With decent pay, reliable clients and a very followed 9-5 policy, you can see how comfortable the job can be. But, that comfort is maintained by a leadership team that spends much more time fighting each other than working.
At the Marketing Store, you’ll notice quickly that every person is trying to get more credit and more attention; if you don’t, you’ll be stuck making banner ads, microsites, and bag inserts for your whole tenure. This constant pressure to stand out and justify existence competes against leadership who have carved out their ownership of projects through the same underhanded tactics. Because the leaders, who have been undercutting each other and in a constant state of politicking for control, trickled the same strategy down to their subordinates, everyone lives in fear of people rising fast and eating each other’s lunch. Both employees who want to rise, and leaders who want to maintain are at odds, but play together.
Employees who want to achieve get beaten down, told to maintain the status quo or are let go.
So as an employee of The Marketing Store, you are forced to play leadership’s war games if you want to grow: "How can you make them look amazing, without drawing too much attention to yourself, white making sure the leaders you choose to support know you are the one helping them?"
This will make you enemies with other teams, but that is ok because your team is better than that team “and they’re on their way out anyway.” ( Justification from leaders when choosing sides)
As a leader of the marketing store, you’re under pressure to justify your team and your budget. Often your best defense comes from pointing out the flaws of other teams. You might even kick off projects where your opposition’s teams are set up for complete failure by your hand.
For the regular employee, collaboration is out the window as hard lines are drawn in the sand, and you have to tiptoe over strategic landmines. You’ll also experience monthly mediated meetings where teams try to decide where the handoffs are in projects. These are usually the result of one leader’s trap being sprung or their team successfully invading another’s work territory.
When a war is over, the losing team also suffers. Budgets will get cut, hiring will freeze and team members can get relegated to non-growth paths. The stakes are real and you have to choose who you side with strategically.
In my tenure, I saw great entrepreneurial employees, real change agents, leave because of this infighting and war for scope. When people great at their jobs leave, you’re then left with people who are great at playing the game but not much else.
It is why:
The partnership team does not use Salesforce or any CRM tool
The design team is not sure how to use sketch and is confused about material design
The analytics team is just discovering google analytics tagging and struggles to deliver regular reports
The ‘advanced analytics’ team is not scoped for any major client project
The strategy team justifies pitches with marketing anecdotes
The PR team does not use social media
The technology team outsources most of their projects
There is no new business team, and the agency hasn’t won a pitch in a couple of years
The exec team constantly mentions in quarterly reviews they are working on helping people get promoted more, but have been talking about it for eight quarters
Some people will try to crusade to make changes, but the organization M.O. at TMS just needs teams to be 2 steps ahead of their clients. Your great ideas for clients will get shut down by your own leaders as they look at it from the perspective of “Who do I have to fight internally to get this idea passed?” or "Who would criticize me if this fails?"
I have seen many ideas die because it would have been too much effort to deal with multi-team collaboration and "staying in your lane" is easier without any risk.
As long as the leaders know that they just have to be smarter than the client, TMS continues down the path of the least resistance. But, it also sets the stage for the clients you work with.
The comfort leadership seeks at this company is complacency and fear.
“Why create change when this is how we’ve always done it?” “Why risk my job?”
TMS is not a long-term place to stay, but if you are looking for a way to add massive fortune 100 brands to your resume before your next job hop, this isn't a bad place to roost for a stint. Just be aware that the political games are embedded in the organizational structure and always keep your portfolio updated.
