Our Marketing Director is a brilliant creative who generates great campaigns, but she is completely failing to manage our complex marketing calendar and coordinate with the web development team. Her seat on the Accountability Chart includes both creative strategy and technical project management. Should we divide this into two separate seats or try to coach her?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You are dealing with a classic conative mismatch. Creative campaign generation requires high Quick Start and high Fact Finder instincts, where someone is constantly ideating and researching. On the other hand, managing a complex marketing calendar and coordinating technical development requires high Follow Thru, which is the natural drive to create order, systemize, and follow a strict process.

Coaching her to change her natural instincts is a waste of time and energy. People do not change their conative makeup. If you try to force her to be a highly structured project manager, she will burn out and her creative output will suffer.

The solution is to restructure the Accountability Chart by splitting these responsibilities into two distinct seats. Keep her in a seat focused entirely on creative strategy, campaign generation, and brand messaging, which she easily GWCs. Then, create a separate Marketing Project Manager or Operations Coordinator seat that reports to her or sits parallel. Fill that new seat with someone who has high Follow Thru and excels at tracking deadlines, managing calendars, and coordinating with web developers. By separating the creative from the administrative, you let your creative director shine while ensuring the work actually gets done.