This February 29, 2012 event was presented by Deborah Maue from DePaul University.

1. Marketing Leaders: Born or
Made?
Deborah Maue
Associate VP for University Marketing
2/29/12

2. My Background
• Kellogg MBA
– (a long time ago when it was still called an M.M.)
• 15 years in brand management/new product
development
– 11 years at Unilever
– 2 years at Schering-Plough (now part of Merck)
– 2 years in brand management/innovation consulting
• Came to DePaul 6 years ago
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3. Are Leaders Born or Made?
• A little of each
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4. Leadership Vacuum
• Leadership isn’t modeled
– Strong leaders often are not attracted to
higher ed
• Not enough hierarchy
• Leadership isn’t rewarded
• Leadership vacuum often causes higher
ed institutions to look to the outside for
leaders
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5. Does this sound familiar?
• You have a great idea
• Let’s say it’s a portal for prospective and
current graduate students
• A place where they can:
• Get their questions answered about all things
related to their program
• Conduct transactions
• Connect with other students/prospective students
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6. Does this sound familiar?
• You need to hold a meeting (obviously)
• Whom to invite?
– Well, depending on how you’re organized,
you probably need
• Admissions
• IT
• Staff representative from the college
• Marketing Communications
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7. Does this sound familiar?
• The day of the meeting arrives
• Everyone brings an extra person to the
meeting
– And people from new divisions show up
• Alumni relations
• Student affairs
• Career center
• 5 minutes into the meeting, this starts:
– “And wouldn’t it be great if we could…”
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8. Does this sound familiar?
• The result of the meeting:
– The scope of the project went from:
• narrow to wide
– The number of participants in the project went
from:
• manageable to herding cats
– The timeline went from:
• 6 months to infinity
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9. Does this sound familiar?
• The next meeting…
– Even more people show up to jump on the
bandwagon
– You spend most of the meeting re-capping
the last meeting for those who weren’t there
– Lots more discussion
– No agreements
– And finally after several meetings you give up
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10. So what happened?
• Too many people involved
– And no sense of roles and responsibilities within the
project
• Everyone’s got an equal vote on everything
• No clear sense for how the project fits with
strategic priorities
– How important is it?
• No agreement to the project objectives and
strategies
• No agreement to the project scope
• No clear agreement to next steps and timing
• No buy-in to your vision
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11. The situation isn’t hopeless
• There are five simple things that you can
do to be able to lead more effectively
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12. The five secrets to getting things
done
• Position every major project as a pilot
– With expansion phases as you gain learning
• Pre-sell your ideas before the meeting
• Always write a brief upfront
• Always have a RACI matrix
• Recap every single project meeting
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13. Everything is a pilot
• Lower perceived risk of failure
– Signals that you will learn and modify before
moving on to the next phase
– If it’s not working, you can pull the plug before
too much investment
• Reassures people that they’ll eventually
get what they want
– May not be until Phase 3, but it will happen
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14. Pre-sell your ideas
• Talk to everyone invited to the meeting before
the meeting
– Outline your vision
– Manage scope
• Deal with “and we could also do this” comments before the
meeting
– Talk in person if possible, on the phone if necessary
• Mention your idea in hallway/water cooler talk to
build momentum
– Talk to the supervisors of people who will be
attending the meeting
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15. Write a brief
• Write a “draft” version of a brief as you envision
the project
• Send it in advance of the meeting
• Ask for questions/comments/clarifications in
writing prior to the meeting
• Address as many of the above before the
meeting
• Use the meeting to get final agreement
• Don’t leave the meeting until you have
agreement
– If approval is needed from higher-ups, charge the
group with getting agreement from their management
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16. Elements of a solid brief
• Background
• Objective
• Target audience
• Rationale/fit with strategic priorities
• Strategies
• Key issues
– And how they’ll be addressed
• Timeline
• Next steps
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17. RACI Matrix
• The single most valuable project
management tool I’ve ever seen
• For each project task, identifies the role of
each team member
– Doer
– Decision-maker
– Consultant
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18. RACI Definitions
• RACI stands for:
– Responsible
• The ONE person doing the work, or responsible for seeing
that it gets done)
– Accountable
• The decision-maker
– The ONE decision-maker
– Consulted
• A person who needs to be consulted before a decision is
made
– Can be many names in this box
– Informed
• Someone who needs to be informed of the task once a
decision is made
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19. A caveat to the “traditional” RACI
• We split the “C” in two
– C-Decision
• A decision cannot be finalized until this person is in
agreement
• This person is usually a HiPPO (or several)
– C-Input
• This person’s opinion must be heard, but they
don’t have to be in agreement with the decision to
go forward
– They have something to add, but don’t have the power to
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20. Using the RACI
• Break the project into meaningful tasks
– If you have too many people in one box, your
tasks are probably too big
• Can be developed prior to the first
meeting, or once the players are identified
• The value is in the discussion, not the
documentation
– I’ve never gone back to it to see what
someone’s role is
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21. Using the RACI
• Most helpful for projects, vs. on-going
teamwork
– Unless the team’s charge is very clear
• Not a timeline or process grid
– Doesn’t tell you when or how decisions are
going to be made
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22. Meeting Recaps
• Recap all agreements
• Use bullet points
– Not paragraphs
• Recap all outstanding issues and how they will be
resolved
• Recap next steps, timing and owner of each
• Don’t recap every discussion point
– It gets tedious
• Put the recap in the body of the email
– Not a separate attachment
• Send to all team members and anyone else who needs
to know
– Let team members send to their own managers as necessary
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23. Please feel free to contact me
• dmaue1@depaul.edu
• http://twitter.com/debmaue
• http://linkedin.com/deborahmaue
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