News & Podcasts

The Whole Marketer Podcast – Episode 12

Aug 4, 2020

Episode #12. In this Episode, Leadership is the soft skill explored with guest Katherine Whitton, Chief Marketing Officer of Specsavers. Katherine’s leadership style is inspiring as she shares with Abby the 8 pillars of good leadership, why leadership is not just about authority and how to create an environment of bravery, learning, reassurance and recognition. Plus as a marketing leader, why now is not the time to cut your marketing spend.

Resources/brands mentioned in this podcast:

www.specsavers.co.uk

www.americanexpress.com/uk

www.britishairways.com

Mark Ritson

Sponsored by Labyrinth Marketing

FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)

00:00:00:06 – 00:00:06:26

This podcast is brought to you by Labyrinth Marketing. Hello and welcome to the Whole Marketer podcast.

00:00:11:26 – 00:00:41:28

Todays skill is a soft skill its leadership marketing is or becoming the function that leads the organisation. Its long-term growth and commercial agenda and therefore leadership a soft skill once needed to lead the marketing team has now to span across functionally across the whole organisation. Marketers are also expecting so much more from their leaders. They’re looking for their leaders to be visionary, inspirational, human and authentic. The skill of leadership cannot be overlooked.

00:00:42:00 – 00:01:12:04

Today’s guest is Katherine Whitton CMO of SpecSavers. Prior to joining SpecSavers she was CMO Barclaycard and has risen through the marketing ranks the likes of American Express and British Airways. Katherine and her team recently took a consumer suggestion to leverage the Barnard gate debacle by launching an ad with the copy line you should have gone to Barnard Castle. For me this is a great example of leadership and the skills needed by today’s marketeers to act with bravery and pace with your insight.

00:01:12:18 – 00:01:28:19

So not only listen to your consumers but to cocreate with them. It also is a great example of integrity as when submitting the recent award entry for this really effective campaign. She did so on behalf of her consumers allowing them to take the credit of the effectiveness just simply legendary.

00:01:29:10 – 00:01:33:13

So Katherine welcome to the Whole Marketer podcast.

00:01:33:21 – 00:01:35:20

Thank you very much. Great to be here Abby.

00:01:35:23 – 00:01:41:16

I’m going to jump straight in with a big juicy question up front. What does leadership mean to you?

00:01:42:09 – 00:02:13:01

You know it always feels like a trick question because there are just so many definitions. If you’re looking at it from an academic point of view I think I’ll start by saying what it’s not to me and what it isn’t is management. And you know it’s interesting in business that we sometimes use those words leadership and management interchangeably. You know for me you manage a production line or a process and certainly that’s what leadership is not.

00:02:13:03 – 00:02:53:14

I think the other thing about leadership is sometimes people think leadership is associated to authority or seniority. And in my mind it’s not. I think if you have a position of authority or seniority there is a greater expectation on you of leadership. But when I really ask myself what leadership is I kind of turn it around to say that leadership is the purpose of creating followership. And I think that is really really critical because it focuses on actually what you’re trying to achieve and to create followership in the simplest terms.

00:02:53:22 – 00:03:36:08

I think it is about influencing individuals, groups to a common goal aspiration or purpose and the influencing really requires great leadership that creates the followership to have insight and understanding of who you are leading to really have empathy of people’s needs and motivations. And I think the influencing to the purpose is also really critical for leadership because I think to lead you have to have such clarity of vision to take people on a journey with you.

00:03:36:10 – 00:03:49:16

Yeah I couldn’t agree more. I think for me with the visionary is definitely what’s been requested by marketers and their leaders and also vital you know as I was saying in the introduction it’s you know as marketers we need to lead the commercial agenda.

00:03:49:18 – 00:04:08:18

Therefore you need to be able to sit back and take the time to think about the vision of where you want to take the organization and feel it so palpably if you will that you know you can see it and what the end result looks like. With such clarity that when you share that with others they feel emotionally attached to it.

00:04:09:09 – 00:04:40:09

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more and I think you know one of the component parts of that is consistency because I think sometimes leaders think they’ve done the job if they’ve set out a vision or expectation at the beginning but the continual reminder. And what I call label and linking back to it. So to really make sure that that consistency is in place because that is how you change people’s attitudes and behaviours by continually reinforcing it.

00:04:40:15 – 00:04:46:26

And is that something that you’ve experienced yourself and thought yeah this is really working as my method is leading my marketing teams?

00:04:46:28 – 00:05:18:09

I think there are three things probably you know I’ve been in business for a long time, so I think the practice is important. I’ve been incredibly fortunate through my career to have been led by some really inspiring people and actually not just in my career but I think you also when you think about leadership really need to broaden your horizons about what great leadership looks like whether that be political whether that be religious whether that be commercial etc.. And I have made mistakes along the way.

00:05:18:17 – 00:05:48:29

So there is definitely you know two times in my career at least that I look back and I kind of treated my responsibility of leadership maybe academically. But I failed to take people on a journey with me expecting people to be able to decipher the vision to be able to adapt themselves to it and maybe not support them as much as I could have along the way. And you know and we’re human.

00:05:49:01 – 00:05:52:05

One of the most powerful ways to learn is through making mistakes.

00:05:52:07 – 00:06:20:23

I love that you said that because you know being human is so important. I was on an earlier podcast with Peter Docker and he was talking about the time when he was landing a plane and he should’ve circled back round and not land to the plane and he turned round to his team when he had landed and said I’m sorry I shouldn’t have done that and I won’t do it again. And I think having that vulnerability and honesty as a human to say that is also inspirational is also what people are kind of looking for is authenticity.

00:06:20:25 – 00:06:52:02

Yeah. I mean I often say to people at work you know one of the most courageous but confident things to say is either you don’t know or you could have done it better because actually what we’re looking for in our leaders is authenticity. But the humanity because if that’s not there. Then actually too really for people to connect with you and for them to believe that you really understand them becomes more challenging.

00:06:52:07 – 00:07:03:25

Yeah. The person behind the job title. Absolutely. So why do you think it’s so important. You said it not just in management. Why do you think it’s so important to have this leadership skill in marketing today?

00:07:03:27 – 00:07:33:28

I mean it’s marketing but I think it’s just generally you know in business. I think there are two things. There’s something very very pertinent about the role of leadership as in today in terms of what the world has gone through which is seismic change and the role of leadership in taking people through change any any form of change is so critical because that’s what people are looking for. They want to create a bedrock of trust.

00:07:34:00 – 00:08:06:12

They want to believe that there is a way forward. And if I think about four things that I think us as individuals so forget job titles forget organizations or departments have faced in to to a greater or lesser degree over the last hundred days we’ve experienced fear. We’ve all done it in our own way. But as the world became topsy turvy and the pandemic took a grip the uncertainty created levels of fear. We’ve had to question what freedom means to us.

00:08:06:14 – 00:08:39:15

So our ability to go about our lives once again has been you know tremendously unsettling. And then at the more kind of I suppose powerful and we’ve questioned mortality and how we’ve known that we’ve crossed a question and more so now than ever actually during the pandemic morality. What is the right thing to do? What do our behaviours suggest what’s the new norm of cultural norms? So all that together creates at a personal level a huge amount of change.

00:08:39:19 – 00:09:17:13

And then if you take that into the importance of leadership through change in marketing one of the reasons you know I’ve been a serial marketer for most of my career and what still inspires me about it is because the role of marketing and the actual practice of marketing is constantly changing. And I think more so than ever. So if you’ve kind of got this personal change that we’re looking at you’re looking at business change because you know most businesses probably know we had an incredibly well documented and constructive annual plan that literally stopped overnight.

00:09:17:24 – 00:09:50:27

And we had to change up literally within hours to a new way of operating. And as businesses come through the crisis into recovery and to rebuild is going to be continual change of the role of marketing because our consumer requirements are going to change our commercial requirements are going to change. So change is the catalyst of why leadership at the moment is so so critical whether you’re the marketing director or you’re leading a family or a community or anything. If

00:09:50:29 – 00:09:52:26

If leadership has to step up it’s down.

00:09:53:00 – 00:10:21:23

I couldn’t agree more. And I think it’s rightly or wrongly has forced many many organizations to think about that person behind the brand or business you know. What’s their childcare situation? Who would they happen to look after? Where would they based? What do they need in order to still be able to work if work at all during this time? And as you say the marketers role is always changing. Now you’re going through a moment of change and we know on the other side of it there’ll be change again. So resilience has to be absolutely intrinsic I guess in these people.

00:10:21:25 – 00:10:37:15

Yeah and you know what I’ve seen in SpecSavers across the whole of SpecSavers particularly our in-store colleagues who remained in store during the pandemic and lockdown to support people with urgent or essential eye and hearing care.

00:10:37:17 – 00:10:52:16

The resilience right the way through to the marketing team people who have run towards the problem it is cast a new light for me on many of our colleagues because I just saw a level of resilience that was breath-taking.

00:10:52:20 – 00:10:57:21

That’s so inspiring and thinking about as a CMO.

00:10:57:23 – 00:11:06:23

You’ve been leading your team in the business this time of change but also what is it going to look like on the other side. What do you think your biggest challenges you face are?

00:11:06:25 – 00:11:37:04

It’s a really good question. I think that’s the leadership challenge will be taking people through this change and I often refer to taking people through change as having to kind of retrain muscle memory. We unfortunately have been commercially impacted by the pandemic. We operate in 10 markets around the world. We have seen good recovery as different markets are coming out of lockdown but we have been left with a significant commercial deficit.

00:11:37:06 – 00:12:11:15

It’s meant that at a strategic level in the organization that we have had to reconsider our plans we’ve kind of curtailed some of the bigger programs of capital investment we had we had a longer-term framework of growth. We’ve retracted to a short-term framework which has meant that we have had to look at people in our organization. We’ve had a fairly significant redundancy program in place across our support offices. So the very fact that our plans are different our colleagues and structures are going to be different.

00:12:11:17 – 00:12:54:08

The biggest challenge is helping and inspiring the team to refocus into a shorter-term horizon and to learn to work in different ways because we will not and cannot achieve our objectives if we just continue to work in the way we used to. So I find myself actually on a daily basis having to remind myself that I have to work in a different way as well and that doesn’t happen overnight. So I think that helping the organization, reframe its objectives and to help people retrain that memory muscle to find new ways of working I think is going to be really really critical.

00:12:54:10 – 00:13:37:07

I think you know if I take the pandemic and put that to one side, though hard to do. The biggest challenge from a marketing perspective I think is taking a fairly traditional marketing organization that I inherited when I arrived at SpecSavers and really trying to recast it into some three I think very distinct typologies that need to exist in marketing. We obviously need our strategists we need our storytellers and that’s where you break down the silos of traditional marketing and channel mix into being content first and then finding ways to distribute through your channels.

00:13:37:09 – 00:14:15:12

And that’s been a massive change that we are continuing to go through. And then obviously the scientists the third breeds that we need to in marketing I think that recasting those roles and reorganizing people against these three areas is quite a challenge. We’re absolutely on the road. It’s certainly not finished. I think that the third thing I would say in terms of a challenge and I think this is agnostic I think to sector or business is to be part of the thinking and influencing around what I call the boundaries of marketing.

00:14:15:14 – 00:15:04:08

I think if you know I said I’ve been marketing for a long time and what’s really exciting to me actually in the world today is the questioning of the role of marketing versus being passive in not obviously being very active in that discussion as being a CMO to where the blended edges of marketing happen. So you know refocusing recasting relationships which five 10 years ago you’d never think that your best friend was going to be head of technology to really understanding the blending between customer experience and communications and engagement and really understanding the purpose and the contribution of marketing in its broadest sense the question also was a challenge but I don’t see its challenges as difficult thing.

00:15:04:10 – 00:15:07:12

It’s almost like the opportunities I suppose.

00:15:07:14 – 00:15:16:13

Yes so the opportunity and how you reframe the marketing within the organization so that it works cross-functional across the wider organization.

00:15:16:15 – 00:15:31:05

Absolutely and almost it feels a slightly odd say but I kind of just wonder whether marketing generally in the world needs a rebrand because I think it feels too limiting as a definition to me it does.

00:15:31:07 – 00:16:02:02

I’m just thinking about where we are now versus the last 20 years. So 20 years ago you know we were the support function to a sales production R&D, someone someone else came up with that product and kind of arrived at our door and said okay can you please sell this now to where we are now where we are insight based we have the communication and the voice of the customer the consumer what they’re looking for. We are also looking at the long-term direction of the business and what that’s going to commercially deliver. So it’s not just the market any more.

00:16:02:09 – 00:16:19:08

Yes the term is marketers we’re not there just to sell and communicate we’re there to set the direction and be the voice of the consumer and bring everything you know aligned to that. And that’s a massive shift depending on where any organization is on that journey.

00:16:19:10 – 00:16:24:29

Where would you say spec save as is would you say that your marketing led or absolutely consumer led?

00:16:25:21 – 00:17:04:06

Before I joined the company I actually knew very little about it as I kind of explored the opportunity. I was taken aback I suppose about the heritage of the brand. So the brand was created 35 years ago by a married couple called Doug and Mary Perkins. They were both optometrists and they created Spec Savers because they believed that the country needed and deserved better. So if you cast your mind back to five years if you were a glasses wearer you’d go to a local optician they’d open the front door they’d take you through to be tested they’d be the people who would then dispense your you know select your frames and everything but literally that closed the door behind them.

00:17:04:08 – 00:17:17:28

But in the context of that most people and those who are older who have glasses whereas for a long time will remember those kind of like sorry days where you had four pairs of NHS friends you could choose from pink only ones.

00:17:18:00 – 00:17:48:21

And again Doug and Mary thought that the world needed better. So the idea of choice is something they introduce but they also demanded that everyone should have access to this. And that was around a price point in value and they have been maniacal about that till today and they still are actually very heavily involved in the business and are the other aspects the conscience of the business to say we are here to make a positive difference to the lives of all young,

00:17:48:23 – 00:17:53:01

Poor, old, rich. It doesn’t matter really democratic cry.

00:17:53:14 – 00:18:25:26

But they’ve also been and continue to be incredibly passionate about being what I call marketing and brand driven. Absolutely passionate about the last thing you do in a recessionary environment is to cut your marketing spend. You actually this is the time where you have to over communicate to create certainty to your customers and to take advantage of opportunity. So being a privately owned company. They can absolutely take you know we can make those decisions.

00:18:26:00 – 00:18:41:28

We’re not having to make shorter term shareholder decisions which we all know and I’ve worked most my career in the companies like that where you know the short term horizon doesn’t look good. What are the three things that got cut? You know people travel and marketing.

00:18:42:00 – 00:19:03:20

So we actually have a completely reverse philosophy around the time where marketing needs to work its hardest to make sure that customers are reassured and that the trust is maintained in the brand and to take opportunity where people particularly we head into a recessionary environment will be making choices about what they buy and what they buy from.

00:19:03:22 – 00:19:23:06

That’s really reassuring to hear that you are continuing to invest over invest during this time at the beginning of lock down assistant to Mark Ritson’s studies of previous kind of not pandemics obviously but other crisis thank you, that have happened and what has clearly come out is that when you continue to invest you do better.

00:19:23:08 – 00:19:28:20

On the other side you know versus your competition hanging onto your consumers and so on.

00:19:28:23 – 00:19:54:07

I think one of the things which you know I would challenge people who are listening to this is one of the reasons I think many organisations see the short term opportunity to pull the investment lever to or fro from marketing is because we as marketing practitioners may not historically have done a good enough job of demonstrating value to the broader organisation. Which has come

00:19:54:09 – 00:20:25:18

Back to your storytelling here isn’t it. It’s storytelling to tell emotive story to consumers. It’s also storytelling internally that they understand the benefits of the investment made in marketing and the impact that has to that as you say we can rebrand marketing. Yeah absolutely. So we spoke about the skills and characteristics leadership less about leading more about creating a fellowship. It’s also about being human doing morally what’s right. It’s about inspiring and being a visionary.

00:20:25:20 – 00:20:31:09

Is there anything else you think that is essential to being a leader in the world of marketing today?

00:20:31:11 – 00:21:18:19

I think one of the things that is really critical today and hypercritical based on on the global events of today and we’ve talked about about change as well is I think leadership is so important to create the right environment and support and motivation for colleagues to take risks. And I know it’s a pretty kind of West Coast concept. It’s probably more prevalent in America but this kind of whole corporate ownership of failure and that is good to fail but we can all kind of talk about that because if we don’t fail we don’t learn if we don’t learn we don’t innovate.

00:21:18:21 – 00:22:08:02

So risk taking is really important. You could say that to people like you know you got to take risks to change things up. You could to experiment but you have to as a leader give people permission to do that and make them feel really really certain and comfortable that as long as the risks are calculated it’s not going to be detrimental. And that that’s quite a different approach in many organisations where you know the F words isn’t something you want the band around in the corridors. So I think one of you know if leadership is about helping people through change if it is about getting to a common aspiration and goal of betterment I feel really strongly about this one because I don’t think we generally do a very good job of creating the right conditions for experimentation.

00:22:08:04 – 00:22:14:14

And one of the biggest ones is the cushion that is not going to be detrimental if you’re associated to something that hasn’t worked.

00:22:14:27 – 00:22:24:26

Yeah that’s so true. Have you got any kind of top tips for anyone who’s trying to embed that test and learn no mistake as long as a learning culture?

00:22:24:28 – 00:23:07:21

I think it’s about being just very open about it and I think recognition is another leadership trait which is really really important. We don’t probably do enough daily recognition let alone you know seismic recognition but the recognition should be about bravery. And I think you know a in terms of that kind of how do you create followership if the aspiration that you’re trying to influence people to change you need to explain that in order to change we have to think differently in order to do things differently and find the best ways we have to experiment and if you experiment the experiment successfully it has to come with a level of risk and risk is okay.

00:23:07:25 – 00:23:44:26

And this whole kind of idea of you know failing fast et cetera. It’s about having that open narrative. It’s about recognizing when people have been brave and it’s about giving people the kudos for them to be able to express what they learned from it. Verses like oh we don’t talk about that project. It didn’t go so well that actually giving people the recognition and the platform to talk about what they learnt and how they improved or they stopped fast. So again I think it’s just bringing it into the culture and being very open about it and giving people the opportunity to talk about their own experiences.

00:23:45:15 – 00:23:48:06

That’s great advice. Did you want to talk about the eight pillars Katherine?

00:23:49:04 – 00:24:01:09

Yeah I mean I you know you know as we met on link in and we you know we started obviously kind of communicating I was I think at the time I talked to you as we were exploring this podcast and talking about leadership.

00:24:01:11 – 00:24:48:00

That’s because of what we’re going through as an organization said a focus from more strategic long term ambition to short term recovery taking people through change and particularly people are going to be leaving our organisation unfortunately. We have to recast our teams in ways of working and there is something which is officially known as survivor syndrome. So people who are left in organisations when others leave through you know redundancy programs et cetera often productivity dips considerably directly afterwards because colleagues are feeling still they have a fear about the future and particularly in a world today where this isn’t going to be a linear path of coming out of the impact of the pandemic.

00:24:48:02 – 00:25:22:27

So there’s still underlying fears about their security there’s guilt and anger. So thinking about the what and the how. Myself and my leadership team came together to say right what do we need to be really intentional in our leadership of helping our teams get through this change? And we created what we called the eight pillars of leadership for marketing and I’ll run through them pretty quickly actually. We’ve covered quite a lot of them already and in our conversation, I think that the foundation of it is really about caring guiding and supporting teams through the change curve.

00:25:23:04 – 00:25:51:23

And it will be a curve because you’re not going to get to your full productivity and motivation and everything from day one. The real importance of setting a motivating vision very clear objectives that really really critically every single member of the team needs to know what their role will ladder back up to the vision that we have organisationally from a brand point of view. That’s such a preach moment.

00:25:52:16 – 00:25:57:17

What do you mean by that? Oh right. Just like you say it sister.

00:25:57:19 – 00:26:10:02

You know like I say that all the time I ever do this and ladder back up to the vision that you trying to do and everyone has their personal understanding of their scope and their role. That all ladders up.

00:26:10:04 – 00:26:11:16

Like I say it at least once today

00:26:13:01 – 00:26:47:19

but it’s so simple but so often missed because I think sometimes if we just expect people to put it together themselves. But you know if every member of the team should absolute because that’s the motivation of you know one out of six of success everyone wants to feel a pride in the recovery of the business and they want to know and be able to tell their friends and family. I did this and this is why I did it. So I think it’s really important I think because things are going to change and the media landscape is going to change consumer sentiment and motivation is going to change.

00:26:47:24 – 00:27:21:17

I think as leaders the constants what I call look forward and look out to spot the emerging opportunities. You know when a business is under stress and when individuals are under stress it’s very easy to become very myopic and to be inwardly focused. But there will be opportunities. I mean there are opportunities on a daily basis. We run a daily editorial board for content creation and we’ve been creating. We actually started it on the first day that we closed down our offices for the pandemic and we run it.

00:27:21:19 – 00:28:02:18

We’ve been creating content seven days a week for the last 110 days that you know we review the news we look at social trends we look at you know we’re working with Google and looking at our analytics to create content based on what’s happening today. So for instance you know what are the big trends at the moments of what we know we’re all gonna have to wear masks and retail environments and others spaces. If you wear glasses you wear a mask it’s very difficult because your glasses steam up. So what do we do. Yesterday we sent all our social content was five hacks to wear a mask and glasses at the same time and actually looking at the performance of our social post yesterday with no spend behind it.

00:28:02:20 – 00:28:35:13

It’s been the most shared piece of content we’ve had over the last hundred days because it’s helpful. So you know just the small things as well as you know the bigger things about things like you know changing media landscape but that outward focus the next one is cool out when things aren’t working and fix it fast. So let’s not be laborious let’s not have meetings about it. Let’s empower people to call it out and have a trusted environment people can. But more importantly they’re empowered to fix things. The next one we’ve talked about which is the motivating teams to take calculated risks.

00:28:35:15 – 00:29:06:12

Point number six in our leadership kind of responsibilities is actively looking for opportunities to collaborate more so than ever actually. And not just amongst you know we have all our creative is done in-house. We have a creative department here. So the cross collaboration with creative and marketing with marketing and retail with our partners in our stores really finding ways and actively looking for ways that we can do things differently through collaboration.

00:29:06:14 – 00:29:39:17

Number seven make recognition a daily habit. We’re not good at it as we should be. I think because everyone is running 100 miles an hour. So at a time where people are learning to do things differently they want reassurance and there’s no better reassurance than either peer or leader recognition. And the last one which kind of takes us full circle to the beginning of this conversation I suppose is constantly question why people will follow you or should follow you. I find it so powerful you know because I could be academic about what leadership is.

00:29:39:19 – 00:30:27:23

But. My biggest responsibility as a leader is to the people who I have a responsibility for and that responsibility means that everybody who I have care of I want them to truly believe that they can trust the direction I’m taking the department in or as my board membership the business in that they truly believe that I am empathetic and close to their individual requirements and ultimately that people can come to work be themselves and the best version of themselves and contribute in a way that gives them the satisfaction of spending way too many hours working in a lifetime.

00:30:27:25 – 00:30:35:18

So you know that idea of people having that trust in me and me being able to earn that trust is really really important.

00:30:35:20 – 00:30:39:19

That’s just wonderful. We’ve actually made quite emotional listening to that.

00:30:39:29 – 00:30:54:29

I’m so glad I reached out to you to have you to talk about leadership because you spoke about people you spoke about care. You spoke about motivating. You spoke about the role that work plays in their broader life. I think you’re just an inspiration Katherine. And thank you so much.

00:30:55:01 – 00:30:56:18

Oh bless you.

00:30:56:25 – 00:31:07:00

On that note I think it’s a lot of people that be listening to this thinking. Katherine Whitton CMO. I’d love to know what one piece of advice she would give me.

00:31:07:02 – 00:31:14:29

It has a marketeer or someone who is aspiring to be a CMO or leader. What would that be. You can have two if you really want somebody else had to but yeah

00:31:16:21 – 00:31:20:26

I’m the first one I would say as it is never too early in your career.

00:31:22:09 – 00:31:57:11

Even if you’re on a grad program or you know a few years in to demonstrate leadership traits and I kind of said this at the beginning which is for me leadership isn’t about authority or seniority it’s about your ability to influence others and for a purpose or for a change. And you know when I look across all the teams I’ve had the pleasure of leading through my career I’ve always been very focused on high potential and the high potential isn’t necessarily just about what has been achieved but how it has been achieved.

00:31:57:27 – 00:32:28:12

And I talk about the influences in my team whenever I’m new into a team right. Inherited a team or I’m growing a team. I spend time with my leaders talking to them about identifying the influencers because they’re the people that are going to create the cultural environment that we want to and they could be at any part of the organization. So I think often the thing that really depresses me is when I talk to colleagues in my team or I’m giving career advice or mentoring a lot of the kind of role I think we should do blah blah blah.

00:32:28:21 – 00:33:30:12

But I can’t do that and I’m like well why can’t you do that. It almost feels that people don’t have permission. So take the permission yourself and you know never never back away. You know if you go to your leader with a problem and that’s all you go to them with you’re not going to get a huge amount of thanks. If you go with a problem it’s endless suggested solution. Even if they don’t agree with that they will admire you for taking that effort if you go with that of those two areas and as you take it you suggest I want to do X Y and Z to either fill this opportunity or tackle this issue again for me that is true leadership and I can right the way through my career I can still remember those people at every level of seniority in the team who have been those people who would take it upon themselves to identify an issue or opportunity come up with a solution but put themselves forward to solve it.

00:33:31:04 – 00:34:18:15

So that would be my first thing and then the second thing I would say is do not be afraid of creating a lateral career path. So what I mean by that is people who are highly motivated and ambitious want to get to the top quickly but you will have a much more interesting fulfilling and sustainable senior career if you have gained breadth along the way. And I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my career where I’ve had leaders who saw the potential in me that I hadn’t seen myself and given me very sizable shifts to the left and right to broaden my experience so much so that they kind of scared me.

00:34:18:19 – 00:34:53:07

But they saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. And you know when I was American Express I spent three years heading up the P&L for all the consumer payments products. I didn’t have P&L experience I’d never done product management role but that was one of the most powerful set of experiences which was kind of lateral because it wasn’t you know classically marketing driven. And then another time at Barclay Card the CEO at the time asked me to cocreate the payment innovation strategy with her again.

00:34:53:09 – 00:35:03:09

You know that wasn’t my background but those two lateral moves in my career I think had made me a better marketer and a better thought leader. I

00:35:03:11 – 00:35:12:05

I agree breadth of experience different application just wonderful. Thank you so much Katherine for joining the whole market podcast for the pleasure.

00:35:12:07 – 00:35:14:14

Oh not at all. Thank you so much for asking me.

00:35:15:12 – 00:35:24:06

Thank you for tuning in to the Whole marketer podcast. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode please do click follow below for more weekly podcasts. Thank you.

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