the kinds of relationships to effectively run a modern marketing organization. That includes adopting such best practices as:

• Be truthful and transparent; establish honest, open communication all the time.
• Engage constantly; this is our journey.
• Be willing to eliminate barriers.
• Be decisive; keep things moving.

 

Table 5-1 provides a few descriptions you might find useful in rethinking your role as a marketing leader, innovator, and influencer.

Table 5-1

Cameron Dow, the vice president of marketing at SAS who oversees Canada and Latin America, noted that you also can't underestimate the importance of building a case for why you're asking people to change. “It can be easy to feel like you have done all the analysis and have come up with the right thing to do,” he said, “while at the same time, you haven't walked anyone else through your thought process, so you end up failing to bring anyone else along with you on your journey. That's why it's critical to keep your team and your stakeholders involved in any transformation effort all along that journey.”

One approach we have found effective is to form a guiding coalition within our organization made up of people who understand why change is needed and agree on where everyone is headed, together. We work with this group to create a vision of where we want to go and then rely on them to help us communicate the path forward until the changes become part of our organizational culture. It's not something that happens as a onetime event, though. We still spend a significant amount of time designing and communicating our vision, as we continue to adjust to the changes that are always happening. The key is to make it clear to people why changes are being made.

As you take your organizations through this journey, there will be casualties. Some will choose not to engage and prefer a different path or environment. Some will take on stronger leadership roles and become trusted advisers. The beauty of the analytical journey is how many directions we can take and how much opportunity we have constantly available to us. I have witnessed wonderful discovery, amazing growth, and a renewed confidence across the organization. That's the power of culture at work.

Prepare for Surprises along the Way

As part of our analytical marketing organization, I have tried to lead with the right balance of collaboration and decision making. I've pushed to move ideas, concepts, and change forward, while also making sure to stop and calibrate along the way. Efforts can get stuck,spinning too much in what cannot be accomplished or bogged down in process or people. As leaders, we have to move obstacles, redirect, or reimagine. Empowering others in this process is critical, giving them permission to drive to a decision or, when necessary, making the decisions.

My favorite part of this entire process is to watch an idea come to life. It often catches me by surprise, mostly because those closest to it don't always see their success or value. I often have to remind others to share their stories, send examples, and promote their discoveries. Then, it is my job to evangelize their results, all the way to the top.

Give People Permission to Fail

Data, technology, advanced analytics, methodology, and a strong analytical culture drive innovation. Having data and analysis at your disposal encourages people to be inquisitive and challenge the status quo, and not be afraid of trying. Permission to fail is a key aspect to inspiring innovative ideas. Individuals need rewards for taking risks and bringing innovations forward. At the simplest level, innovation is about problem solving, testing, and adjusting efforts. Innovation resonates for marketers in the approach to new channels and communication methods. Innovative marketers will leverage analytics to take more calculated risks and, most importantly, have the confidence to be agile in responding to the market. If they are empowered with the tools, the permission, and the creativity, they will be strong leaders and better marketers.

The impact of marketing analytics results in a more intelligent marketer and a better customer experience. We can be smarter, but we also have to be more agile. Becoming more agile presumes a lot of things—a higher level of response, more flexibility, and anticipating needs, not just reacting. Agile marketing or proactive marketing is the goal.

But, first, you need to understand how agile or proactive the marketing organization is. Then, define what being agile means to your business. The next step is to assess the drivers that make you more or less agile—process, technology, and people.

Once an assessment of agility is understood, you can prioritize what to change. Identify barriers, determine intersection points with analytics needs, and define cultural impacts. There are, of course, risks associated with being agile. Humans make mistakes, and there need to be safeguards in place. But there also needs to be a culture that rewards failure and allows people to fail fast. As a basic tenant of innovation, failure must be seen as progress.

Marketing agility is also about choosing the right “attitude.” Agility needs to be ingrained in the culture as an expectation, not an exception. A sense of urgency and a level of accountability that align to a clear set of objectives drive behavior, just like all other aspects of the business. Some people cannot be effective in that mode, so it is imperative that they know up front and either adapt or move out.

When Felicia Ramsey, a marketing manager at SAS, started her career in media and advertising, she said that the only way anyone could measure the potential effectiveness of a campaign was to conduct a focus group, especially since it was so hard to assess the impact of a print or TV campaign. Making adjustments on the fly became difficult; you had to wait until the completion of the campaign to see the results.

With digital advertising, that's all changed. “We don't waste our time on anything we can't measure our ROI anymore,” Ramsey explained. “That allows us to do more of things that work while doing less of things that don't work.” With digital tools, we as marketers can also experiment and try new things without making the kinds of investments we once needed to. “We have built a culture that encourages and rewards us for taking risks and trying something different,” Ramsey said. “I've worked in other places where doing that might be held against you. Here you can be creative and comfortable about experimenting.”

A key lesson we've learned is to give marketers the freedom to test and learn so they can make intelligent decisions that will drive change. Since we began applying marketing optimization techniques, our conversion rates on outbound marketing campaigns have tripled, while associated communication costs are dropping. There has been a reduction in list size of 14 percent, a reduction in e-mail opt-outs of 20 percent, and an increase in click-through rates of 25 percent— all of which translates into higher-quality leads, reduced costs, and an improved customer or prospect experience. Achieving that kind of optimization has a direct impact on results, and it indirectly increases marketers' confidence level. There is far less guesswork and much more time and energy invested in strategies to connect with customers.

A great example of how, by using data and analytics, we are able to be more agile and experiment with new techniques is the evolution of our website, www.sas.com. With millions of visitors to our site, most of whom initially find us through an organic web search, analytics is critical for determining how we leverage a person's time on the site. With scoring and nurturing efforts, we have experienced conversion rates at 20 percent to 30 percent. Just as importantly, we have enhanced the overall experience for our customers when they do visit our website by making ourselves available to talk with them if they have questions. That's something we've added with our relatively new, integrated, online chat capabilities that allow members of our customer contact center to respond in real time to visitors' questions.

Adding the chat technology actually began as a skunk-works test program under Aaron Hill, Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Technology, who recognized that all the content on our website might actually be confusing to a visitor, especially someone who simply wanted a price quote. Hill told me he equated the situation with entering a home improvement store and wandering the aisles looking for the right product. How happy we become, therefore, when someone steps out from behind the cash register to help us. In the end, we as customers appreciate help and buy more as a result. Hill thought chat could bring similar benefits to our customers and business. He was right; we've seen a much higher conversion rate among visitors to our website who engage with us via chat.

Marketing Analytics at Work

Using Data to Justify Additional Resources

In the last decade, live chat has gone from a website curiosity to a mainstay on corporate sites. For companies selling business-to-business solutions, the use of chat is an immediate way to answer questions and establish dialogues with customers, even on their first visit.

SAS began investing significantly in chat resources in 2008, and each passing month brought new levels of engagement. Initially, the contact center operated from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. eastern (US), Monday through Friday. The staff answered questions, provided links to resources, and often initiated a valuable early sales contact with prospective customers.

By 2013, the team realized that web traffic supported the need for coverage later in the day to help meet the requirements of customers in the western United States and Canada. As a temporary measure, the team started to work an altered shift from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. as a pilot, but that left the group understaffed earlier in the day.

At the same time, the scope of the group supporting live chat expanded to include social media engagement on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other channels. Soon, the contact center was at a crossroads. With a longer workday, more engagement options, and the same staff, marketing leadership had to make changes to meet the increased demand.

The Challenge

The contact center team faced a dilemma found in many marketing groups. The team supported a high-volume activity, but there weren't enough resources to cover additional efforts such as more channels (social media plus live chat) and a longer workday.

Because the contact center worked closely with inside sales to pass on leads, the marketing leaders proposed a partnership with their sales counterparts. Marketing would increase the operating hours for the contact center to include more coverage for West Coast customers and others on our website later in the day. It would also expand its reach to include more complete coverage of social media channels, as well as discussion forums, as part of a global social media monitoring and response program.

To justify the increased resources, the contact center turned to historical data on chat traffic to determine:

• Web visitors whose behavior indicated a likely lead
• Chat acceptance rate
• Rate of chats to leads
• Number of leads passed to sales
• Rate of chats to sales conversions
• Close rate of deals originated by chat

The Approach

The marketing leadership team used the data from contact center interactions to justify hiring additional resources. The team applied SAS algorithms to historical live-chat results, creating a virtual view of the results the sales team could expect with additional resources.

The team applied the same approach to lead conversions and close rates and also added resources to the analysis. Based on these extrapolations, the marketing team could predict the workload and sales leads from each additional staff member, and what that would mean to the bottom line. The analysis also showed how the team could interact more effectively across social channels and, as an additional benefit, help SAS recruit attendees to events.

With better data about the historical performance of live-chat sessions, the team members accurately predicted the outcomes of adding additional resources. Rather than simply asking for resources based on gut feel, they made a strong, data-driven presentation to executive leadership. They got the approval, and the contact center hired new staff.

The Results

Soon after adding the new resources, the team began to see that the expanded contact center was living up to expectations. Extended coverage hours and additional contact center resources helped generate more leads for sales from inbound channels. The data showed that these leads had the highest likelihood of converting to sales opportunities and revenue. The additions contributed directly to the bottom line and validated the analysis conducted to justify the new positions.

The team has also become more active in social channels, expanding the company's presence and allowing the marketing organization to be more proactive. For example, a new Twitter handle—@ SAS_Cares—gives customers an additional service channel for quick responses to their questions as well as timely notifications and helpful tips.

 

Similarly, we continue to experiment with other aspects of interacting with customers through the website, such as how much information we require someone to give before, say, downloading a white paper. While we might think we need twelve items of information about a person and her company, for example, we might see a high rate of opt-outs when we've made the barrier too high. By using the data as our guide to understanding that behavior, perhaps we really only need to ask for six critical pieces of information, which will in turn boost the number of people who download our white paper. “It's all about using the data to help us understand how to make the experience for our customers better,” Hill said.

None of this would happen if our marketers weren't comfortable testing, measuring, changing, and justifying marketing activities. We let analytics decide the best approach and reward the effort.

There is a saturation point, so, as leaders, we need to pay attention to warning signs of the flawed aspects of being agile. We also need to watch the level of risk, the number of failures, and the volume of changing expectations. If we don't, it can lead to the wrong behavior and negative outcomes. Finding the balance is key, and ensuring that data and analytics are components of the approach to being agile increases our success rate.

Leadership Advice

As someone who has evolved as a leader and learned some lessons along the way, I offer the following advice for those who aspire to lead their own analytical marketing organization:

• Be willing to rock the boat.
• Be willing to be wrong.
• Be willing to be right.
• Be willing to compromise.
• Be authentic.
• Be confident.
• Be deliberate.
• Trust, deliver, respect.

 

Make It Personal

As leaders, we often believe that our success is defined and validated by the level of innovation (or idea generation) we have achieved or the amount of knowledge gained. Or, even more dangerously, when we seek perfection. As you embark on transformational experiences, it is important to leverage your guiding coalition to execute effectively. Make it happen; don't just talk about it. Use the process and experiences as constant learning opportunities, being willing to accept that knowledge is only powerful if it is enriched. And, getting it done is better than a constant push for perfection.

There is a lot of advice available for all of us as leaders—plenty of training, books, tests, and coaching to guide us along the way. None of that really replaces the value of just having experience—time to learn, make mistakes, and change. Part of leading in a transformation is about having confidence in your decisions. Confidence can take on different forms. My style is to be very open and engaged, both in work and in my personal life. I act and react very honestly, and I am not fearful of being wrong or not knowing the answer. I rely on my guiding coalition; together we can fill the gaps. I am not in this alone. Take the example of Amy Cuddy, who gave a popular TED Talk about body language.¹ I heard her speak at a conference in Las Vegas in October 2015, where she said that “real confidence comes across as honest and open, not as arrogance.”² She was referring to your body language when you are telling your story. If you are authentically honest and open, and believe your story, it comes across fluidly.

As a leader, my last piece of advice is to take the time to know your own personal story. Write it down. Be introspective about your style, your values, your principles, and what motivates you. Who are you and what were your influences?

Did you know that you can drop off dirty laundry at a Laundromat and someone will wash and fold it for you? Well, it was true in 1979, when I was fifteen years old and got my first job at a Laundromat. I have been working ever since. Most of my jobs were in retail, but I also worked at a check-processing center, as a babysitter, and—the job that everyone should have at least once— as a waitress (or waiter). Work is fulfilling, and regardless of the job, I am always driven to excel. It might be pride or work ethic. But I think it is probably a huge sense of accountability. I like that others can depend on me and trust me to get the job done. That characteristic was instilled in me from a young age, and I saw my parents demonstrate that same commitment and diligence. They both worked hard to provide for our family and to enjoy life. My mother came to the United States from Cuba in her twenties and started a whole new life. That takes confidence and stamina. My father joined the navy at eighteen and eventually reached senior management at IBM. That takes courage and determination. They were both loving and supportive, and they had high expectations of us throughout our lives. I know how fortunate I am.

Confidence, stamina, strong work ethic, accountability, and kindness were all my influences. All my life, I have been surrounded by love and support, which make me who I am. They make me a better person and ground me and make me authentic—I hope.

A life story has its ups and downs—tragic moments that last a lifetime but, over time, become more part of you than a moment in time. When I was thirteen, my aunt was dying of cancer, and in 1977, there wasn't much anyone could do for her. My maternal grandfather was in his sixties and had come to this country in the mid-1960s from Cuba and had to start life over again. He had actually immigrated from Lebanon to Cuba, so during his life, he had seen his share of chaos and hardship. He couldn't bear to lose his eldest daughter, so hours before her death, he took his own life. My first experience with death was burying both my aunt and my grandfather. The images of that time are vivid in my memory. He will always be one of the most influential people in my life. He was so incredibly patient and loving. Even without knowing the English language, he found a way to work, and he worked so hard. He was eager to learn English, so I can remember hours sitting with him telling him the words in English and him teaching me Spanish. He showed me what it means to experience and sacrifice. He also taught me that a little salt on an orange is the only way to eat it. It was my abuelo who made me a kind and compassionate person.

On March 17, 1987, my father died at the age of fifty-three. I was twenty-two years old and terrified. As you would expect, at first there was shock and numbness that don't have a real description. I had to do some pretty fast growing up at this point. My mother was unprepared for life without him. In the days leading up to my father's bypass surgery, he had prepared to die. He provided me with very explicit instructions about moving money and other documents, should he not survive the surgery. When the time came, I had to follow the instructions. It has been twenty-six years, and my dad missed so much of my life. There is truth in feeling his presence. That day changed me forever, and I continue to learn from him. It was his strength, confidence, and compassion as a person that have also changed the course of my life. My dad gave me self-assurance and a sense of curiosity. To this day, my mom is still teaching me about patience and courage.

In finding my authentic self as a leader, my most influential life moments have been welcoming my children into this world. I know that may be expected, but it is no less important to the story. Understanding the meaning and feeling of unconditional love for someone will shape your heart. Leading as much with your heart as your head is a valuable trait that I cherish. I also believe that passion comes from those experiences that touch your heart. My children are constantly teaching me how to be passionate about life.

There are certainly more chapters in my story. If you take the time to write down your own story, it becomes clear how those experiences influenced you as a leader. Your story gives you a perspective on your own strengths and weaknesses. Your story will define your authenticity as a person. When you write down your story, it becomes clear how it influences you as a leader and how you can leverage your strengths—and weaknesses—to become more effective at leading an analytical marketing organization.

 

APPLYING THESE IDEAS TO YOUR ORGANIZATIQN

Have You Changed Your Approach to Leading an Analytical Marketing Organization?

As your marketing organization shifts to analytical marketing, you'll need to change how you think about leading your team and how you interact with your peers in other departments and even the executives in the C-suite. Consider how you might need to shift your current approach to your team members and how you sell the value of your department to the company's bottom line. Ask questions such as:

✓ What does your marketing dashboard look like and who pays attention to it?

✓ If you want to understand the impact of a campaign or program, is that information readily available to you—on your desktop or mobile device?

✓ If you want data or analysis to support your investment decisions, how easily can you access the information?

✓ Do your marketers regularly come to you with insights or stories about your customers and the marketing efforts? Are they in active advisory roles?

✓ Would having access to new analytical reports change how marketing interacts with executive-level leadership?

✓ Has understanding how marketing delivers value and impact on revenue for the company shifted?

✓ Have you gotten executive leaders' support for adding the digital or analytics talent and resources required to make the shift to an analytical marketing organization?

✓ What can you as a leader do to help ensure your marketing organization continues to be dynamic and embraces future changes?