Marshall Goldsmith
AUGUST 15, 2011
Here are her ideas and reflections: Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are usually under pressure because most organizations see marketing as a cost center and are not aware of how it is contributing to the bottom line. For an insider's perspective, I've asked Susanne Lyons, former CMO at Visa and Charles Schwab, to answer your question.
Marshall Goldsmith
NOVEMBER 30, 2010
Many businesses view marketing as a cost center without recognizing how it contributes to the bottom line. Many marketers make the mistake of talking about lowering costs instead of talking about increasing revenue. But I believe the most dramatic changes are happening internally, especially in this tougher economy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
To meet the organizational need for integrated experiences across business units, many CEOs have created new roles like Chief Digital Officer, Chief Experience Officer, Chief Customer Officer, or Chief Growth Officer. Elisa Steele at Jive Software, Jay Farner at QuickenLoans, and Susan Lintonsmith at Quiznos have even gone from CMO to CEO.
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 4, 2018
The ABU was set up as a centralized profit center with ambitious targets and with direct reporting to the chief operations officer; most often, similar units are organized as cost centers with no specific targets. This setup fosters focus on high-yield projects, actionable analytics, and speed of execution. Support from the top.
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 1, 2013
CEOs, following the advice in Nicolas Carr’s famous HBR article, “IT Doesn’t Matter,” perceive little strategic opportunity in IT and devote as little time as possible to the issues. Today, this topic simply doesn’t come up often enough, leading to a one-size-fits-all approach to managing IT, often as a cost center.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 2, 2011
With peers in a few CEO roundtables, I've heard things like: "I plan on hiring 3 biz dev people to get $345K per headcount in revenues." Talent, purpose, culture and creating meaning is the peopley work mostly viewed by the performance folks as "cost centers," or departments that exist only to manage legal risk.
Harvard Business Review
JULY 16, 2014
In too many companies, IT leaders, relegated to their cost centers, are subordinate to other C-level executives. He reports directly to the CEO and is a member of the management board. To borrow a computer-science term, the denotational semantics are all wrong. I’m not responsible for ‘just’ IT,” he says.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
107 
Let's personalize your content