Empowerment in management is a corner-stone to truly being able to scale a business. Of course if it happens to be in a discipline that we are not overly familiar then empowerment is a lot easier, but when it is in your core competency area it is harder. We basically don’t want to hand over power and authority to people we shouldn’t .
In the area of marketing lots of 40 plus managers are starting to second guess themselves as to whether they know enough about marketing anymore. Because they feel a bit old school and don’t really get the modern marketing jargon nor platforms they feel being an oldie from the 80’s, marketing has passed them by.
I remember at one stage sitting in on a marketing master class and waiting for my turn in the session and a digital type guy says “you don’t need to spend any more marketing because SEM landed you enough leads this month” and I thought so what the sales team still isn’t getting enough sales, but I found myself listening to him and even started to second guess myself.
As the arms race toward digital marketing continues, I feel there is even more need for 40 plus marketers who have had to blend marketing with sales and customer relations. In my opinion good old-fashioned marketing principles are still needed in spades.
I don’t know if we are any smarter than we were 20 years ago, but I reckon we are a little wiser.
More and more in the modern world and especially in marketing we are dealing with data.
Our new age types collect data on everything, our job is to have them turn that data into information. And if you get that data into the right information you will get knowledge out of it.
Work with that knowledge long enough and you will get understanding, and work with that long enough and you get wisdom.
But if it is left totally to the newbies all you get are folk just working with data and information. This can be very academic,and perhaps not all that useful if you lack that thing called experience.
Yes there is still a role for the older marketer, just learn to stay cool listen for the cues and really now, It’s more about less doing but rather the giving of some guidance.
