How do you innovate as the Chief Marketing Officer of a company that you are just stepping into? Casey Stanton is the Founder of CMOx, a Fractional CMO, and author of the Wall Street Journal #1 bestseller, The Fractional CMO Method. This week, Casey discusses when CMOs should start to innovate, how not to innovate, and two approaches to finding novel solutions that enable your to solve bigger problems.
Takeaways:
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There are few opportunities for a new CMO to innovate within the first quarter of their tenure. The focus of this period should be on aligning their team and ensuring person and role fit. A certain amount of triaging is also a necessary part of this stage.
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You don’t innovate by copying others. It’s impossible to copy what another company is doing and expect to be seen as the leader. By relying on copying them, you are always behind them.
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Rather than copying another company’s actions, instead try to emulate how they think and approach problems. What do they hold to be true? What constraints have they put in place? By recreating their process of thinking, you can produce much greater results.
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A few ways to understand someone else’s thought process include listening to their podcast appearance, watching their TED Talks, reading their blogs, or even examining their career.
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An important way to drive innovation is to have a process to follow. The first step of the process is to identify the problem. Next, define what success looks like. Then figure out how to innovate a solution to solve the problem and meet the success criteria.
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When innovating, try to look at the problem from every considerable angle to find multiple possible solutions. Also, consider the Kaizen approach that focuses on constantly making minor improvements, these will build to a great impact over time.
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