Making It Run Isn't Running It

In the early, primitive days of marketing professional services, there weren't enough people doing marketing for law, accounting, and consulting firms to think much about marketing department management. The exceptions, of course, were the larger firms, particularly those for which, in the beginning, having more people on staff was readily equated to better marketing. Marketing, at the beginning, was invariably assigned to a partner, who had only a vague idea about marketing and the marketing process, and certainly, no marketing experience.

The newly appointed marketing partner was then charged with hiring and managing a marketing director. The partner, who generally knew nothing about marketing, knew even less about managing a marketing operation. This often led to chaos, as well as poor marketing, no matter how good the marketing director was.

This practice still exists today, although to a lesser extent than before. After all this time, though, some ' not all, but some ' professionals have learned better.

Where this poor management by marketing partners still exists, it usually represents a traditional distrust in law and accounting firms of any non-lawyer or non-accountant in the professional office. And by now, many more lawyers and accountants than ever before are beginning to learn about marketing. But many more marketers are learning about law and accounting firms, and how to market them. Still, it's not uncommon for many partners in charge of marketing to insist on designing the marketing program, and directing the marketing manager to execute it. In too many firms, reasonably high-paid and experienced marketing professionals are directed by marketing partners with no marketing skills, no marketing experience, and no foundation for their projects. This is not only disastrous, but also expensive and wasteful.

A favorite story about this is the lawyer who once said to me that if you're smart enough to be a lawyer, you're smart enough to do your own advertising. True, I said. And if you're smart enough to be a lawyer, you're smart enough to be a nuclear physicist ' but it doesn't make you one.

And if you think you're smart enough to manage a marketing program, you're smart enough to trust the marketing professional you hired to do it. If you don't trust your marketer to do his or her job, then fire the marketer. Or at least, ask yourself whether you're smart enough to let the marketing professional do his job. There's still plenty for you to do in managing the professionals. Professional marketers, it's safe to assume, have the skills, the techniques, and the experience to serve you well. With luck, and your good hiring skills, they have the talent and imagination to do a superb job for you.

One thing is certain ' the ability to execute the marketing process is not the same as the ability to manage that performance in others. The mistake comes in not understanding the difference between the ability to do and the ability to manage.

Without doing a full treatise on management ' the library is full of good books on it ' there are some simple factors that should be considered before accepting management responsibility. They begin with understanding what managing is and isn't.

What Managing Is

What managing is and what managers do are two different things. There are as many definitions as there are definers, but essentially, managing is getting things done the way they should be done, to effectively accomplish a predetermined objective with the help of other people, and to motivate other people to do well in their own specialties. Essentially, managing ' all managing ' boils down to three major things:

1. Having a vision for the firm or the department;
2. Being able to communicate that vision to the people who have to make it a reality; and
3. Being able to inspire staff to make that vision a reality.

For the partner in charge of marketing, managing your firm's marketing activities is at least:

• Understanding the objectives of your firm;
• Understanding the objectives of the marketing department, in the context of the firm's objectives;
• Understanding how to participate with your marketing director to plan the program, and the projects within the program, in terms of all these objectives;
• Understanding how to motivate marketing directors to fulfill those tasks effectively, successfully, and enthusiastically; and
• Understanding how to judge and measure the results of each of the marketing staff person's actions and performance, and how to express either satisfaction or dissatisfaction with performance, without attacking the individual.

If you accept this definition ' and of course, it's shorthand, because there are many more nuances to it ' then the list of skills for a marketing partner becomes clear. For the partner in charge of marketing, there are three more responsibilities:

1. Understanding ' but not necessarily being able to perform ' the basic skills of marketing and how they fulfill the objectives of the marketing program;
2. Serving as liaison between the marketers and the firm's partnership and staff; and
3. Transmitting the firm's objectives and culture to the marketing director, and the marketing program to the partners and staff, who are ultimately responsible for making the program a reality.

The partner responsible for the marketing process cannot and should not second-guess the professional marketer. If the marketing director can't relate effectively to the firm's culture or objectives, the marketer should be fired. If the marketing professional allows himself or herself to be second-guessed, or is asked to perform marketing tasks that are obviously nonproductive, the result is going to be disaster, and the marketing professional should quit.

It helps to keep in mind that there's a difference between managing marketers and managing staff in other kinds of organizations. The added ingredients are:

• Marketers deal in concepts that require both skill and imagination. Marketing is based not only on techniques, but on original ideas and concepts as well. This is particularly important in the new competitive environment.
• Goal concepts ' and therefore, success ' are measured differently, and usually on a longer term. Making a sale is one thing, but measuring the success of a public relations activity or an ad campaign for a law firm is something else. Is a press release successful because it gets published ' or because it contributes effectively to supporting other marketing activities? Is an ad campaign successful because the managing partner likes it, or because it effectively serves a marketing objective?
• Training marketing people, in the firm, its practice, and its culture. Marketers come from a different world, and must be managed differently than lawyers. These differences, by the way, are why non-accountants, non-lawyers, and non-consultants often find a hostile environment in accounting, law, and consulting firms.

At the same time, there are specific factors that preclude good management. For example:

• Being unable to motivate and direct people of not only diverse personalities, but of personalities that you may not like personally. Personal chemistry is an overrated concept. A good manager should be able to deal with a talented person, even if it's someone with whom he or she might not necessarily want to socialize.
• Competing with one's own staff. The manager should be sufficiently emotionally secure to allow staff the opportunity to excel, and to take credit for its own excellence.
• The competent marketing partner need not know how to do everything ' but rather, how everything is done.

Teamwork is good, but it shouldn't be mistaken for homogenization. In an arena such as marketing, in which ideas and originality matter, the ability to understand and accept idiosyncrasy and individuality is important, as long as the attendant behavior isn't disruptive to the point of being counterproductive.

Confusing being temperamental with temperament doesn't help much, either. Screaming fits don't seem to accomplish a thing.

There are people who think that managing by sadism accomplishes something. It does for the sadist, and maybe for the masochist ' but not for the business. Ruling by terrorizing, by threatening, or by having two people compete against one another by giving them both the same task, may do something for the personality of the manager, but doesn't do a thing for the business.

Indecisiveness and inconsistency both preclude good management. The leader who can't make a decision, and the leader who makes the decision one way today and another way tomorrow, is no leader. He or she is a perpetrator of chaos.

Conclusion

Entire books have been written about managing, and you can major in it at your local MBA program. But pragmatically, other factors, such as the foregoing, must be used to make a decision about who to hire as a marketing director.

The problem is that marketing isn't a science ' it's a skill that's enhanced by artistry. So, too ' in fact ' is management.

Bruce W. Marcus is a Connecticut-based consultant in marketing and strategic planning for professional firms, the editor of The Marcus Letter on Professional Services, (www.marcusletter.com) and the co-author of Client at the Core (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). His e-mail address is [email protected]. ' Bruce W. Marcus. All rights reserved.

In the early, primitive days of marketing professional services, there weren't enough people doing marketing for law, accounting, and consulting firms to think much about marketing department management. The exceptions, of course, were the larger firms, particularly those for which, in the beginning, having more people on staff was readily equated to better marketing. Marketing, at the beginning, was invariably assigned to a partner, who had only a vague idea about marketing and the marketing process, and certainly, no marketing experience.

The newly appointed marketing partner was then charged with hiring and managing a marketing director. The partner, who generally knew nothing about marketing, knew even less about managing a marketing operation. This often led to chaos, as well as poor marketing, no matter how good the marketing director was.

This practice still exists today, although to a lesser extent than before. After all this time, though, some ' not all, but some ' professionals have learned better.

Where this poor management by marketing partners still exists, it usually represents a traditional distrust in law and accounting firms of any non-lawyer or non-accountant in the professional office. And by now, many more lawyers and accountants than ever before are beginning to learn about marketing. But many more marketers are learning about law and accounting firms, and how to market them. Still, it's not uncommon for many partners in charge of marketing to insist on designing the marketing program, and directing the marketing manager to execute it. In too many firms, reasonably high-paid and experienced marketing professionals are directed by marketing partners with no marketing skills, no marketing experience, and no foundation for their projects. This is not only disastrous, but also expensive and wasteful.

A favorite story about this is the lawyer who once said to me that if you're smart enough to be a lawyer, you're smart enough to do your own advertising. True, I said. And if you're smart enough to be a lawyer, you're smart enough to be a nuclear physicist ' but it doesn't make you one.

And if you think you're smart enough to manage a marketing program, you're smart enough to trust the marketing professional you hired to do it. If you don't trust your marketer to do his or her job, then fire the marketer. Or at least, ask yourself whether you're smart enough to let the marketing professional do his job. There's still plenty for you to do in managing the professionals. Professional marketers, it's safe to assume, have the skills, the techniques, and the experience to serve you well. With luck, and your good hiring skills, they have the talent and imagination to do a superb job for you.

One thing is certain ' the ability to execute the marketing process is not the same as the ability to manage that performance in others. The mistake comes in not understanding the difference between the ability to do and the ability to manage.

Without doing a full treatise on management ' the library is full of good books on it ' there are some simple factors that should be considered before accepting management responsibility. They begin with understanding what managing is and isn't.

What Managing Is

What managing is and what managers do are two different things. There are as many definitions as there are definers, but essentially, managing is getting things done the way they should be done, to effectively accomplish a predetermined objective with the help of other people, and to motivate other people to do well in their own specialties. Essentially, managing ' all managing ' boils down to three major things:

1. Having a vision for the firm or the department;
2. Being able to communicate that vision to the people who have to make it a reality; and
3. Being able to inspire staff to make that vision a reality.

For the partner in charge of marketing, managing your firm's marketing activities is at least:

• Understanding the objectives of your firm;
• Understanding the objectives of the marketing department, in the context of the firm's objectives;
• Understanding how to participate with your marketing director to plan the program, and the projects within the program, in terms of all these objectives;
• Understanding how to motivate marketing directors to fulfill those tasks effectively, successfully, and enthusiastically; and
• Understanding how to judge and measure the results of each of the marketing staff person's actions and performance, and how to express either satisfaction or dissatisfaction with performance, without attacking the individual.

If you accept this definition ' and of course, it's shorthand, because there are many more nuances to it ' then the list of skills for a marketing partner becomes clear. For the partner in charge of marketing, there are three more responsibilities:

1. Understanding ' but not necessarily being able to perform ' the basic skills of marketing and how they fulfill the objectives of the marketing program;
2. Serving as liaison between the marketers and the firm's partnership and staff; and
3. Transmitting the firm's objectives and culture to the marketing director, and the marketing program to the partners and staff, who are ultimately responsible for making the program a reality.

The partner responsible for the marketing process cannot and should not second-guess the professional marketer. If the marketing director can't relate effectively to the firm's culture or objectives, the marketer should be fired. If the marketing professional allows himself or herself to be second-guessed, or is asked to perform marketing tasks that are obviously nonproductive, the result is going to be disaster, and the marketing professional should quit.

It helps to keep in mind that there's a difference between managing marketers and managing staff in other kinds of organizations. The added ingredients are:

• Marketers deal in concepts that require both skill and imagination. Marketing is based not only on techniques, but on original ideas and concepts as well. This is particularly important in the new competitive environment.
• Goal concepts ' and therefore, success ' are measured differently, and usually on a longer term. Making a sale is one thing, but measuring the success of a public relations activity or an ad campaign for a law firm is something else. Is a press release successful because it gets published ' or because it contributes effectively to supporting other marketing activities? Is an ad campaign successful because the managing partner likes it, or because it effectively serves a marketing objective?
• Training marketing people, in the firm, its practice, and its culture. Marketers come from a different world, and must be managed differently than lawyers. These differences, by the way, are why non-accountants, non-lawyers, and non-consultants often find a hostile environment in accounting, law, and consulting firms.

At the same time, there are specific factors that preclude good management. For example:

• Being unable to motivate and direct people of not only diverse personalities, but of personalities that you may not like personally. Personal chemistry is an overrated concept. A good manager should be able to deal with a talented person, even if it's someone with whom he or she might not necessarily want to socialize.
• Competing with one's own staff. The manager should be sufficiently emotionally secure to allow staff the opportunity to excel, and to take credit for its own excellence.
• The competent marketing partner need not know how to do everything ' but rather, how everything is done.

Teamwork is good, but it shouldn't be mistaken for homogenization. In an arena such as marketing, in which ideas and originality matter, the ability to understand and accept idiosyncrasy and individuality is important, as long as the attendant behavior isn't disruptive to the point of being counterproductive.

Confusing being temperamental with temperament doesn't help much, either. Screaming fits don't seem to accomplish a thing.

There are people who think that managing by sadism accomplishes something. It does for the sadist, and maybe for the masochist ' but not for the business. Ruling by terrorizing, by threatening, or by having two people compete against one another by giving them both the same task, may do something for the personality of the manager, but doesn't do a thing for the business.

Indecisiveness and inconsistency both preclude good management. The leader who can't make a decision, and the leader who makes the decision one way today and another way tomorrow, is no leader. He or she is a perpetrator of chaos.

Conclusion

Entire books have been written about managing, and you can major in it at your local MBA program. But pragmatically, other factors, such as the foregoing, must be used to make a decision about who to hire as a marketing director.

The problem is that marketing isn't a science ' it's a skill that's enhanced by artistry. So, too ' in fact ' is management.

Bruce W. Marcus is a Connecticut-based consultant in marketing and strategic planning for professional firms, the editor of The Marcus Letter on Professional Services, (www.marcusletter.com) and the co-author of Client at the Core (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). His e-mail address is [email protected]. ' Bruce W. Marcus. All rights reserved.