When she first saw the email, she thought she was about to be fired. About 30 minutes prior to her weekly one-on-one with the CEO, the chief marketing officer at a multibillion global financial services firm received a cryptic email from him with the subject line “The Trouble with CMOs.” The email contained a link to a 2017 article one of us wrote for HBR, and suggested the CMO read it before their meeting. Uh-oh. She went into the meeting prepared for the worst. As she sat across from the CEO, he asked her whether she thought she had the right role to maximize marketing’s impact. With trepidation, she answered honestly and indicated that she didn’t.