What Causes This High Turnover Among CMOs?

Why typical CEOs last for 44 months, on the job, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are replaced every 26 months?

David Meerman Scott has a very interesting entry on his blog entitled, "Why most CMOs get fired." It seems one of the reasons is that many CMOs waste far too much time and money on image marketing and brand awareness, instead of running tried and tested direct response marketing campaigns to generate revenue by supporting the sales folks.

The other problem is that in some 50% of the cases, CMOs are hired as proverbial silver bullets to fix collapsed marketing campaigns (usually ruined by top management) but are not allowed to participate in the company's operation on a strategic level.

And what I've seen a big problem is when top management says. "We don't like it."

Then the CMO says, "But it really works and we're" not the market that buys our stuff. The market has to like it not us."

And at this point of the battle, many CMOs just get fired.

Anyway, read the article, "Why most CMOs get fired", and see what you think.

Technology Brochures From The Drawing Board To The Rubbish Bin

Check most technology companies' promotional materials and you realise that when they were designed, the focus was on creating glitz and glamour not results. The objective was pontification and self-aggrandisement not educating readers and invoking the next step leading to the sales..

These companies were kidnapped by some graphics designers and the result is just that: Nice graphics that will enrich the designer's portfolio but doesn't make a dickybird of a difference to the company's sales results.

And then salespeople spend around 30% of their time to hide all the rubbish created by the marketing department and to create some meaningful sales materials they can hand out to prospects and leave behind after meetings.

It reminds me, the former farmer, of a cattle rancher with a big hat and a fancy branding iron but no cattle. They can impress the market until potential buyers want to take a look at the beasts. Then our rancher is in deep shit...

So, in this month's article, we discuss how to put together client-centred brochures, entitled...

Technology Brochures From The Drawing Board To The Rubbish Bin

Value-Pricing At NHL Level...

Over at the Verasage Institute we talk a lot about value pricing and the elimination of timesheets. One of the Verasage Fellows, Ed Kless, has just posted a brilliant example of value pricing at the Verasage blog.

If your company is still...

• selling expertise on an hourly basis
• forces employees to fill in timesheets
• hire new employees for an hourly wage

...then you should read this post. It's pretty eye-opening, and rest assured this is how it plays out in the work of technology as well not only in ice hockey.

Actually, I've just read an interesting article about the performance of people who work for hourly wages. They were told that as soon as they complete normal eight hour's of work, they can pack up and go home for the day. On average, eight hour's of work was completed in three hours and 19 minutes, 41% of the allotted time.

What does that mean to you, the employer? It means that your people are smart. They learn the system and have become pretty good at playing to the weakness of the system. Their focus shifts from improving performance to marking time and filling hours to maximise their wages.

For many companies people relax during normal hours and then request overtime to complete the work. And you can't blame them because this is what they are motivated to do. There is a definite motivator to work slowly and inefficiently.

So, what to do? Well, you have to recognise that they are knowledge workers of the "knowledge age", as Peter Drucker defined it about a half a century ago, but most managers were so busy managing their feudalist empires that they didn't pay attention.

Then put your people on annual salary with a bonus structure, create an environment in which people are naturally inspired to do great work and leave them alone. If there is any problem, give them instant feedback and forget about the annual review. If your HR goons insist on the annual review, then throw them out of your department or, if you can, fire their arses.

Through living history, traditional HR practices have never contributed anything positive to the work environment, so there is no reason to keep old-fashioned, time-focused HR practitioners on the payroll. They have taught people how to lie on their resumes, how to doctor references and to perform consistently at sub-par level.

Anyway...

Read Ed's post at the Verasage blog and see how you could replace your time-centred organisation with a value-focused organisation.

Tomicide Solutions October 2007: Eleven Diseases Of High-Tech Business Development Departments

In most high-tech organisations business development exists as a number of independent silos that are working on their own, on internally created mandates which often have nothing to do with the company's overall strategy.

And in this process, they often step on each other's toes and even undermine the company's overall strategy.

Here we discuss 11 areas we can improve to seamlessly blend these silos into one integrated department.

Tomicide Solutions October 2007: Eleven Diseases Of High-Tech Business Development Departments

Online Copywriting Dilemma

There is a brilliant article at over at Future Now's website, entitled When Developers Write Copy. It's about an interesting situation when many companies scrape up the money to have one page, the landing page, written by a copywriter, and stitch the rest together for themselves. And visitors, after the initial interest generated by the landing page, get turned off and leave the site once and for all. And the owner company of the website is euphoric with joy and excitement that is saved a small fortune by not "wasting" money on a copywriter.

And as a result of this shortcut, the website performs way way way under its potential. Nevertheless, the accountant and the CFO are happy because of the significant savings. So, go and read When Developers Write Copy.

Tomicide Solutions September 2007: Eleven Website Mistakes That Turn Premium High-Tech Companies Into Cheap Commodities

It's fair to say that all high-tech companies have websites. It's also fair to say that most of those websites do more harm to those companies' bottom lines than good. Nothing major really. They just fail to engage their visitors and encourage them to click deeper and check what the company has to offer.

So, this month's issue of Tomicide Solutions, we discuss 11 key problems with high-tech websites. Some are easy to fix, but some need some thinking.

The Emotional And Financial Costs Of workplace Bullying

The Workplace Bullying Institute has just released it's 2007 survey on workplace bullying. It seems the issue is much more serious than most of us think. The findings are rather both interesting and sad. Well, we've always known that most managers, due to the traditional promotion process, are not suitable for managing, and this survey just proves it. 72% of bullies are bosses. 55% of those bullied are rank-and-file workers harassed by their bosses.

What makes these figures even sadder is that so many companies actually tolerate bullying because it comes from "high-performing" people in important positions. Even companies that say that people are their most important assets tolerate bullying.

Why is it tolerated? Because it doesn't have an entry in the accounting system, so corporate leaders don't relate bullying to financial loss. But obviously there is. And the price is pretty high.

And a recent article in Fast Company magazine, entitled "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't" explains the staggering costs of tolerating even only one bully in the workplace.