Page 62 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

your goal, for example, is to be a marketing chief, you would certainly want
to be from Nike, one of the world’s great marketing organizations, because
you’d learn a tremendous amount there. But I’m not sure how long you
would want to actually be there.
Nike has legions of fantastic marketing people. The competition for the
top marketing spot is so intense there that your chances of getting the job
are slim.
Remember also that by the time you get into your late 30s or so, you
have another problem in an organization too rich in people with your
skills: There is younger competition coming in underneath you. They are
very, very smart. After all, they are Nike
marketers. While you’re waiting to
move, they might move ahead of you.
EVEN IF YOU ARE
Stay too long at the Nikes of this
SURE THAT YOU’VE
world, and you may start to look like
FOUND THE RIGHT
Rumpelstiltskin.You can spin straw into
INSTRUMENT, MAKE
gold, but nobody knows your name.
SURE THAT YOU
So, at a certain point, go some place
ARE PLAYING IT IN
that really needs marketing talent. Go
THE RIGHT PLACE.
some place where the top people will
brag about snagging you: “We have a
guy who was in charge of the East Coast marketing for Nike, and he’s now
our national marketing manager.”
That way, you can operate in a bigger landscape and get a chance to do
what you always wanted to do.
Even for somebody at the level of Bob Nardelli, a change of venue can
do wonders. He was ousted as CEO of Home Depot in 2007 in part
because he couldn’t get the stock to rise and in part because he was widely
considered too impolitic for the head of a public company in today’s
world.
But then Chrysler was taken over by Cerberus Capital Management, a
private equity firm. And the private equity world doesn’t really care what

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