(This is a rather lively discussion going on in the VP’s Sales/Marketing Group on LinkedIn. In fact, it’s a rather heated topic that’s going on in a lot of different forums. Below is my posted answer.)
I don’t know that there’s any one, perfect answer other than, “it depends.” But before you think I’ve copped out..
At some point, someone in the company has to own responsibility for both. So whether that’s the CEO, the CMO/CSO or further down the food chain may depend on the complexity (# of products, channels, personnel, industry / category growth, geography, corporate culture) and health of the business. And by health, I’m including high quality, cohesive leadership at CXO level–not solely financial sustainability.
There’s one school of thought that believes in order to identify and fix issues, the separation of functions is necessary. Metaphorically speaking, it’s far easier to figure out which string(s) is/are the key(s) to untying the knot if each string is a different color than if all the strings are the same color.
I don’t know of a single company out there who performs flawlessly. That has no bottlenecks, no politics, no problems of any kind. [If you do know of one, quick, submit them to Guinness Book of World Records and let us know too.]
There’s so much overlap today especially because so much of what we do converges on the same technology/systems, that perhaps we should be less concerned with functional titles and more concerned with results.
I think we need a complete paradigm shift if we’re to fully embrace the new evolution of business in this century. I don’t know what that is, but I feel it coming — like this giant tsunami is waiting offshore, ready to crush us if we don’t figure it out soon.
Anyone got any ideas?
