This is the third and final part of a series of articles, which deal with a great misunderstanding of organizational structures within modern, tech focused startup companies.
Long story short: You do not need a CPO AND a CMO role!
In most cases, you can and should get rid of one of them — simply because of cost and efficiency.
First, my other two articles summarized.
Why a modern CMO needs to be a Social Tech Guy (click to read).
Being a tech Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) may never be about advertising only! It is about helping to develop a product that perfectly fits the respective market and tell people about it. This is Marketing, when you look at its definition (ever heard of the 4P?). Communication (and even more advertising) is only a small part of it. In the article, I state that most companies forgot about this and that this is the reason why the role could be replaced by a Chief Product Officer (CPO). Think about it!
Doing user interviews, developing product requirements, developing a product roadmap, setting pricing strategies — this is part of a CMO’s job profile, but is nowadays often associated with the product area.Why a good Product Manager needs to know Code (click to read).
Being a Rockstar Product Manager always includes to know code.
Why? Because if you want to set an efficient roadmap, you need to know the implications that your plans have on the tech team and resources.
This could even come pretty close to what an engineering manager or head of engineering or even Chief Technology Officer (CTO) does.
Putting it together
Let’s keep this in mind and have a look at the main areas a CSO, CMO, CPO, and CTO deal with.
Spoiler Alert: Even there is also an overlap of CPO and CTO as well as CSO and CMO responsibilities, I would not recommend to combine those roles in most cases. Therefore, I will focus on the CMO vs. CPO conflict.
Mind that we don’t do “how do we split the cake”, but rather look at the cake and check “how can we get it eaten with a minimal number of people”.
This does not cover every detail but should reflect a solid overview.
As you can see, there is one huge overlap and this is what I am talking about. The C-Level is the final and highest role in a company. Responsibilities should be clear and distinctive to keep the executive board efficient.
There might be edge cases where you do not need a CTO, when you have a techie CPO, or you do not need a CSO, when you have a sales guy within your CMO or COO. There are also case where you need a double role (see Disclaimer).
But generally speaking, it most often will look like this and you should think about the CMO + CPO twice.
Choosing the right role
To decide, whether you should rather go for the Product or for the Marketing executive role, I recommend three things.
1. The pros and cons list
There is no clear winner here, but you can find out with which cons you can live the best. Depending on the role, you might experience a push, which goes either more into the advertising or more into the tech direction.
2. The tech focus
In simple words:
The deeper your tech, the more important is the CPO over the CMO role — especially with regards to PR and communications.
Potential investors of a deep tech AI startup might ask why your management team includes a CMO, but not a CPO. The other way around, a CPO role does not make that much sense for a simple 1-click online shop.
3. Check the case and existing board
In a final step, you could combine the previous thoughts and take into account, how your business goals look like and who’s already in your team.
Mind that the following chart is only an example, no recommendation!
Conclusion
I am not saying that you should get rid of the marketing or product team or even combining them. This is about the executive role!
There, it is not only about saving on a large salary.
It becomes particularly important, when thinking of decision making. Of course, it is good to have multiple views and opinions. This is what the different departments are for.
However, in the end, somebody needs to decide and here you cannot allow to have too many overlapping responsibilities.
So, go and kill your CPO or CMO — the role, not the person 👊🏼
Disclaimer
This is about small, rather young, digital companies. There are edge cases, where you might need both roles (e.g. additional offline business, which is a clear area for the CMO). This can make sense as long as the borders are set clearly. There are even cases where one could think of two people per area. For example, if there are two main and very large products — both with a scope that would overload one person. Still, this is not the case with most companies.
And, of course, this article is highly related to my personal experiences and opinion.
By the way, you should also think about the CEO role. If the CEO is the product or marketing guy, you can even save on the CPO AND the CMO. In small and young companies, you should think about the jobs to be done. In this setup, “CEO” is only an additional title for one of the managers.
Typical C-Suites for those companies:
- CPO/CTO, CFO/CSO/COO (2 people)
- CPO, CFO/COO, CTO (3 people)
- CPO, CFO/COO, CSO, CTO (4 people)
- CMO, CTO, CFO/CSO, COO (4 people)
- and similar others.
(…with the CEO added on one or even two of those heads.)
