Welcome to the Team:
A guide for getting up-to-speed in your new marketing leadership role
Part One: Introduction
Mostly, our Google Home is a glorified timer who occasionally tells me how long, and at what temperature I can roast chicken breasts in the oven. However, this morning:
“Hey, Google: Define, Consultant.”
“According to Dictionary.com, a Consultant is defined as a person who provides expert advice, professionally.”
I thought about that definition over coffee and in preparation for this piece of writing. Expert advice. Professionally.
I’ve been working in marketing strategy consulting for about five years, and one of the most critical inputs to being able to provide expert advice professionally is the ability to learn about an organization: quickly, and without encumbering a new client with a lot of tedious information sharing.
As a consultant, you’ve likely been brought into an organization through a specific engagement, but there are many factors that affect how that engagement should be approached: culture, lead management process, technology, organizational structure, skill sets, and go-to-market model to name a few.
Being brought in as a consultant is not unlike being new to a leadership role in an organization. You’ve been hired because of your expertise, and you’re going to be imparting operational “advice” to your teams throughout your tenure in that job. Further, as a new hire, you too need to get up-to-speed quickly so you can start to make your mark and deliver results.
With that in mind, I thought I would share Inverta’s framework for getting to know new marketing organizations. I’ve developed framework to help me organize what I’m looking to learn so I can quickly understand how business is done today within my client’s environment. It also helps to uncover areas where the organization isn’t as strong as it could be, thus laying the groundwork to build a prioritized plan of attack.
Stay tuned for part two of this article series, Leadership: Understanding the Culture of your new Organization. I’ll describe what you need to learn from your peers at the new company. I’ll provide a list of roles you should talk to as well as an interview guide to make sure there’s nothing you forget to ask about.
