Disruption is the New CMO Reality

The edge of chaos. Where a frozen order and an ethereal disorder meet in a fluid equilibrium. Where life is in endless flux. Where a system is so adaptive that it is only a breath away from spinning out of control. -

Kuwabara, K. (2000). Linux: A bazaar at the edge of chaos

This quote has rattled around my head for years, ever since grad school way back on the tail end of the dotcom bubble, when my study group was named “Edge of Chaos” (which more of less described our study habits, for better or worse). It’s from a white paper describing the open source movement generally and specifically the community around Linux, but I believe it’s a near perfect encapsulation of what it feels like to be a marketing leader today in many organizations.

Heads of marketing organizations these days are asked and expected to be expert, or at least semi-fluent, in many things: marketing technology, market trends, analytics, customer insights, new channels, and so on. But more than anything else, today’s marketing leader needs to be an expert in disruption - how to build and lead marketing teams, talent, and strategy that not only weathers but thrives through the endless disruption we all face.

How to create and sustain those disruption-fluent marketing organizations is, in my view, the central skill a marketing leader needs today. Because it’s not just about addressing “what do I do about AI?” or “how do I build culture in a remote team” or any other single disruption. Those are just the flavor of the moment; there will no doubt be countless others in the coming year. Disruption in marketing is a constant, and only those leaders who become fluent on how to lead through it will ultimately succeed.

Being fluent in disruption is the new expected norm for marketing leaders.

What this looks like and means for marketing leaders is the focus of this site, on topics such as:

• What does disruption-fluent marketing leadership look like?
• What’s the blueprint for being disruption-fluent as a marketing team?
• What tools, frameworks, and lessons can we apply from outside the traditional marketing world?
• How are others tackling all this change?

Over the course of my own 20+ year career in marketing, I’ve seen and been part of countless disruptions. My very first job out of college was doing tech sales with a startup that got wiped out due to a sudden shift in the technology adoption curve. During an early turn at Microsoft I went all in on community marketing and watched the rise of early tech blogger influencers shake up the public relations mix. On the agency side, I experience the early days of social when “tweeting is not a hobby to be left to your intern” was an argument still being made to Fortune 500 clients, then again through the rise of content marketing when the very idea of editorial content being a useful brand and pipeline driver was viewed as near-heretical. Toss in COVID, remote work, the rise of AI, political and generational shifts, and “ethereal disorder” as the quote up top says, it has certainly been.

Seemingly every day brings new disruption to our profession, and as marketing leaders we are expected to expertly navigate it and guide our teams and companies through it. That’s the purpose of this story, to explore that disruption and what it takes to lead through it successfully and relentlessly.

I hope you’ll stick around and learn with me.