In Part 2 of 7 of our Q&A with Steven Holstein, former CMO of Guardian, we dive deeper into how the C-Suite and Financial Services CMO of the future will need to work closer together to drive company success.
Q. Do you think that there is a power shift that’s occurring in the executive suite because of these trends, and if so, how is it manifesting itself?
A. “It’s interesting that you put it in the terms of power shift, I’m not so sure if I would call it a power shift as much as what it spurs is partnership requirement as never before. You’ve always had a corporate objective on what you’re trying to do to grow the company or manage the company. I think now as never before, those corporative objectives need to align because for all intensive purposes, to execute these corporative objectives with the big macro trends occurring, different parts of the organization really need to come together on programs and projects in order for each of them to be successful. You really [need] that ‘coming together’ alignment to have mutual success. So think about it this way: when you’re actually putting out a mobile capability for social, digital or big data capability, who’s the business owner of that program, first of all? And that’s always of course in question. It depends upon the culture and organizational structure, but I would argue that marketing plays a significant role in being the business owner for those or at least a role player in most organizations, then who they need to work with. They need to work with the Chief Information Officer, you might have a Chief Digital Officer. If you definitely [have] legal compliance in a regulated industry, you’ve got the services organization, and of course you have the product people who want to put their content in this new context. So again, not necessarily a power struggle – in the worst case scenario I guess it could be a power struggle – but in my mind it’s really the CMO and C-Suite need to work in partnership like never before.”
