Micromanaging and marketing (an inevitability?)
We’ve always known many of the issues afflicting healthcare marketing are not unique to our industry, and here’s another example. In the August 24 edition of BusinessWeek, there’s an article on Fiat CEO and new Chrysler head Sergio Marchionne, “Tough Love at Chrysler.” The article primarily praises Marchionne as a straight-talker and a believer in creating a meritocracy at Chrysler:
“No lover of hierarchy and process, Marchionne has stripped people of fancy titles and moved the CEO’s office from the 15th story to the ground floor, where designers and engineers dream up new cars.”
So far so good. Even better, the article touts Marchionne’s strength as a delegator, saying, “He sets goals and expects his reports to tell him how to proceed.” But according to the article, there is one area where Marchionne does like to dig deep and get his hands dirty. Can you guess which one? That’s right, marketing.
“Marchionne personally approves every ad and already has been meeting with BBDO, the automaker’s longtime advertising agency.”
So he trusts his engineers, his designers, his finance folks, his HR team, his operations leaders, and on an on, but he wants to approve every ad? So we can either think negatively, that leaders don’t respect and value what we do, and don’t trust us to do it. Or think positively, that what we do is so much fun, leaders can’t help but want to join in.
I’m in a good mood this morning, so let’s go with the latter (at least for today).
I think it’s a little bit of both – what we do is extremely fun, but looks deceptively easy – and everyone has an opinion about the most visible elements of our roles. The best among us appear to shoot from the hip (when it’s actually confidence inspired by years of experience and hours and hours of research), and even the brightest of executive types can misguidedly reduce marketing to “picking out color chips and choosing fonts” (an actual quote from a former CEO).
My own marketing journey started when I left development roles behind after the VP of Marketing challenged me to do a better job when I openly criticized his team in an operational review – and after 15 years and several roles in marketing I’m still convinced that I could better.
I just haven’t proven it yet.
Oh yeah – it’s not just healthcare… it’s everywhere.