In the Harvard Business Review article, The Ultimate Marketing Machine, the authors claim that today’s CMOs must acquire the capabilities needed to drive Marketing excellence. The Marketing2020 – Organizing for Growth study identified five drivers of organizational effectiveness exhibited by high-performing companies:
- Marketing is connected to the business strategy and the rest of the organization
- All levels of the organization are engaged in the brand’s purpose
- People are focused on a few key priorities
- Marketing is organized into agile, cross-functional teams
- Leaders build internal capabilities for success.
Marketing Excellence Focuses on Results, Growth, and Value
Organizing for growth requires the Marketing function to operate as a Center of Excellence (CoE). A CoE refers to a team or entity that provides leadership, fosters best practices, facilitates research, and enhances the skills needed for a focused area. At its most fundamental level, a CoE is working to create world-class standards and models that drive and achieve business results, encourage innovation, create value, and leverage proven techniques and methodologies across all areas of responsibility.
Organizations committed to Marketing excellence are exploring how to transform their Marketing organizations into a CoE. Transforming your Marketing organization into a Center of Excellence is not only commendable, but essential. Leadership and direction play a significant role in ensuring that the CoE is effectively managed and that it successfully fulfills its purpose. Without strong leadership and clear direction, the CoE will lack focus. It may be unable to completely realize its aspirations. Therefore, we highly recommend you create and employ a Marketing Leadership Council (MLC) to steer and sustain Marketing as a Center of Excellence.
How Your MLC Facilitates Marketing Excellence
An MLC brings together top thinkers, high-performance practitioners, and leaders in Marketing and performance management within your organization. This group discusses, defines, and directs the future of the Marketing organization. Its purpose is to facilitate Marketing excellence by fostering communication, collaboration, and coordination among the people and programs involved with improving and proving the value of Marketing.
The council serves as a resource to transform and sustain a culture of excellence and provides the necessary strategic vision and direction. An MLC does not need to be for the purpose of creating a Center of Excellence, but a CoE stands a better chance of succeeding when an MLC is in established to support it.
Form Your MLC with these Four Components
Incorporate at least these four key areas within your MLC:
- Scope: The charter, mission, and responsibilities of the MLC. For example, a customer experience MLC may have a charter to assess the state of customer experience for each vertical, and develop and implement the process to map the current and desired customer experience journey. A possible mission statement might be, “The Leadership Council will be the primary advisory group to the C-Suite on all strategic and policy issues related to improving customer experience in order to increase customer retention by X% and double the number of products/services per customer over the lifetime of that customer.” Note that the mission includes the impact the MLC will have on the business.
- Structure: How the council is structured, how members are selected, member roles, and terms. Continuing with the Customer Experience MLC, the council members may include managers and directors from your Customer Experience, Content Marketing, Account Management, Service Quality, Product Marketing, and Professional Services organizations. Note that members of this MLC extend beyond Marketing.
- Processes: How the council will operate and the processes and workflows they will develop and use. For example, the following illustration might be a recommended process developed by the Customer Experience MLC.
4. Performance Management: How the work of the council is reported, measured, and managed. Some potential measures should include how well MLC activities are linked to the business outcomes, how well they are delivering on their charter, both in terms of time and money, and how well the processes they have developed are being adopted.
Marketing Leadership Councils should help with the transformation to a Center of Excellence. MLCs are in the unique position to improve Marketing’s ability to deliver value to the organization, build a stronger sense of ownership of business outcomes, enable decision-making and actions that produce better results, and speed the implementation of strategies and tactics, all with less need to regularly reinvent the wheel. For more about creating Marketing Leadership Councils, download The Role of Leadership Councils in Creating Marketing Centers of Excellence.
FAQ:
A: They must build the capabilities required to connect Marketing to growth, results, and value. Research on high-performing organizations emphasizes that Marketing excellence is not accidental—it is enabled by organizational effectiveness, internal capability-building, and disciplined leadership.
A: High-performing companies tend to demonstrate:
- Marketing is connected to business strategy and the rest of the organization
- All levels are engaged in the brand’s purpose
- People focus on a few key priorities
- Marketing is organized into agile, cross-functional teams
- Leaders build internal capabilities for success
A: A Center of Excellence is a team or entity that provides leadership, fosters best practices, facilitates research, and strengthens skills in a focused area. At its core, a CoE creates world-class standards and models that drive business results, encourage innovation, create value, and scale proven methodologies across the organization.
A: Because organizing for growth requires Marketing to operate with discipline, repeatability, and cross-functional alignment. Without strong leadership and clear direction, a CoE can lose focus and fail to realize its aspirations—making governance and stewardship critical.
A: An MLC is a leadership and practitioner group that brings together top thinkers, high-performance practitioners, and leaders in Marketing and performance management. Its purpose is to steer and sustain Marketing excellence by fostering communication, collaboration, and coordination—especially to improve and prove Marketing’s value. A CoE is more likely to succeed when an MLC is established to guide it.
A: The council discusses, defines, and directs the future of the Marketing organization, provides strategic vision and direction, and serves as a resource to transform and sustain a culture of excellence. It helps reduce reinvention, speeds implementation, strengthens ownership of outcomes, and enables better decisions and actions.
A:
- Scope: Charter, mission, and responsibilities—explicitly tied to business impact (e.g., retention improvement, increased products per customer).
- Structure: How members are selected, roles, terms, and representation (often cross-functional, not Marketing-only).
- Processes: How the council operates and the workflows it develops and uses.
- Performance management: How council work is reported, measured, and managed—linkage to outcomes, delivery against charter (time/money), and adoption of developed processes.
A: It can improve Marketing’s ability to deliver value, increase ownership of business outcomes, accelerate decision-making and execution, and improve results with less “reinventing the wheel”—supporting the transformation to a sustainable Center of Excellence.
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