For a new chief marketing officer (CMO), prioritizing vision and strategy is crucial. However, strategy is destined to fail if its creator doesn’t become fluent in the culture where their plans have to live. Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” emphasizing that no matter how well-crafted a strategy is, it will falter if not aligned with the company’s culture.
This is especially true for today’s CMOs, who are often brought in with a change mandate. CMOs have an average tenure of around three years at the top 100 U.S. advertisers, one of the shortest in the C-suite. Furthermore, up to 30% of CMOs step into new jobs each year. The pressure is on them to swiftly establish their marketing vision and set a new growth agenda. However, a CMO’s valuable insights, ideas, and experiences may struggle to gain traction until they can work out how to “dock” with the existing culture.
Quickly learn and leverage an organization’s culture
Drucker’s belief is backed up by research findings as well as the experience of many of today’s CMOs. Extensive research underscores the connection between a CMO’s effectiveness and their ability to comprehend the cultural environment. Culturally astute CMOs are proven to excel in areas such as building trust and earning their teams’ support. The transformation graveyard is littered with examples of CMOs going in guns blazing with a brand new vision and then misjudging the company culture in its rollout.
The first step for any new CMO is to observe and decode what they see around them—both explicit and implicit cultural cues. This means going beyond the surface-level understanding of the company’s mission and values found in the official documents. Instead, dive deep into the daily practices, communication styles, and unwritten rules that shape the organization’s environment. For example, the meetings the CEO routinely fails to attend tells you more about the C-suite priorities than the company handbook.
Uncover the influential stories and folklore
The real organizational culture isn’t always found in the official values and mission documents. Enron—renowned corporate villains—had the values of Integrity, Communication, Respect, and Excellence proudly shown in reception, while committing one of the biggest accounting frauds in history. Digest the company materials, but then do some research of your own. Challenge the rigid onboarding plan you are given, go off-script and be nosy, speaking to people at all levels of the organization. Talk to the longest-serving employee. At newer companies, spend time with the founder. Look at the exit interviews. Have lunch in the cafeteria. Ask questions that help unearth the cultural norms and what they say about the organization. If the building was on fire, what would they save? What are the taboo topics? Who are the company villains, heroes, and the 10x employees?
Our founder, Jonathan Mildenhall, is the former VP of global advertising strategy of The Coca-Cola Company. When he joined The Coca-Cola Company, he spent long hours visiting the archives, where images of racial harmony deep in Coca-Cola’s DNA inspired his purpose-driven approach to the brand.
Look around your business and get curious about the questions below. What clues do you observe as to the culture of your organization?
Artifacts
- What status symbols are there?
- What do the building and environment tell you about how the company operates? Pay particular attention to where the leadership sits.
Rituals and routines
- What is unique about the way new staff members are onboarded?
- What successes are celebrated and how do they celebrate?
Language and legends
- What stories are told about epic successes or epic failures?
- Who are spoken about as mavericks or heroes and why?
Power and people
- Who are the cultural standard bearers?
- When and how do the senior leaders have contact with the rest of the staff?
We talk more about culture in the CMO Thrive Guide by TwentyFirstCenturyBrand—a manual for success during a CMO’s first 12 months. It includes a menu of crucial questions to help you get to the bottom of your new organization’s culture.
Obsess on the how and who of company decision making
Much onboarding will focus on the company’s core mission and vision, products and services, and business plan. This why and what information is vital, but it misses key components critical to understanding how things get done and who makes the decisions.
For example, while many boardrooms rely on compelling PowerPoint presentations to convince decision makers, at Amazon, the written word is key and PowerPoint is outright banned. Proposals are shared through the “6 pager” format, which forces writers to go beyond bullet points and provide full context, rationale, and detailed analysis. Instead of the pre-reads that many organizations employ, Amazon even sets time aside at the start of meetings for everyone to read the document in silence.
Understanding who can be more nuanced. Senior stakeholders have to be mapped but also minutely understood. You will need to become very familiar with the agendas, styles, and priorities of those individuals you will need to influence most frequently.
Final thoughts
By understanding the cultural norms in this way, a new CMO will quickly learn what the business holds dear and what it rejects. For CMOs brought in with a change mandate, this allows them to adapt both their strategy and operating style to go “with the grain” of the company’s cultural fabric, ensuring a smoother path to embedding their plans and overcoming resistance to change.
Mastering company culture is not just an added advantage—it’s a crucial element in the CMO toolkit. It is the bridge that connects visionary strategies to practical execution, making the difference between fleeting success and lasting impact.
Sara Tate is European partner in the Transformation practice at TwentyFirstCenturyBrand.