Katie Foote’s Guide to Navigating Marketing Leadership
Katie Foote (CaptivateIQ) discusses her framework for executive leadership to navigate market uncertainties.
Thanks for tuning in to this exclusive edition of GTM News Desk, presented by
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This show is hosted by me, Nick Bennett, and my co-host Mark Killens.
Now let's get to the goods, on with the show.
Alright folks, we're back with Katie Futs.
Katie, like myself, likes to think, tends to think in mental models and
frameworks for different things.
You know, you want to have like, live your whole life through mental models,
probably not.
You want some spontaneity and like some, you know, some fun, if you will.
But you can still have fun with mental models and frameworks. I just actually,
before we even get to the first question, Katie,
I feel as a marketing leader, or former marketing leader, the right mental
model/framework can actually help with creativity.
Agree or disagree?
Oh, I totally agree. I mean, how else are you going to make sense of all this
crazy shit?
Like, you can bring the store, you can throw stuff on the wall, you can have
post-its,
but at some point you have to like, organize it, and that's where I think a
mental model and a framework,
even just the way we build campaigns, for example, I have like very specific
questions that we need to ask ourselves
to get to the best campaign.
And so it doesn't cycle creativity. I think it helps organize creativity, so
you can actually move it from ideation to execution.
Love that. Alright, so everyone, hope you enjoyed the podcast episode.
If you haven't checked that out, go do that.
But let's start with what's one of your proven frameworks, models that you love
using in the job of being a marketing leader.
I'm going to share two. That's how it's biting and special this episode is.
Okay, so my first mark will not be new to you, the three piece, people,
pipeline, and process.
And we talked a little bit about this on the podcast, but you have to find the
right balance between the
art of marketing and the signs of marketing. And my belief is the only way to
do that is to ensure
those three pillars are in place. So first and foremost, it starts with people.
Most of the jobs that I've walked into have not initially had the right level
of talent,
people with the right attitude for that unique moment in time in a company. And
there's been an element
of needing to thank people for their time in an organization, help them land on
their feet elsewhere,
and bring in a new level of talent so that you can get where you want to go.
If you don't have the right team in place, you're only going to get like 50%
out of people.
It's going to be a drag on the PNL. And so often, especially bigger companies,
this was a real challenge at Salesforce, people who just coast forever. We're
not here to most.
We're here to do great things. And I look for people who have this a little bit
of hunger,
a little bit of chip on their shoulders, something to prove. And so when you
build that right team,
then you have to make sure that you're adjusting your management style. You
understand,
what are their personalities, what motivates them, how do they best like to
receive feedback,
making sure that you're not just hiring the right people, but you're managing
effectively to get
the most out of that team. And from there, it's critical that marketers, you
could substitute
performance for pipeline for the second P, but by and large, marketing is
responsible for sourcing
and driving as much demand and capturing that demand in the form of pipeline to
give sellers the
best possible chance at hitting their revenue targets. And when revenue targets
are hit, that is a
rising tide that lifts all boats for everyone in a company. And so why we have
jobs. So once you've
got the right team in place, you need to focus on performance and pipeline,
which means you got to
launch the right campaigns, you got to measure your business so that it's going
the way you would
expect. And you can kind of adjust on the fly. And there's a whole host of
tactics within pipeline
performance that you want to pay attention to. And then finally, you want to
get to some level of
repeatability through process. If you are always reinventing the wheel, you're
wasting precious time
and energy. And in my mind, especially at, you know, an executive level, it's
all about energy
management and conservation. And so you want to try to be as smart with your
resources. It's not
just working harder. It's working smarter. And the way you do that is develop a
playbook one time,
document it and then go back to it. We had a situation in a previous life where
we were
struggling with someone internally from a talent perspective. And the challenge
was it was a
really high profile role and a critical role to our business. And so we didn't
want to,
the sequencing was tricky. Like, how do you exit someone that's in a critical
role and then spend
three months hiring someone else? So we built a new playbook around, you know,
we put this person
on a performance improvement plan. We knew that we were going to give them
coaching and hope that
they could rise to the occasion. But we opened a confidential search for their
backfill,
just in case it didn't work out. And so you're de-risking. And we did this, you
know, beautifully done
process to be able to have a really seamless transition plan on the other side
where the business
didn't really take a hit. And that individual was given the best possible
chance at succeeding.
That's a playbook that we captured that we can repeat again. And so what are
the playbooks in
your business that you need to develop? And how do you go back to them time and
time again so that,
you know, anybody off the street coming in can execute against that. So those
are the three
piece. People pipeline and process that I think are, that's how I just organize
what the job that
needs to be done within my organization. I love that. Before you do the next
one,
Nekka can't see a reaction on this. Meim Kati. So going back to the people
thing,
where you say, coasting, I've thrown around this term called like, driftwood
and deadwood.
Here is people like a driftwood that are floating in top of the water just
drifting around,
kind of bouncing off things. Imagine a lake, right? Or an ocean, but like
typically a lake is as easy
a metaphor because, you know, it's, it's, you know, 100% coverage around like
the surround of it. So,
you know, bumps into the shore one day, bumps into a boat, but like they're
kind of just drifting without
like true direction. Deadwood is like, what are they're sinking? Like they're
just, you know,
like that's definitely going to pip comes in or you know, whatever happens. But
like I think the
driftwood and deadwood, when you think about that metaphor and you think of
your people, you don't
want a lot of driftwood or deadwood. And that can be extremely toxic to an
organization. Like really bad.
It's like the fruit in a container, one rotting piece of fruit that's operating
what we call below the
line can impact so many other people. And so I'm a huge believer and you've got
to get everybody on
the bus, focus, believing, belief is so powerful. If you don't believe and you
don't want to be a part
of something, that is totally okay. But you got to not be part of this team
because belief is just
toxic to a team. We actually had a recent off site, good market summit where we
brought sales
marketing and CX together. And the theme of the three day event was you win in
the locker room first.
It's actually based on a book by the former Atlanta Fappin's high coach.
Nothing earth shattering,
but just so helpful to think about you win as a team first. It's the stuff you
do all the little
moments behind the scenes, not on Sunday in the football field, that actually
impact what's going
to happen on Sunday. A big topic of that was you can't be that piece of rotten
fruit that impacts
other people people have to believe in the locker room and be a part of this
team on good days,
on bad days, on, you know, not too exciting days. That's really important.
Love that. Yeah, I think this is my second question. I want to unpack that
second framework, but I
would love if you could like even like tie it to a success story or maybe even
a failure, whatever
you want to do. But like see if we can do a little bit of storytelling with it
as well. Because that
was the only piece that I was going to ask if you had any additional success
stories. So my as
well do both. What's funny about this second framework is it's literally called
unpacking any issue.
So in the spirit of team and if you subscribe to the belief that teams have to
figure out how to
work effectively together to be successful, then you're going to have a
framework to help teams do
that. And I was recently working Paul Warner from the Paul Warner group gets
all the credit for
this. He brought this to my team into our organization, but it's called unpack
ing any issue.
It's a literal template. It's rooted in this leadership principle called
conscious leadership.
We are conscious leadership really aims to he describes it as optimizing how a
team rolls
and minimizing the drama tax. Every time that we're distracted by these side
conversations or what
he describes as below the line behaviors versus above the line behaviors. If
you're below the line,
you are committed to being right. And you might get defensive, you might get
argumentative,
you might get depressed for now, you might become driftwood. If you're above
the line, you're committed
to growth and to curiosity. And not just you could just, you know, for me
describing that, there's
a different energy associated with each. And so this whole premise of conscious
leadership
is rooted in I alone own how I show up. I own my thoughts. I am 100%
responsible for choosing to be
above the line or below the line. That's on me. So often in teams it's easy to
say, well so and so
did this or so and so did that. You know, Paul's response would be that's
interesting. But what I'm
most interested to know is what did you do in a given scenario? And so with
this framework of unpacking
any issue, it gives you the tools you need to be able to take that 100%
accountability and responsibility
for you. And so it's this literal exercise where you write down, you choose a
headline,
something's bothering you. Maybe it's a little thing like you keep scratching
at it or maybe it's
a big thing like I don't know if I'm in the right job. So you write that as
this dramatic headline,
like it's a newspaper headline. And then you start to write and you have to
physically write. So he's
a big believer in writing before you speak. So many of us just go, "Blah." In
life, he wants us to really,
you know, do this as a quiet activity for 45 minutes. You write down the facts
of your situation.
And they're just what you can observe on camera. Facts are literally like, "I
have a job. It's at
this company. I'm doing x, y and z." And then you move into the stories that
you're telling yourself
about that headline. No one appreciates me. I don't get the recognition I
deserve. I'm not paid
enough. These are all stories, right? And a lot of times we conflate facts and
stories.
They're just stories we're telling ourselves. Then you can write out the
feelings that you have as a
result of the stories you've been telling yourself. You write out what is your
part in it? And like,
and it could be action or inaction. Well, I haven't actually talked to my boss
about how I'm feeling.
Or I haven't actually, you know, done any research on what my salary band might
be in this particular
role. And that helps you by taking your responsibility. He calls it the drift
and shift. That's when you
start to shift back above the line because you've been able to go kind of
through and back to that
healthier place. All right. Well, these, you know, these are the facts and
stories and feelings.
And my responsibility and all of this, what are my options? I could look for a
new job. I could do
some research to see if any of my stories are validated with actual facts. I
could talk to my boss.
Like, there's probably a whole host of options that you could explore. And then
that starts to get
you back above the line to be able to say, all right, these are the actions and
the commitments I'm
going to make as a result of this. And his belief, and I've used this with my
team, so to bring this
full story, we did this entire training with my whole marketing organization.
And then we did it
as a good market team, particularly the frontline managers. And it gets us out
of this, you know, in the
spirit of like, look, we all have hard jobs, high pressure. We want to minimize
the drama tax as
much as possible. And so much of our shit is just that it's our own shit. So
can we just learn to
unpack our own stuff on a Friday afternoon for 45 minutes? This is a skill that
everyone on our team
is expected to do. And if you've gone through that exercise and you still are
really stuck, then you
can talk and you can lean on, spend some time and energy, you know, unpacking
this with other people.
But it's been a really powerful tool for us to manage and personal
relationships in a remote
first environment to manage the pressure cooker of being in a grown market team
when you're having
to replay and you might be missing targets, you're facing these economic had
wins. We don't want our culture
to be rooted in just how well our business is doing. We want our culture to be
rooted in a set of
working agreements that no matter what is happening in a particular day, we
know we can trust one
another and count on one another. And for us, that unpacking and issue tool is
critical for all of us
showing up healthy and able to navigate this crazy world of BDB tech. Happening
at the template,
Paul loves to evangelize it. He just feels like the more people who can take
advantage of just
your own, you know, owning your own shit, the better. Everyone should own their
own shit. I'm on
to work with that. It's hard. But it's very hard. Yeah, it means a great
framework to help people
do like reflection. Totally. Yeah. And he has his work-or-com concept of he
called it Plexiglass. So
it also to that cool exercise, he said the real trick. You do that for 45
minutes. The real trick,
though, is can you distill it down to a one to three sentence explanation? So I
was telling myself
this story between my relationship with my boss and I currently, this was maybe
six months ago.
And I worked through the entire process and I was able to say, hey, funny thing
happens, Mark,
I was telling myself this story. Here are the actual facts. I went through this
whole thing,
and turns out, this is where I landed. What do you think? What does that bring
up for you? And so I
was able to condense this like what felt like a big issue into three sentences.
And then we put up
the Plexiglass. So we're protected. We worked on our stuff. So whatever Mark
has to say to me, I can
handle because I've kind of done the work, the drift and shift. And it gives me
a chance to kind of
share with him my perspective. It could even have been a coaching session for
him in that two to
three sentence frame. And it just kind of has transformed the way in which we
communicate with one
another in our business. It reminds me a little bit of a little bit about the
situation, behavior,
impact kind of feedback. Yeah, yeah, it's very similar. It just I think what S
BI doesn't necessarily
capture, go as far to do is like what's our part and all of it? You know, how
what stories are we
telling ourselves for where we're like misinterpreting what's actually
happening? That's where I think
this framework goes a little bit farther. I love this. I mean, this has been I
mean, folks listening.
You've caught in so much value in the last 15 minutes. If you haven't, I don't
know what you're doing.
You're not you're not listening well enough. Hopefully in a place when I've
that was helpful because
it's been critical. All these tools have just been critical for me to be able
to keep my head above
water in this role and in this high pressure position. Well, we'll let you get
out of here like
pretty easily. One last question simple like, well, you might not answer in a
simple way, but you
can if you want, which is what is the one thing you would tell a marketing
leader and maybe even just
using the exercise you just did, you know, on yourself and like whatnot like,
like what's that
thing that you say, hey, I need to be better at this having now reflected and
it's going to make
me a better leader. Yeah, I think you have to take responsibility for yourself.
No one is coming to
see marketing is a stankless position. It really is and it's really easy to
fall into victim mode of
nobody understands that it's too hard. They're picking on me. This isn't fair
and that's understandable.
Like there are moments where I feel that way very much, but how I I have to get
out of that from
victim into creator mode. I create my own destiny. I am responsible for me. I
have to figure out how to
give myself the praise motivation or find the coping mechanisms and tools to be
the best I can be
because no one's coming to save me. No boss is perfect. No company is perfect.
And so if there's
one thing I could say is work on yourself and find ways to just be the best
version of you, no one
else is going to be able to do that for you, but you believe it at that folks.
Katie, for everyone.
Thank you so much, Katie. Thanks for having me. Katie. See you.
Thank you for joining us for this exclusive edition of GTM News Desk. If people
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until next time, keep a people first, everybody.