Diagnosing & Resolving Marketing Dysfunction in 2026

Fractional Futures is the essential podcast for CEOs, investors, and senior marketing executives looking to unlock the power of fractional marketing leadership.
 
Hosted by Paul Mills, Founder at VCMO, and with special guests, we'll share expert insights, provide actionable strategies and explore real-world success stories to help you leverage fractional marketing leadership for maximum impact.

In this episode

This virtual round table discussion explores the pervasive issue of marketing dysfunction within organisations, particularly as they enter a new year. The panel, consisting of four chartered marketing experts, delves into the causes of this dysfunction, including leadership challenges, the impact of AI, and the importance of clear communication and strategy. They discuss the signs of dysfunction, the consequences of leaving it unresolved, and the critical role of effective leadership in marketing. The conversation also highlights the differences in marketing dysfunction across various business sizes and offers insights into diagnosing and addressing these issues to foster growth and effectiveness in marketing efforts.

Panel Experts

Lydia McLelland, Chartered Fractional CMO

Rachael Wheatley, Chartered Fractional CMO

Ruth Napier, Chartered Fractional CMO

Links to Useful Resources

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Key Takeaways

• Fractional CMOs provide strategic leadership on a part-time basis.
• The role is about embedding leadership, not just executing marketing tasks.
• Fractional CMOs are integrated into the senior leadership team.
• They help set marketing strategy and align it with commercial goals.
• The value of a fractional CMO comes from senior thinking, not hours worked.
• Flexibility in engagement allows businesses to scale support as needed.
• Fractional CMOs can add value at any stage of a business's lifecycle.
• Effective communication is key to successful fractional leadership.
• The model helps businesses avoid wasti

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Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!

Fractional Marketing Leadership | Marketing Transformed.

Chapters

• 0:08 Introduction & Welcome to Panel
• 2:12 Understanding the Causes of Marketing Dysfunction
• 4:31 The Role of AI in Marketing Challenges
• 7:46 Identifying Early Signs of Dysfunction
• 10:12 Leadership's Impact on Marketing Effectiveness
• 12:04 Dysfunction Across Different Business Types
• 16:56 Consequences of Unresolved Dysfunction
• 20:33 Diagnosing Marketing Dysfunction
• 29:28 Leadership Dynamics in Marketing
• 31:47 Assessing Team Capability
• 33:13 Evaluating Marketing Processes
• 35:09 The Role of Reporting in Marketing
• 37:35 Uncovering Uncomfortable Truths
• 39:53 Uncovering Uncomfortable Truths
• 40:38 Discussion Wrap-Up

Transcript

Paul Mills (00:01.985)

Hello and thank you for joining this round table discussion. I'm Paul Mills, founder of VCMO and I'll be facilitating the conversation. today. Today we're exploring why so many organisations enter the new year with marketing dysfunction and how leadership teams can diagnose and resolve it before compromises grow. Sorry, let me do that again. Today we're exploring why so many organisations enter the new year with marketing dysfunction

and how leadership teams can diagnose and resolve it before it compromises growth. We'll cover what dysfunction actually looks like, why it persists, and how a structured 30-day diagnostic can provide clarity, direction, and momentum. The key thing to understand is that marketing dysfunction is not a performance issue. It's often a leadership strategy and capability issue.

Joining me for the discussion are three chartered marketers, each of whom are also SOSTAC certified planners and bring extensive experience of operating in startups, scale-ups, mid-tier and enterprise businesses across multiple sectors. They have led in environments where there are high levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. So before we get started, let's introduce the panel. Lydia, can you please introduce yourself?

Lydia McClelland (01:23.677)

Hello, I'm Lydia McClelland. I'm based in Northern Ireland. I'm a chartered marketeer and SOSTAC certified planner and also SOSTAC certified license trainer. I work with companies across the UK and Ireland supporting with fractional CMO support, mentoring and training.

Paul Mills (01:42.455)

Thank you, Lydia. Welcome to the show. Rachel, would you like to introduce yourself?

Rachael Wheatley (01:47.122)

Hi, I'm Rachel Wheatley. I'm based in Bristol, but work with clients all over the country. I've been in marketing a long time, mainly starting off in kind of in-house and then moving towards running my own business. So now I work as a fractional CMO and kind of board advisor, mainly with professional services, financial services, kind of B2B more generally. So that's where I operate generally.

Paul Mills (02:11.575)

Thank you, Rachel and Ruth Would you like to introduce yourself?

Ruth Napier (02:14.702)

Hello, I'm Ruth Napier. Pleasure to be with you all today. And I'm a fractional CMO. I've run my own business for the last five years, having previously worked in-house for many years in financial services, professional services, bit of property and creative, media side. And that's really where my sweet spot lies. I've done quite a lot of transformation projects through my time when I'm working in-house. my background.

Paul Mills (02:42.007)

Great, and Thank you very much for joining us today, guys. It's great to have your expertise on the show. So I want to jump straight in really and identify the problem, why dysfunction is increasing. So panel, in your experience, why are more businesses entering 2026 with marketing dysfunction than in previous years? What do you think's changed?

Who'd like to go first?

Rachael Wheatley (03:11.145)

I don't mind going first. I think, I mean, you know, as people will know who are listening to this 2025 was pretty uncertain. And I think it came off the back of some pretty kind of up and down years since COVID. So I think in light of 2025, I think people needed quick wins. It felt like lots of people were a bit kind of rabbit in the headlights with some of the left field things that happened. And I think a lot of companies kind of ended up in survival mode and kind of ended up we've seen

quite a lot of redundancies, we've seen lots of people cutting back on marketing, wanting sales more quickly and I think that speed is another factor, that it seems that everyone wants something really quickly and I think in marketing because yes you do have quick wins and there are that short-term horizon but marketing is actually about long-term horizons as well and I think there's a real kind of disparity there and I think the things

that people did like redundancies, like cutting back on marketing has actually not helped at all. I think that's created more dysfunction.

Paul Mills (04:20.247)

Absolutely. And how about you, Lydia? You're going to jump in there?

Lydia McClelland (04:22.013)

Yeah, so certainly what I see is businesses very much been operating in that kind of constant reaction mode and things from economic pressure, the talent churn, digital acceleration and board level scrutiny for sure have really all increased at the same time. And really what I see is that marketing really what changes marketing has become that sort of shock absorber expected to fix those revenue gaps really quickly, sometimes without clarity and structure or authority to lead strategically. So they're very much in reaction mode

which has caused a lot of that dysfunction because it is reactive rather than proactive.

Paul Mills (04:56.343)

I think that that's something that certainly resonates with me and some of the clients I've been working with, one of the things that I think as you get towards the end of the year and Christmas, I think December generally is kind of a shut down month for many businesses because you've got the Christmas parties, you've got the networking, everyone slows down, you've got people working from home or people finishing early. So December's a bit of a write off. in those...

last few weeks of November, it's kind of all hands on deck and quite often if you're having a poor finish to the year, you will start focusing. The natural thing to do is focus on doing more things, more stuff, more tactics.

and often jump in straight into tactics without the strategy, you're just burning time, effort and resource. And I think that doesn't really help going into January where you've tried a load of stuff end of the year, it hasn't quite worked or manifested in January and you're back at square one. So I think that's something that a lot of companies might feel familiar with perhaps. How about you, Ruth? What are your thoughts on this?

Ruth Napier (05:58.327)

Well, obviously I echo lot of Rachel and Lydia have already said. I think the other one thing this year for me that's made also it more potentially dysfunctional perhaps in previous years is the fact that we've moved so far forward with AI and people are still in, I would call it AI digestion mode. We haven't finished the meal.

And we've got that discomfort in our bellies at the same time as actually trying to do all this other stuff. And actually that's just compounded everything.

Paul Mills (06:35.777)

That's a really interesting point, Ruth. And I've seen this in businesses where there's so much focus on AI that AI generates quite a lot of outputs very quickly.

A lot of marketing teams can be swamped with outputs. It's a bit like information overload when you're looking at marketing data. There's so much data you don't know where to start. I think the same is true of AI. If you just go into AI blind, if you're not quite sure how to create a prompt that gives you a concise but strategically sound or robust output, you're just printing pages and pages and pages of stuff.

And really that stuff isn't really going to move the needle any further forward. I've also seen founders using AI to build the business plan and

Unfortunately, what they're using is they're using the wrong prompts. They're getting a very generic business plan that doesn't actually fit the context of their business. AI is kind of a tool to tick a tick box. I need a strategy. I'll get AI to do it and I'll forget about it. It's done. And I think that's a very dangerous habit for companies to get into if they're not quite sure how to use AI in the right way. What are your thoughts? What are you seeing out there with AI?

Ruth Napier (07:56.365)

Well, I'm seeing people using it for all sorts of different solutions, but quick solutions where they think it's going to give them, replace a marketing resource, for example. So I don't need someone to write my content anymore. I can do that all through just creating stuff on generative AI. And that's a real problem because it's actually impacting their brand really negatively.

Lydia McClelland (07:56.913)

Yes, we'll

Ruth Napier (08:25.357)

And they just start realizing it at this point. So, over to the others.

Rachael Wheatley (08:32.221)

Yeah, I think it links actually to two themes that we kind of picked up on earlier. One is that speed thing that things are getting faster and people want things faster. And what Lydia said about being kind of reactive, not proactive. So, you know, they tend to be kind of more more tactics. People want tactics. Actually, what they need is to take a step back and think about it and think of kind of mindful, thoughtful use of AI. Because I suspect it's not solving the problems they think it's solving or that they need it to solve.

Lydia McClelland (09:03.919)

Yeah, similar. I'm seeing a lot of companies using it for tactical usage and tactical outputs, but not actually thinking about the strategy behind the AI. So it's into that very much tactical space, which is great, I suppose, in terms of ramping up outputs and things, pros and cons obviously behind that. But actually, what is the AI strategy for the business and what might our business look like through the AI lens? So I haven't seen too many businesses adopting that approach just yet.

Paul Mills (09:30.817)

think It's very easy think when businesses, when marketing teams, they're doing all this activity

and you come to January and you think, well, we did all that stuff in last quarter and none of it seems to have worked. We haven't hit target again in January or we're losing customers. But why is that? Now, where do you think, where do you see the earliest signs of dysfunction forming? Because it's very easy to look back and say, we did all this stuff, it didn't work. But are there any telltale signs where you can actually say, if we were looking carefully two or three months

ago we could probably have predicted that we were going to end up at this place. What do you think those early signs might be where dysfunction might be forming?

Rachael Wheatley (10:19.931)

I think it is, I think it starts at that reactive, not tactical. So you just see an increase in the amount of activity and perhaps, you know, more junior marketers being asked to do something to which they say, yes, you know, perhaps they feel that they can't say no, but actually it doesn't link to a plan and they don't, they couldn't really explain why they're doing it. I've kind of seen that. And I think the other thing is lack of clarity. So if you ask people, you know, what do we sell and who are our ideal clients and people say different things.

things. And that to me would indicate that there really isn't, they haven't really thought, really pinned down and communicated what is it that we're selling? What is the proposition? And who do we really want to engage with? So I think that lack of clarity and that kind of reactive and tactical, not proactive and strategic are two key kind of early signs.

Paul Mills (11:19.255)

I think many marketers, particularly junior marketers, have, they'll probably reflect on the day they walk into the office and their boss who might be the founder or the CEO comes up to them and says, I was having a bath last night and I've got a great idea or I've seen our competitors to do this. Can we do that as well?

Rachael Wheatley (11:32.169)

Yeah.

Paul Mills (11:38.207)

I see this and I hear this so many times and it infuriates me because actually, copying your competitors is probably a dangerous thing to do because they've got a completely different business model, they've got different IP, they've got different approaches, different systems, different everything. So sometimes copying your competitors is probably the worst thing you can ever do. It's do what you do best. How about you, Leah, and Ruth, What's your thoughts on this?

Lydia McClelland (12:07.121)

Well, certainly from a leadership point of view, I think it goes back to the leadership of that marketing function, you know, in terms of that strong approach. Obviously, if there's a strong leader in place, they will recognise the dysfunction. But if there hasn't been a clear business strategy set followed by marketing strategy, then I think that's where it can get a bit chaotic. So the leadership for me is always key in terms of who's leading that marketing department, who's driving it, but ultimately where are they taking their direction from?

because it needs to come from the overall business strategy, hopefully set at SLT or board level, whatever the structure is. And that that's kind of filters down into the marketing. So I would say if there's a strong strategy and a strong plan, there shouldn't be dysfunction and strong leadership. As we know, that's not always the case in terms of the leadership within a marketing team.

Paul Mills (12:57.439)

It's probably, I know there are many businesses where the marketing team might be the PA who has suddenly, they've been a PA and they're suddenly, they're looking to develop their role in the organization and they're asked to.

some marketing events and they support some events and that's great and then they pick up some more stuff maybe some social media and some other bits and pieces. So the PA suddenly becomes the marketing person and then quite often what happens is that you know the the business leader or the CEO or the founder or whoever expects that person to then over time develop the strategy and they're probably not equipped with the tools or the knowledge to do that and that's kind of where frustration

starts coming through. Ruth, is this something that you see? I know you've done quite a lot of work in professional services, and I've worked in that area as well. is that something that's kind of familiar in that sector?

Ruth Napier (13:53.357)

It is, I've come across it at least on two or three occasions and it translates into something that I think marginalises the true value of marketing because effectively it compartmentalises marketing to be just one of the four P's, effectively just the promotion piece and the promotion piece which is being done on a

on a best efforts basis rather than an informed basis. And that means that actually you're missing out on the holistic nature of what the value of marketing can bring to the business in terms of its growth and its strategic direction. So I think that's why I find it particularly interesting to work with businesses that have that in place because they are actually

almost your first steps are around an education piece with the senior leadership team of the business around the value of marketing and what marketing can bring.

Paul Mills (15:02.167)

stuff. No, think that's what you're going to, That's probably a nice segue to the next section that I'd like to discuss. That's how dysfunction shows up. Now I think we've touched on some of those just there, but what I'd like to do is I know we've all worked in different sizes of businesses, businesses at different stages of the life cycle. So just maybe If we can think about different sizes of business where we've operated and think about how dysfunction shows up in startups versus scale-ups,

versus mid tiers and maybe sort of larger enterprises. So I guess the question is, What does marketing dysfunction look like on a day-to-day basis inside those different types of organisations? What behaviours, what patterns give it away? Who'd like to start this one?

Lydia McClelland (15:49.758)

Yes, So for me it is about that. I see it as constant reaction. Teams just constantly kind of on the back foot reacting to things, jumping from campaign to campaign, responding to the loudest voice in the room and that there's no back to the fact there's no clear plan. Typically there would be misalignment between sales and marketing. Reporting might have less of activity, but doesn't inform decision making. So there's no kind of actionable insights coming out of the reporting and rules.

really roles and team members that are absolutely overloaded, burnt out and roles that are clearly, sorry, poorly defined within the team. So it's not that people aren't putting their best effort in, but there's just not clarity around the direction of travel and what they need to do. So for me, it sometimes just looks like chaos in terms of what's going on and people are very burnt out by the volume of work that they're trying to get through.

Rachael Wheatley (16:46.013)

Yeah, I would I would echo that. I think the one thing I would add would be that there is no repeatable process  it always seems like you're constantly reinventing the wheel. And it feels hard, you know, and it feels like we're not really making very much progress. And, and I think, you know, that is indicative of the fact that there are no, no, no plans, but also more than that, there are no, you know, they've not thought, this is the way we do things, this is what works, let's set it up

so that actually we can repeat this rather than that knowledge and experience residing just in one person or a small team and not actually being taken out and broadened out across the organization.

Paul Mills (17:31.463)

Are these  things you're describing there, are they on a bigger scale? Are they magnified more in large enterprises, maybe blue chip organizations versus early stage scale ups? Is it just a magnitude of scale these problems manifest or are they completely different manifestations altogether in those larger businesses?

Lydia McClelland (17:58.97)

I personally think it can be similar throughout, like in a scale up. It might be that there's over-reliance on one particular individual or a very small team of individuals, you know, from that point of view. But as you get into larger companies, you know, sometimes it's the leadership that they think the problem is that we need better, we just need a better campaign or we need a stronger head of marketing. But the reality is it always comes back to...

strategic approach, what is the strategic approach for this business, what do we require and typically it can be structural as well. it's not just about the tactics, doing tactics differently and marketeers are all exceptional in terms of running great campaigns but without that clear strategy and it anchored back to what are our objectives, what are we trying to achieve, what does good look like, that's I think where it can go wrong.

Rachael Wheatley (18:48.892)

Yeah, I agree. I was thinking about this and kind of thinking I, you know, they are very similar issues, depending, you know, notwithstanding the size. And I don't think the determinant of great marketing and mature capability is the size or stage of business. You know, I've seen great marketing and bad marketing in both in all sizes. And so I thought I wondered whether actually it was more about as you've kind of hinted, Lydia, kind of the leadership or lack thereof. And that's

That's the thing that makes the real difference.

Paul Mills (19:20.311)

I was going to say Ruth, as on that, obviously different scale businesses. It sounds like they're similar problems, just bigger. Ruth, I know you've worked in law firms, in LLP structures. Is there a difference between the sort of marketing problems in an LLP, limited liability partnership, versus a limited company where you've got a completely different governance structure and sort of board makeup?

Ruth Napier (19:50.381)

Yes, they are different animals, shall I say, in terms of how their internal culture and the multiplicity of, I should say, people with decision-making power and influence is multiplied. And that makes navigating it a complex stakeholder management piece, which if you are a junior marketeer or someone's come up from the ranks,

a PA, an ex-PA we were talking about earlier, will make it very hard for them to actually be the right person to make that strategic leap and be able to make the impact that needs to happen. And that is simply because of the complexity of the organisation. And even within LLPs, you've got different shades of LLPs. You have some very consensual, some very...

well coordinated collective mindsets within a partnership group or you can have a complete disparate, a complete array of competing factions and it can be a complete nightmare to navigate unless you've got the right person involved and that makes the marketing challenge multiple times more difficult.

Paul Mills (21:10.707)

That's interesting and I'm sort of thinking now, in terms of the consequences of leaving dysfunction unresolved in those different organisations, whether it's an LLP, whether it's a limited, whether it's a scale up, whether it's an international blue chip, if you leave this dysfunction...

unresolved for six or 12 months. What are the consequences of that? I know some of you, you've gone into organisations to fix that, but what happens if you do nothing? Because that is something, it's overwhelming. And sometimes the easy option is do nothing. Let's hope that the economy picks things up and we can mask the issues through that. What's your thoughts on that?

Lydia McClelland (21:52.454)

I think for me, if it's left unresolved, dysfunction definitely erodes trust. So marketing then become very defensive. Sales teams become very frustrated and leadership will lose confidence in the marketing function because there's no real clarity about what they're doing or what they're delivering or how they're performing. And I think then that's, it's very hard to come back from that. So getting a recovery isn't necessarily always possible. And I've seen that where it's been a clear out of an entire marketing team because the trust has been absolutely

eroded whereas had it been dealt with sooner head on it may have been able to recover quicker.

Paul Mills (22:27.703)

Yeah, I think that's where you sometimes, know, where a lot of marketing teams are, they get that derogatory tag of the colouring department or the PowerPoint team or, you know, the team always on the jolly and the function is seen as an expensive cost centre rather than a function that drives growth. Rachel and Ruth, what are your thoughts on this piece?

Rachael Wheatley (22:48.87)

I agree. I think it completely undermines the value of marketing and you get in this kind of vicious circle, you know, that dysfunction exists, therefore you can't prove the value of marketing, therefore people question the value of marketing and it's really hard to get back from that. I think the other problem is that it is the performance issue, especially in areas in businesses that have a long sales cycle. So you might think, well, I've left this dysfunction for a while, that's fine. Well, we'll clear the deck.

will put a plan in place and will quickly get up to speed and you don't because the sales cycle is quite long. So not only does it take a few months to get back up to speed, it takes a few months to kind of then kind of end up winning work. So that dysfunction left is not it's not a few months before you get back up to where you were. It could actually be 12 months or even longer. So I think there's a real risk there to the business and and it's kind of long term medium

long-term health.

Paul Mills (23:53.217)

Ruth, I know you've worked in, I guess there's a different lens to look at this as well, which is the added pressure of working in a portfolio company which is backed by private equity. think you and I both worked in those kind of organisations. So you don't just have the pressure of the CEO running the business, and the team. you also have the additional external pressure of the investment thesis and the investors who really, because they're funding the business, there's that added pressure. Ruth, what are your sort of experiences of working in

that sort of PE environment where there's even more potential to get things wrong and even more pressure on the marketing team to get things right.

Ruth Napier (24:34.669)

But I think now I can make a very clear distinction between successful marketing teams and less successful, the really less successful ones. And it is really around a much more heightened focus on commerciality. that is commerciality for the business. And it does require someone at a senior level to be able to do that in a sensible way.

because it's not just about, you know, I got so many clicks on this advert, it wasn't that great. That kind of really, it's low level indications. That's all it is. It's not informing you. It's not moving you forward in the same way as actually having a properly aligned, this is the whole reason we're doing this particular campaign. We need to be able to make these changes rapidly. We need these controls in place because this is all about generating that growth.

And I think it's a much harder environment, but actually it's also a very rewarding environment to work in. So I think, you know, if there any marketers in here who are listening, not just businesses, that's the other thing I'd message to say to them is don't leave just because a PE takes over the business. That's not a reason to go.

Paul Mills (25:56.811)

Absolutely. And I think you just prompted me to sort of a new question there, Ruth. I think, you know, in terms of For CEOs or founders who might be listening to this and watching, can you describe the difference in energy and behavior between a strategic marketing function and a dysfunctional one? Because if you're a business leader and you don't understand marketing,

if the marketing team looks busy, it's easy to assume they're doing a good job. But in your experiences when you've come in to fix dysfunctional marketing teams, what are the kind of the behavior signals between high performance and low performance?

Ruth Napier (26:41.421)

For me, the things that are markedly different are, it's the basic energy level, but it's the ideas, the creativity that come into play much more than actually, and I will say therefore also the speed of execution is better. It seems weird because actually you'd think, actually, no, if you're having to do all this energy into ideas and creativity, your execution falls back.

It doesn't because it kind of feeds off itself in a really weird way, but a positive one.

Paul Mills (27:17.815)

you, Ruth, sorry, how about you, Rachel and Lydia, what are your thoughts? What would you say are powerful indicators of high performance versus low performance?

Rachael Wheatley (27:29.352)

I what I've observed is a kind of, you know, in the dysfunctional team, it feels like really hard work for, you know, few returns versus a real enthusiasm and energy and optimism. And it feels like everything is in flow. I think it's confused difference between confusion and feeling in the weeds versus that clarity and longer line of sight. And I think I've seen

in a dysfunctional one, feels like marketing is always on the back foot, always having to justify and validate itself versus a real confidence. And you know, it can easily justify what they're doing because because of that clarity and because they have a plan and it links to the business plan and objectives. So that's how I would characterize the differences.

Lydia McClelland (28:22.491)

Yeah, absolutely echo exactly what Ruth and Rachel have said. It is about the energy. So if it is, if it's not dysfunctional, I suppose it's there's focus, there's a confidence, there's momentum and people really understand where they fit in and how their work contributes to the outcomes for the business. But where it's dysfunctional, energy's scattered. People are anxious, they're burnt out. They may be reactive in their decision making. Everybody's on the back foot and

as Rachel said, like we're down with the weeds in terms of the, you know, trying to wade through the mud and get through, get through work, you know, workloads and everybody's working flat out. So energy, always sense there's a very different energy when things are obviously functional versus dysfunctional. And even going into it to fix that, you have to bring that, you have to bring your own high energy to that to try and get out of the dysfunction. And it can be, it can be extremely.

draining I find in terms of going in and doing that but you have to keep the momentum and keep the energy up for your clients and for the team members you're managing.

Ruth Napier (29:20.801)

The other thing I found also was that you get a different mindset within the team. You get a very fixed, this is my job boundary and I'm not going to go beyond that. So people become less cooperative and they could become much more clock-watchy and also sickness patterns can occur.

Paul Mills (29:21.271)

I think, sorry. Sorry, go, go reef.

Ruth Napier (29:49.015)

So those are early signs, certainly early warning signs of things not going quite right.

Paul Mills (29:56.511)

I My bit to add to this, I think it's in the relationship that the marketing team or the head of marketing has with the board or the senior leadership team. And I think In a high performance marketing function,

the person leading the marketing, they will be a key ally to the CEO and CFO. They will be the one driving the strategy of the business, identifying what market opportunities there are to take advantage of, what threats to minimise, what the internal drivers of competitive advantage are and how we can use that from a marketing perspective to do better things for the customer or client and also mitigating the weaknesses in the organisation just to strengthen that

competitive advantage. And I think If the marketing function or the marketing leader is having those strategic conversations and helping shape the overarching commercial strategy, they win the seat at the table. They get that earn, they earn the trust and respect of those key protagonists at the sort of board and senior leadership level. I think the other thing that happens is that the rest of the business see marketing as the function that is driving

growth rather than like we mentioned earlier just the the events team or the team that you get a PowerPoint jazzed up kind of thing and so I think it's very much that internal influence and sort of I guess

influence on the overarching strategy and delivery of that and actually holding that strategy, that commercial strategy to account and challenging the rest of the business to say, you know, what are you doing to contribute to the person that we care about most, which is the customer? So I think that that for me is one of the big differentiators. If marketing isn't If marketing doesn't own a seat at the SLT or the board, if they're just going in and reporting on some numbers and then dropping out and that's it, that for me is kind of an early signal that something's not right.

Rachael Wheatley (32:01.822)

Yeah, I think that's a really good point, especially that relationship between whoever leads the marketing and the board and particularly the CEO. I think it's really hard to have a functional, effective, high performing marketing capability if that relationship doesn't work.

Paul Mills (32:19.903)

Absolutely. I think the other thing as well, it's not just the CEO. The CFO is a key protagonist as well and a lot of marketers, a lot of senior marketers often

hit heads with the CFO that there's a lot of unhealthy tension there. The marketing leaders say we need more budget to do X, Y and Z. The CFO, they're actually quite happy to give you budget if you can justify commercially that whatever activity or tactic or thing you're trying to bring in will move the needle forward and will contribute to growth. And quite often in the higher performing marketing functions, they will have that a high level of financial fluency

see in the language and the metrics that they're reporting on and describing and measuring. Whereas in a lower dysfunctional team, you are probably more likely to see, got this number of followers this month and we had those number of clicks and we had so many downloads. Well, that's fine. That shows you you've got a bit more reach in the market and your campaign might be working. But how does that contribute to EBITDA? How does it contribute to customer acquisition costs or

know, increasing lifetime value. So I think that's the other big difference, certainly for a CFO, if you're reflecting on your own marketing function, if your marketing leader isn't talking in those financial fluency metrics, then you can probably think we might have a problem here.

Any thoughts on that? Is that something you recognize?

Rachael Wheatley (33:53.161)

Yeah, I mean, it kind of links back to what we were saying earlier, doesn't it, about why it's so important to have a plan to be able to articulate that and for it to link to where the business wants to go. Because if you've got that in place, then it's easier to have the conversations with the CFO and say, this is why we're doing this marketing. And you can kind of lead them through and even include them in the plan. I mean, I think that works really well if actually the CFO is part of the conversation around the marketing strategy

and plan.

Ruth Napier (34:26.477)

I don't agree with that, Rachel.

Paul Mills (34:27.031)

We're about halfway there now. Do you want a quick comfort break or just quick top up a drink before we go into the next bit? How do you think it's going so far? All good? It seems to be flowing nicely.

Rachael Wheatley (34:36.062)

Yeah, quick tip.

Lydia McClelland (34:37.052)

Yeah.

You know, quick pause would be good just to stretch.

Rachael Wheatley (34:40.264)

Yeah, it's good.

Paul Mills (34:43.401)

Yep, good. So let's have a couple of minutes and then we can sort come back. I'll just get the auto-queue tidied up and then we can jump straight back in.

Rachael Wheatley (34:50.76)

You okay?

Lydia McClelland (34:52.157)

I'm just going to step away from the dare to stretch.

Paul Mills (35:13.973)

You guys got anything good for the weekend lined up?

Rachael Wheatley (35:19.994)

weekend I think. Good, the rest of our weekends in January are a bit busy. What are you doing Ruth?

Paul Mills (35:21.857)

Yeah.

Ruth Napier (35:23.213)

got an antique there.

Paul Mills (35:26.091)

Yeah.

Ruth Napier (35:28.077)

Standing at an antique fair. That's my husband's business. So I help him.

Rachael Wheatley (35:30.5)

right, okay. So that's Saturday, is it? Or Sunday? Or both?

Ruth Napier (35:38.125)

It's both, it's set up Saturdays down Sunday.

Paul Mills (35:44.023)

Be fun. Before we jump in, did you guys, did you complete that survey I sent on the, yeah, no, it's fine. No rush. It's open for a couple of weeks. We've had a good response. We've got well over 120 respondents so far. So I think we've got some really strong, I did a bit of a push on sales navigator the other day. So had a good old boost, but no, some really interesting insights coming out of it. think,

Lydia McClelland (35:51.474)

No, I haven't apologies.

Ruth Napier (35:52.426)

Not yet.

Rachael Wheatley (35:53.094)

I haven't yet, that's for sure.

Rachael Wheatley (35:58.937)

wow, that's great!

Lydia McClelland (35:59.046)

one.

Lydia McClelland (36:06.621)

Thank

Paul Mills (36:13.911)

It kind of corroborates the hypothesis that most fractional leaders hate doing BD, which is the thing you need to be great at to win clients. And I think my personal hypothesis is that when you get to our sort of in-house, you've got teams doing all the BD for you. You don't touch it. And then suddenly you go fractional.

and it sort of dawns on you, oh shit, how did I do this? I used to have a team for that. So yes, you've got some interesting stuff.

Ruth Napier (36:44.365)

Yeah, I've got to do all that stuff.

Lydia McClelland (36:45.083)

Yeah. I love it.

Rachael Wheatley (36:45.31)

Yeah. It's interesting many. Yeah.

I think it's interesting, many, many years ago, before I left corporate employer, I recognised that was a gap, kind of BD and sales. So actually, when I first set up business and I joined with a BD consultancy to do BD training, and they trained us and then we trained others, there was kind of mainly professional service firms, but I thought that kind of really helped to plug a gap.

Paul Mills (37:19.319)

Right, are we ready to jump straight back in? Good, right, okay. So we're gonna sort of this section here there. So we're going to look at maybe what those sort of five key things are to look at. it's gonna be, Rachel's gonna cover strategy, the roof is gonna look at the leadership lens, Lydia capability, I was gonna do something on process, and then I think we'll all chip in on the reporting piece, that okay?

Lydia McClelland (37:20.733)

Yes.

Rachael Wheatley (37:20.926)

Nope.

Paul Mills (37:46.859)

Great, so what I'm gonna do then, I'll start now. So it's still recording, so I'll just start from now. So if you're listening to this conversation and some of the things that we've been talking about, if they've resonated with the situation in your business, you're probably thinking, how can we move from marketing dysfunction to high performance? I'd now like to get the panel's thoughts about how quickly...

you can diagnose dysfunction, what are the first and most obvious things you should look for? So Rachel, starting with you, what do you look at when you're trying to diagnose dysfunction? What is one of the most obvious things that you start with?

Rachael Wheatley (38:26.238)

Well, I think the first thing to say is that I don't just look at the kind of marketing team. actually tend to, so I do obviously look at that and kind of what's going on and what's working and not. But I talk to quite a wide range of people, you know, whether that's that senior, whether that's kind of other people, because I think what's interesting talking to a wide range of people in, you know, very different functions is they'll have  variable perceptions of marketing. They're not necessarily

right or wrong, it's just understanding what the perception of marketing is. Because marketing is much broader and deeper than lots of people think, I think that's why it's really useful to bring that together and get...

get people's insight. And I think Where I would start is always strategy. So I think As we've mentioned earlier, it absolutely starts with the business plan and the extent to which they have a clear vision, they've got some value set out, they have a purpose, and that has been communicated beyond the board, so around the business, so people feel that they are contributing to that whole. For me, that's the absolute core of

of the marketing strategy and plan. I think it's very hard to have a functioning coherent marketing strategy and plan unless that is in place. And then you kind of think about the kind of more strategic aspects of marketing, like thinking about what are we selling? Is the proposition clear? Does it just talk about features or actually real benefits? Do people understand why customers might choose them rather than others? What problems does it solve?

Does it connect to the market, what the market needs and wants? So it's kind of those kind of things. And is the ideal client clear? Are we just marketing to everyone or actually are we really clear about the segments, the customer markets that we can serve best and do our best work with? So those are kind of the things that I would start with for strategy.

Paul Mills (40:35.287)

I'm glad you mentioned the ICP there, the ideal client persona or profile.

I've just onboarded a new client and only yesterday we were looking at their ICPs. They have some ICPs in place, they haven't been looked at for a long, long time and the ICPs they have in place, they're so shallow that there's no real commerciality about them. So one of the very first things we're doing is re-optimizing and rebuilding their ICPs from scratch, just going to, for each of the segments they compete in, who are the buyers? Are they the right buyer we're targeting? Are they too low down?

Are they the ones making the decisions. and then really crafting that? yeah, I totally agree with you there. Starting at the core strategy is probably a good point. Ruth, how about you in terms of leadership? How do you evaluate ownership and accountability without creating defensiveness? Because I know leadership is a key area, isn't it, to look at when you're doing a diagnosis.

Ruth Napier (41:35.469)

Yes, it is and I think there's two sides to this one is the the leadership of the business and then two is the leadership of the marketing function and I think part of the initial piece that Rachel was talking about will give you a certainly insights into the relationship between the main leadership team and the role the current leadership of the marketing function is doing but actually there's more of a if you like a

Lydia McClelland (41:58.853)

Thank

Ruth Napier (42:05.481)

a deep dive around how the marketing team leadership is working. There are some early signals that you can actually take a steer from. think Such as we talked in the past about, well, it's a PA, they've come up and, you know, if it's a scale up or a relatively small marketing team, you've just got someone who was an ex-PA involved,

then you're going to actually look at them and talk with them in a different way. But I think it's also really important to get an understanding from the peers across the the parallel functions. So it's not just the CEO, CFO, but actually what's the head of HR thinking about them, what's the head of facilities.

the people are responsible for reception, they may not sit under the marketing team and getting that picture is a really helpful one. But I think really engaging with the person who is in that role from the start, because actually I would usually see my role of saying, well actually I'm not here to take your place. I think this is really important. Someone coming in as a fractional CMO for example, isn't there to report

replace you, that's not the point. Actually, I'm here to try and make your life better. And I want to be your, actually your champion for the things that you want to do and make it about that person. And that's the way to not create defensiveness within that marketing leadership. That's what's worked well for me in the past. It doesn't work with everybody. Some people will just automatically the barriers go up. It's not a perfect solution.

barriers will go up and that's really hard sometimes to get past but actually that for me has worked well.

Paul Mills (44:07.485)

can say some advice there. Lydia, in terms of capability, if we're looking at diagnosing dysfunction, capability is one of the lenses you'd look at. How do you determine whether the issue is skill, structure, or expectations from the board or the SLT?

Lydia McClelland (44:25.025)

Yeah, so for me, sometimes the question isn't about is the team good enough? Because I do find when I go into cases that you've got exceptional individuals, very capable, but is it about are they set up to succeed? So for me, it's about looking at the system that they're operating in. How is that connecting to other departments? So that sort of system and understanding then, do they have the right tools? know, So simple things like sometimes like the marketing technology that they need to support them.

CRM systems. Again, I've worked with organizations where the key thing that was missing was a CRM system. So no matter how hard this team worked, they were never going to succeed using spreadsheets to kind of manage customer information, to try and work out, you know, kind of workflows and work out who they were targeting and all of that there. So sometimes it's really the simple things that although you've got very good individuals, very capable individuals, very hardworking individuals, they're never going to succeed in the system. So

that wider piece that both Rachel and Ruth have talked to there is really important. So for me as well, going in, you're looking at everything through every lens, but for me, you can't fix what you don't understand. It's understanding really, you know, seeing that marketing is not in isolation, it's part of a wider system. And I would also then be looking at other teams, say for example, the sales team, how well have they set up? What have they got? So again, you know, for teams, they need further training? Do they need mentoring?

Is it about the technology to support them? So you're looking at everything that's going to just help them be the best marketing team that they can be and what do they require?

Paul Mills (45:58.664)

That's really interesting. think

you know, For me, another lens when I look at marketing dysfunction and try and diagnose what the problem is, one of the lenses I look through is the process lens. Evaluating the processes of the marketing team. And again, we mentioned earlier, everything start, you know, the core of this is often the strategy. And so I will in terms of processes, what is the strategy in the first place? And I certainly with my clients, I use the SOSTAC planning framework, which helps you identify

what is the situation in which we find ourselves? What are the objectives? What are the strategic choices we need to make? Once you know that, you can then look at the tactics, the actions and how you control that. Now often, there's lots of...

thought leadership and reports out there saying that two thirds of businesses typically don't have a business plan or a marketing plan. It's a high number and it's probably no surprise why so many businesses fail in the first few years when they launch. But if you're operating your business without a marketing plan, how do you know you're doing the right things? And if you don't know if you're doing the right things, what are the processes supporting those? So I will very much, when I look at process, I look at strategy first and say,

is the strategy robust enough for us to achieve the commercial strategy? And if there is strong alignment there, you're probably doing the right tactics. And if you're doing the right tactics, you're gonna start moving the needle in the right direction. And that's probably what good looks like. In the absence of that, what you'll typically find is you'll start doing the wrong tactics. You'll be burning time, you'll be burning operational resource, you'll be...

Paul Mills (47:47.295)

getting frustration and then you'll be draining productivity as well because everyone's frustrated, nothing's working, everyone looks and feels busy, but you're not adding to, you you're not enhancing customer acquisition costs, you're not influencing customer lifetime value, you're not impacting top line or EBITDA or enterprise value. So that for me is one of the lenses I look at. In terms of reporting, that's another key lens to look at dysfunction is the reporting and the metrics.

So I just want to open this bit up to all of us really. What's the quickest way to understand whether reporting is helping or hindering marketing dysfunction?

Lydia McClelland (48:28.455)

For me, it's about the actionable insights that come out of it. So if reporting is happening, and again, sometimes an organization's reporting isn't, hasn't actually been set up. So first thing is to get the reporting set up. But for me, it's those reports on a, if it's a monthly basis, what are we doing on the back of that information? So it's about insight and not just noise of stats and information that we actually are changing up what we're doing or we're tweaking or whatever it might be because we've got new insights on that monthly basis from our reporting process.

Rachael Wheatley (48:57.418)

Yeah, I completely agree with that. And for me, it's the difference between, you know, in kind of finance terms, you might get any, you know, revenue report, but it doesn't, I mean, it tells you something that doesn't tell you very much. It tells you about the past, doesn't tell you about the future. So I completely agree. It's about the insight that you get from it, whereas kind of management reports like what's profitable, which customers are profitable and not, which service lines are profitable and not, what's the budget versus actual and why is delving into why those differences

exist and if the data doesn't help you make those decisions then it's not really telling you very much at all. So you know like we talked about earlier you know if you're not reporting on what's the customer lifetime value what how much does it cost us to acquire a customer it's those that kind of information that links with the KPIs kind of measures of success. So absolutely agree the difference between data and insight and you can see that

quite quickly can't you in the reports that you have.

Ruth Napier (50:01.228)

I thought.

Paul Mills (50:01.663)

you Ruth, there anything you could add to this piece?

Ruth Napier (50:04.397)

Yes, And I think the other one is the purpose of the reporting. Is reporting there to do a couple things that Lydia and Rachel have talked about? There's one other purpose for reporting and that's your control and actually is this going to change what I do in a meaningful way? And quite often that's the piece that it doesn't quite often gets failed to set up. No, I haven't said that right.

It's quite often the bit that people forget about when you're in a busy department that isn't working well. You forget to put the controls in place and those control reports are actually really important for stopping you doing the wrong thing at the right time.

Paul Mills (50:51.351)

That's good. And I want to probe a little bit deeper because I think, you know, we've all gone into organisations and we've all done this diagnostic. And I'm thinking for anyone listening, any business leaders who are thinking, you know, everything resonates thus far, we need to get a grip on our marketing function.

When you're doing this diagnosis process, typically many marketers will be doing this now in January because it's the new year, it's a time to reflect and reset. When you're doing the diagnostic, What's the hardest part of the diagnostic for leaders to accept? Because we might be identifying some uncomfortable truths or absence of process or egos. What are those hardest pieces that

you sort of uncover that the CEO, CFO or someone else might think, hmm, I don't like the sound of that.

Lydia McClelland (51:50.652)

Yeah, for me it's been that they actually have a really good marketeer or group of marketeers. But maybe they're working in a very broken system. So they are good people, they're well trained, they're well qualified, they know their stuff, but they haven't been set up for success.

Paul Mills (52:10.379)

Rachel.

Rachael Wheatley (52:11.752)

I think a number of things come to mind. What do I talk about? think it's when

the CEO or MD has a set view of what marketing is and what it isn't. And what you're bringing up is doesn't accord with their perception or view of marketing. And so they either have to accept that change needs to come, you know, and you're kind of speaking from a position of authority and knowledge and experience, or, or they say, actually, no, that doesn't accord with my view. We'll just continue as is. And I think

there can be a real tension there if that leader thinks, I know enough about marketing, I don't need to change. So that's where I've seen some real challenges in that leader accepting the diagnostic.

Paul Mills (53:07.355)

How about you, Ruth? What's your experience of uncovering some uncomfortable truths during this diagnostic process?

Ruth Napier (53:15.079)

Lydia and Rachel have touched on the two, highest two on my list probably. If I had to pull a third one in is that it's long standing relationships. And that's where the leader has got a long standing relationship with somebody senior in the marketing team. And that is colouring their perception of

the value of the team versus perhaps what it really is delivering. And so there's a mismatch there, a misalignment. That's quite a difficult one sometimes to navigate.

Paul Mills (53:58.551)

And if we're to flip this, sort of, yes, the process often uncovers uncomfortable truths, but in your experience when you've taken clients through this diagnosis process and trying to fix marketing dysfunction, where do you see the biggest aha moments during the diagnostic? Maybe you've uncovered something that actually that one thing is going to move the needle further forwards than what they've been doing the last 12, 18 months. What are your ideas there?

Lydia McClelland (54:28.145)

Sometimes it's been as simple that the leader hasn't communicated their expectations. They haven't been explicit on what they need or want from that marketing function. And then they realize that communication is absolutely key and they need to sit down and articulate what the requirements are. So sometimes it's been as simple as that. A lot of times it does just boil down to communication or lack of communication.

Paul Mills (54:55.617)

Yeah, I've seen that personally recently with one of my clients where I was doing a diagnostic and I interviewed three different members of the SLT. They each had different languages or called things different names, but it was for the same thing. And not everyone realized that that thing was available, but they all assumed that it was, but they didn't know if it was or wasn't. And...

It was quite clearly a communication gap between the three protagonists. And when they realized that they were all describing the same thing differently, but none of them realized that it was in place and they just ignored it. When they realized what we needed was there and we call it different things, that was an aha moment. And it's something simple like that, but it's just vernacular, just language. And it's also...

people assuming other people are doing something about it. And it's like, the CFO's got that in hand. CFO probably hasn't, they're probably not even aware that exists. So I think for me, once you've uncovered who knows what, who's holding what information, what people call the information, and just that simple internal alignment of what you call things, how you act on things, how you use information, that for me is one of the biggest aha moments. How about you, Ruth? What have you seen? Any big aha moments for you?

Ruth Napier (56:17.005)

I think I have experienced an big aha moment, we do need a strategy there. Okay, yes, you do need a strategy. That was like, think one of those, almost a surreal moment, because literally, they had been very successful, but in a completely ad hoc way. And they got to a point where

Lydia McClelland (56:27.453)

death

Ruth Napier (56:44.593)

actually things weren't working as well and what they really were missing was something that they haven't needed until that point or they haven't perceived they've needed until that point.

Paul Mills (56:56.663)

That's a good one. One of my clients I just recently onboarded, I asked to see their marketing plan and they shared it with me and it was a typical to-do list. It was just a list of activities and events. so I gave them some strategic questions. I said, right, here's 50 or 60 strategic questions that cover everything across the business. How many can you answer?

They could only answer half, but that wasn't a bad thing really because actually they'd never really thought about these questions before. And straight away they could see the difference between what should be included in marketing plan versus not. And they could also see straight away, that's probably why we might have a slight revenue gap or why we're underperforming at the moment because we're simply not thinking about these, and they are basic questions.

But if you're not thinking about it, because It's so easy to get drawn into the operational day-to-day leadership and running a business or getting the, you know, we've got a big event coming up, we need to get prepared for that. It's very easy to forget what you're really doing. So I think for me, that's another important thing is, are we asking the right questions? And is it embedded in our planning process or our planning cycle?

Rachael Wheatley (58:14.836)

I think the aha moments that I've seen, a couple of things. One is when they were...

they sense that something wasn't quite working or gelling in marketing and then they suddenly see why, because as you've kind of put the questions together and you're delving deeper in your heart and you're kind of looking at the data and asking the right questions. So it suddenly becomes apparent and say, right, okay, now I understand. I think the other thing is kind of towards a bit what you were talking about

earlier Paul about the common language and when marketing suddenly makes sense that are okay yeah I understand now what marketing does what it can achieve and that can serve the if they're in-house marketers that can really serve them very well they might have been saying these things for donkey's years and suddenly this for external person coming in and shining a light on it or other people really yeah and so those are the two "aha"

moments I've seen.

Paul Mills (59:20.439)

think it's Just touching on that. think that's one of the the, you know, the...

nice things about the fractional CMO model. It's bringing that external perspective into the business, which is probably set in its ways. It has its own culture. has its own way of doing things. You've got the politics, you've got the egos, you've got all of that stuff. And that is something that all organisations have to tackle with and deal with. But having someone independent coming in and saying, everything you're doing feels over engineered because you're looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes. And straight away, it's very easy for

one of us to go in and look at how they're presenting the value proposition or describing a product or how they take a service to market. And just having that step back helicopter view, it's incredible. I've certainly been, I've run workshops where I've just thrown in a one-liner.

And just that one line or that small question has just flipped a switch. And it's like, why are we doing that? And suddenly it's like the light is shining bright and you can suddenly see the problem in front of you in a different way. So absolutely, that's a really good thing to look at.

Guys, I'm thinking, I'm just looking at time. We've hit the hour. I know once it's edited, it will be slightly less than an hour. We've kind of gone through a few sort of case studies in real life scenarios, not as a case study. Do we still want to do the case study bits at the end? Or do you think we've covered enough examples and snippets to say we probably can close here?

Rachael Wheatley (01:00:55.626)

I think we've probably covered quite a lot, haven't we, given some examples. You're happy with that?

Paul Mills (01:00:58.923)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So are you happy if I sort of then close it here? Great. Okay, let me find where I am on the auto queue.

Lydia McClelland (01:00:59.398)

Yeah.

Lydia McClelland (01:01:05.233)

Yeah.

Paul Mills (01:01:13.857)

So So I think that's probably a good point to close this discussion. I think we've covered quite a lot there in terms of what marketing dysfunction looks like, how you might...

identify what the early causes of dysfunction might be and how you can diagnose and maybe resolve it. And I think the panel shared some really good real life examples of what they've seen with clients or in-house with what marketing, good marketing looks like versus underperforming marketing. So Lydia, Rachel and Ruth, thank you so much for your contribution to the discussion. It's been very enlightening and I'm sure our listeners will be left with plenty of ideas for their own next

steps. If any of the themes resonate with the marketing context in your own business or portfolio company, now might be the best time to pivot. If you'd like help understanding how a 30-day diagnostic could work inside your business, we're offering a free no obligation consultation with one of our experts. It's simply a chance to gain... Sorry, I'll start again. It's simply a chance to gain...

clarity before committing to a direction. Links are in the show notes if you want to take advantage of that. So thank you again to the panel for your insights. Today's been really, really enjoyable. And thank you also for listening or watching if you're streaming this. And we hope to see you soon.

Paul Mills (01:02:41.237)

Right, I can stop there.