Four Mindset Shifts CMOs Need to Succeed in Complexity
Thanks to digital transformation, we marketers have access to more data than ever. We also live in a world that moves faster and faster with every new technology.
This heady brew has CEOs and CFOs assuming that more data lets marketing function like a machine. Predictable, controllable, and quantifiable in ways that ignore the nuanced and confusing nature of the human decision-making process. In turn, it has led to a disconnect between executive expectations, CMOs, and market realities.
The result is a world where marketing leadership positions are notoriously unstable. As Kathleen Schaub, speaker, marketing management strategist, and author of Marketing in the (Great, Big, Messy) Real World, puts it, “CMOs have the shortest tenure in the C-suite.”
Schaub believes we need to change our marketing approach instead of trying to calm the chaos. This means embracing four key mindset shifts grounded in today’s realities.
Mindset #1: Approach Marketing Planning Like an Investor
Adopting the investor mindset requires CMOs to accept that most marketing investments will yield the greatest returns in the future. “Think of your 401(k),” Schaub says. “You don’t expect all returns next year. Market ups and downs happen. But long-term growth compounds. The same applies to marketing investments. Some returns come quickly. Others take time to mature.”
This changes your approach to budget decisions: Performance marketing for quick hits, brand building for long-term value.
Like stock market investing, this approach requires patience and conviction under pressure for immediate returns. CMOs must defend marketing investments that may not pay off for quarters or years. The payoff comes when these investments generate returns independent of additional spending. The marketing equivalent of investment income.
Mindset #2: Approach Complexity Like a Navigator
Planning in chaos masked as “move fast and break things” seems impossible, but that’s what today’s CMOs must do. And most marketing teams find out, “the minute you release a marketing plan, it is already out of date,” Schaub explains.
Approaching this challenge with the navigator mindset means adopting Schaub’s pace layering concept—where teams implement different planning horizons for different marketing aspects:
- Strategic elements (brand positioning, core values) might span 3-5 years
- Annual planning for major tentpole initiatives
- Quarterly planning for campaigns and program adjustments
- Weekly or monthly planning for tactical execution and creative elements
This layered approach allows for stability in core areas while maintaining flexibility where the market demands. As Schaub says, “You’ve got to give the people close to the customer the ability to change things up quickly.”
The key to this approach is ‘wayfinding’—taking small, iterative steps and adapting based on new information. Think of it like finding your way in an unfamiliar hospital. “Sometimes you get off the elevator, go left, then you go, wait a second, the room numbers are wrong. I’ve got to go right,” Schaub explains.
This approach transforms metrics from backward-looking performance evaluations into forward-looking navigational tools. Schaub calls this “instrumentation,” where marketing dashboards become like a ship captain’s instrument panel, with multiple metrics showing near-term indicators, long-term trends, field conditions, and internal operations.
Mindset #3: Approach Market Uncertainty Like a Statistician
We want definitive answers: A led to B. X caused Y. But real-world marketing is nothing like a physics experiment. It’s an unpredictable tangled mess. Kathleen Schaub sums it up best:
“Our minds love cause and effect. We want reasons for everything. But customer decisions involve countless interconnected factors.” In other words, your campaign didn’t win because of a single tactic or message. It won (or fizzled) because of numerous influences. This could be your pricing, your competitors, economic mood, the timing, maybe even the weather.
Here’s where the statistician mindset comes in. Schaub argues that great marketing leaders don’t cling to neat explanations; they get comfortable with probability, patterns, and ambiguity. “Things happen for a reason, but they’re not the clear-cut single reasons our minds crave,” she says.
You’ve probably seen attribution models trying to cram multichannel chaos into a tidy pie chart. Schaub isn’t having it. “Attribution helps you a little bit on a certain numbers of things, but it is not an ROI tool.” She’s watched companies dump their budget into demos or last-touch tactics because a report said so, starving long-term growth.
Instead, CMOs should use tools like marketing mix modeling, test-and-learn frameworks, and causal AI. Look for correlations, not just straight lines. Benchmark results against industry data and your best campaigns to know what “good” actually looks like and filter out false signals.
If this feels uncomfortable, good. The point is to trade certainty for useful odds: “Am I heading in a direction that, over time, lets the wins stack up?” That’s the right question.
Mindset #4: Lead Marketing Teams Like an Ecologist
Organizations aren’t machines, they’re ecosystems. What powers the best marketing teams isn’t individual talent, but the health of the entire system. The best CMOs learn to engineer their marketing organization like ecologists. They don’t command-and-control their way through uncertainty.
They empower those closest to customers and live data to act, adapt, and share what’s working. Schaub explains, “Performance comes from the intersection between an individual and their context.”
During a crisis—like the recent Spanish power outage—people step up, improvise, and solve problems you can’t even anticipate. You can’t program that, but you can create that environment.
So, how do you lead teams like an ecologist?
- Don’t just focus on skills. Invest in the context: clear goals, psychological safety, real-time access to information, trust.
- Encourage connections across departments, between senior leadership and front lines, and through cross-functional projects. New ideas and quick course corrections can come from unexpected sources.
- Prioritize learning. Complexity means the playbook gets stale fast. Create space to share what’s working (and what failed), and loosen your grip on process dogma.
- Model adaptability. People mimic leaders. If you react calmly to surprises and own your mistakes, your team will too.
- Open the gates to edge ideas. Build mechanisms for the people closest to customers to surface what's changing in real time. Then act on it.
Building Better Boats
Two things happen when you lean into these mindsets: market system health and agile teams.
Like physical well-being, organizational health comes from consistent habits. You can't brute-force your way to health. You build it through daily practices. With agility, you can respond effectively to change.
You don’t need a total reset to move this way. Change your mindset by a few degrees, and over time your marketing organization will chart a new and better course.
That’s how you build a better marketing boat.
