Over a period of six years, an established high-tech company has seen five reincarnations of its global marketing organization. With each new senior marketing executive has come a new interpretation of the company's mission and vision, followed by new attempts to tune market positioning and overhaul sales tools.

Each change in leadership has also led to terminating relationships with existing consultants and agencies as entering executives introduced new players to the scene.

Such organizational instability sabotages the company's market messaging. The company expends inordinate amounts of time and money on repeatedly reinventing itself—while confusing its industry, customers and employees.

Good marketing programs that took months to implement are discontinued or flounder just when primed to yield results. A strong foundation from which to grow marketing momentum never sets. Resources are diverted to start anew year after year after year.

Needless to say, the company underperforms and suffers eroding revenue. Customer churn is high. New marketing initiatives are met with external skepticism and internal indifference.

Along with the largely cosmetic changes to product packaging, the company's R&D and customer service are among the many constituencies that turn a deaf ear.

The penchant for dramatic change that new marketing executives want to bring to their position can be unwittingly detrimental to a company's success. Even when a need for change is evident, new executives would better serve their organization with more objective assessments and value-based retention of the inherited marketing landscape.

Costly Career Climbs

Architects of "sea change" and "corporate transformation" too often abandon what they start for "better career opportunities" elsewhere.

The resumes of the senior marketing executives taking their turn at the high-tech company portended relatively short tenures. All had histories of short stints at previous positions, moving on in the name of advancing their careers. Yet the company continued to relinquish the reins of its marketing organization, and so repeated its mistakes.

In such circumstances, questions inevitably arise about not only the chief executive's own convictions regarding corporate mission, vision and direction but also the apparent lack of oversight by the company's board of directors.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karl Meszaros is a communications consultant with Savvy Copywriting (www.savvycopywriting.com).