Our current Marketing Director is a high Quickstart who generates brilliant campaign ideas but has an extremely low Follow Thru score on the Kolbe Index, meaning she never actually builds the automated tracking systems we need. Should we split this into a creative seat and a technical operations seat, and how do they report to each other?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Trying to force a high Quickstart with low Follow Thru to build complex, automated systems is a recipe for frustration and failed metrics. They simply do not have the conative drive to organize, document, and systematize.

The solution is to split the marketing function on your Accountability Chart. Do not keep struggling with a single, blended seat that requires conflicting behavioral traits. Instead, create two distinct seats: a Marketing Director seat and a Marketing Operations seat.

The Marketing Director seat will own strategy, brand messaging, and creative campaign generation. This seat matches her natural strengths perfectly.

The Marketing Operations seat will own data integration, campaign execution, reporting, and systems building. This seat requires someone with a high Follow Thru and high Fact Finder score on the Kolbe Index: someone who thrives on order, structure, and detail.

To keep your reporting lines clean, the Marketing Operations seat should report directly to the Marketing Director, provided she has the management capacity and gets, wants, and has the capacity to manage people. If she does not want to manage people, both seats can report to the Integrator, or you can outsource the technical execution to a marketing agency while keeping the internal creative head. By splitting the seat based on conative strengths, you allow your creative leader to shine while ensuring your marketing infrastructure actually gets built.