What the Chief Must do

Information, discipline, planning, structure, and order these are in escapble organizational requisites. The larger the organization, the more they are required. But the more they are required, the more their restrictive consequences must be offset by more emancipating styles at the apex.

Marketing is the one corporate function that is least effectively governed in a traditionally orderly manner. Unfortunately, it is the implicit recognition of this fact which so often causes marketing to be governed so sloppily. A great deal more order, system. planning, control, and even rigidity can be injected into most marketing organizations without injury to their success. The typical plea is that marketing deals with too many intangibles to be effectively governed in the conventional manner. In many cases this plea merely masks a congenial preference for a free floating, undisciplined shop. Often it represents an unwillingness to face the demanding requirements of professional and responsible behavior  The chief executive can and should except more from his marketing department than persuasively plausible arguments that "marketing is different."