Success Is Upstream And Downstream From The CMO’s Job

Other people will affect your job dramatically. Meeting them and understanding what they do, and how, will also help you avoid having to change jobs again soon.

Question: I’ve picked up a lot of ideas and tactics from your articles, both about getting ahead myself and about hiring other people. But it seems to me that behind all this you must have a basic strategy, a way to think about picking the right jobs and the right people and for being successful in a long career. Have you ever written about this? Am I wrong? If you’ve got it, please share it.

Nick Corcodilos: There are many big ideas about picking, getting, and succeeding at a job. The trouble is, they begin and end as ideas. Management authors and experts love big ideas that yield big books and lots of talk.

I’m more concerned with tactics. Big ideas tend to fall flat when we encounter daunting obstacles on the path to the job and career we want. The obstacles are unpredictable and usually novel. Holding to the path of a big idea when you hit a wall is often unproductive and sometimes fatal.

But I believe that if you recognize and overcome the obstacles, you’ll accomplish two things: Avoid the wrong jobs and succeed at the right ones.

I’ll give you an example of how tactics can open up the right opportunities and keep you from getting a walk-on role in a nightmare.

Take Control Of The Job Interview

While I think job success is possible only when you pick the right company and job to begin with, what happens if you devote tons of time and work to one target, only to realize it’s wrong? And, if it turns out to be the right choice, how do you really know?

I teach all my job candidates who get to a job offer to stop the hiring process at that point and restart it on a new vector—one they’d never be able to insist on until they have an offer. With offer in hand, before you make a decision, take control politely but firmly say this to the hiring authority:

“Before accepting your offer to manage marketing, I’d like to come back and interview three of your people: managers who run sales, product development, and manufacturing.” (You might also include finance.)

Never accept a job without taking those meetings.

I think that when you wind up leaving a job—for whatever reason—it’s usually because you took the wrong job to begin with, but didn’t realize it. Usually the wrong job means working with the wrong people. Few new hires—at any level—assess all the key people they’ll have to work with. So this tactic both helps you to decide whether to accept a job and to avoid stepping into disaster.

What’s Upstream And Downstream?

Getting those meetings is one of those daunting obstacles I mentioned. If you fold at this point, you’ll either accept a wrong job or walk blindly into uncharted waters. Some companies will scratch their heads and refuse. Others will want to know why you’re breaking their hiring process.

Here’s what you tell them:

“Those managers are upstream and downstream from the job you’ve offered. Sales uses marketing to sell stuff, but how? Product development creates what marketing promotes, but what’s that partnership like? Manufacturing makes what marketing has pitched to our market; do those products work? And my work will impact their ability to do their jobs successfully. To make the commitment I’d like to make to you, I need to know who I’ll be working with, how they work, and what they expect from marketing.”

Interview The Employer

Other top managers at the company may have interviewed you during the hiring process, but did you interview them? Did you drill down into their business, meet their teams, and perhaps spend half a day in working meetings with them?

No? Would you buy a company without doing exactly that—assessing its talent and management in a hands-on way? Then why would you accept a job without this kind of due diligence?

These meetings are usually best scheduled after the company has made a commitment to you with a job offer.

New York Times columnist Neil Irwin discusses this big idea in a different context in “How to Become a C.E.O.? The Quickest Path Is a Winding One.” The article explores studies of big data by LinkedIn, Burning Glass, and other career companies about what it takes to get into the C-suite. Exposure to many areas of a company and development of cross-functional skills trumps expertise in only marketing or any other single area.

Irwin cites Guy Berger, a LinkedIn economist, who says that to make it into a CEO job “…you need to understand how the different parts of a company work and how they interact with each other and understand how other people do their job, even if it’s something you don’t know well enough to do yourself.”

That may seem obvious, but job candidates rarely apply it when they’re holding a brand new job offer. While Irwin discusses a career strategy for becoming a CEO, I’m more concerned with the tactics necessary to be successful in any job. This tactic also helps when you’re interviewing job candidates yourself: Send them up- and downstream to other managers before you hire them.

Other people will affect your job dramatically. Meeting them and understanding what they do, and how, will also help you avoid having to change jobs again soon.

For another angle on due diligence in job interviews, see “The Only Interview Question You Need To Ask.”