“Cold dark lonesome, dead of night
Things gone so wrong, can’t get right
In the darkness, hear the sound
Of a world that’s upside down”
– Lyric from “Higher Than The Wall” by The SteelDrivers
One night each week…usually Thursday after She and The Three are sound asleep, I burn a little midnight oil, and I read.
A couple weeks ago, I went to my clippings file and read three articles, one in The Harvard Business Review, about how CEO’s should value human resources (the “CHRO”) more, how the Head of HR is the most under-appreciated executive in many companies and how that CEO – CHRO relationship was sacrosanct. Then, I read two articles, one in The Harvard Business Review and one in a marketing newsletter , about how CEO’s should value marketing more, and how the CMO is the most under-appreciated executive in many companies. The relationship, it suggested, between CEO and CMO, is sacrosanct.
This idea that we have to have “C’s” in every title, function or department is kind of alarming. And this idea that one relationship is more sacrosanct than another is ludicrous.
(By the way, a quick check of WordPress stats tells me that no other blogger has ever used the word “sacrosanct” three times in the first three paragraphs of a blog. I feel special….but I digress…)
So, you may be thinking, “Hey, Heston, you big dope, what the heck is the connection between this rant and the SteelDrivers lyric?”
Let me try to connect the dots…
It’s been said “it’s lonely at the top.” (Insert one of the other 11,226 cliches here…). When things have “gone so wrong they can’t get right,” leaders worthy of their checks will “hear the sound of a world that’s upside down,” and they’ll stop trying to prioritize one function over another.
If product sucks and sales rocks, guess what? You ultimately follow product’s lead. If product rocks and sales sucks, that’s a faster path to the same destination. If finance has no clue and marketing makes no mistakes, the disconnect will turn you upside down, fast! If finance is calling all the shots, and marketing is on the outside looking in, well, we’re back to “gone so wrong things can’t get right…”
Is marketing critical? Yup. Is human resources critical? You bet. The idea that we can ever focus on one at the expense of the other is what gets us in to those “dead of nights.” What blinds us, keeps us from seeing, is when we focus on something out of context, at the expense of some other important thing, person or outcome.
If we’re leading, our job is to have the right people. Doing the right thing. In the right place. At the right time.
Try THAT without HR, Marketing, Finance, Sales, Product, Admin, Ops or Development.
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