Recently I re-read Spencer Stuart’s excellent study around the average tenure of a CMO. Greg Welch notes “that the average tenure for chief marketing officers at the top 100 branded companies is just 23 months. Compare this to CEOs, who are in their positions, on average, 54 months.”

It’s a tough job. CMOs are required to balance the newest and riskiest job in the C-suite with an ever expanding combination of skills:

-Business strategy mindset: tomorrow’s marketing leader will be able to collaborate on driving business growth, understand the fundamental Market drivers to influence strategic decisions. She will bring the voice of the customer in the company to influence product roadmaps

- Financial mindset: the marketing leader will drive a tighter linkage between Marketing investments and financial results. He will understand the return on those investments and be able to drive portfolio trade-offs

- Operational mindset: the marketing leader will drive process discipline to industrialize, streamline and standardize Marketing processes (to the extent of using Six Sigma type approaches). She will understand core competencies and drive comprehensive outsourcing and partnership strategies similarly to what happened 10 years ago in manufacturing and five years ago in R&D

- IT mindset: the marketing leader will need to operate in an IT-driven environment, allowing more automated workflows such as MRM (Marketing Resource Management) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Web savviness and web 2.0 knowledge will become mere conditions of employment.

- Product development mindset: the marketing leader will play an increasing role in defining future star products by influencing user experience, user interface and design.

- Human Resource mindset: the emergence of web 2.0 and the power given to individuals will push Marketing to leverage the company’s employee base as a critical marketing asset. She will need to understand and develop actions to unleash this power

- Sales mindset: the marketing leader will need to reconnect with sales in a greater way than in the past years, truly becoming a solid partner in managing the pipeline

I realize more and more that Marketing is where everything comes together. Marketing executives will still be expected to be the most creative executives and the ones to drive the art of Marketing. But the expectations placed on Marketing in addition to these new market dynamics are daunting and we need to prepare a new generation of leaders now. Send me comments if you know such up and coming marketing executives (I will recruit them!!) and why you think they fit the bill.