There is a good case for more CMOs becoming CEOs.
And yet, relatively few make that leap. Some do not even keep full ownership of growth.
The rise of the chief growth officer is often a polite corporate way of saying: “We still need growth, but we are not entirely sure marketing can lead it.”
Part of the issue is marketing’s complicated relationship with ROI.
Marketers ask for investment, and are expected to show it created value. When they do this in commercially credible terms, they become more strategic. When they struggle, marketing starts to look expensive and slightly evasive.
The growth agenda then quietly moves down the corridor, sometimes to a chief growth officer.
The CMOs who become credible CEO candidates usually can connect brand decisions to enterprise consequences. They still care about consumers, creativity, and culture, while also understanding cash, capital, capacity, and investor confidence.
Here are five dimensions CEO-ready CMOs master.
They own the trade-offs
A CEO’s job involves trade-offs every day.
Growth versus profitability. Volume versus value. Price versus cost.
These are also the tensions inside every serious brand strategy.
CMOs with general management potential do not leave the hard trade-offs to other functions. If marketing wants to shape growth, it also has to shape the economics of that growth.
I always told my teams that marketers with general management potential manage the brand as if they were the CEO of that brand. They understand the choices between product cost and price, between premiumization and accessibility, between market share and profit quality.
They look beyond what is desirable for the brand and ask what is right for the business through the brand.
They understand the growth algorithm
A CMO ready to be CEO can explain the growth algorithm.
The question isn’t just whether sales are up, but how growth is being generated, whether it is healthy, and whether the profit and loss is becoming stronger over time.
A healthy growth algorithm is one where value grows faster than volume, and profit grows faster than sales. That gives the company room to invest in advertising, innovation, distribution, talent, and future growth.
