Damon Baker (00:14)
Hey everyone, Damon Baker here. We had some technical difficulties with my microphone while recording this episode, but the content is well worth the listen. Enjoy the show.

Damon Baker (00:25)
Martin, when people hear lean, they picture assembly lines and manufacturing plants, not marketing. And you've admitted when you first encountered the Danube Business System back in 2008 at Tektronix that you were a detractor. But today you're known as one of the strongest advocates for lean and marketing. Can you take us back to what changed your mind?

Martyn Etherington (00:43)
Yeah, let me start off with a Winston Churchill quote. He once said, I'd like to learn, but I don't like to be taught. it was really for me when my company TechTrance was acquired by Danaher. I went through the Danaher business systems and lean classes. And it really wasn't until I got on the manufacturing floor that I had my light bulb moment. And really what I mean by that is

I started to see a manufacturing cell and the way that Dana Her taught us was really look at the manufacturing flow as a process. So the light bulb moment I had was, well if you can take a manufacturing process, why can't you take that to a sales process, marketing process, basically any process, break it down to the finite points, look at areas for improvement, look at areas to actually reduce the process.

improve it and that was really that light bulb moment where realization that I can take this and use it to transform marketing and really start to implement everything I've learned in the class but really as I experienced on the shop floor.

Damon Baker (01:51)
Was it the idea that what you were looking at was a process in manufacturing, so you tied that back to processes and marketing, or was there some other aspect of what you were observing on the shop, or that light bulb trigger moment happened?

Martyn Etherington (02:06)
Now,

it's really a light bulb moment. I think if you, this is saying that the sales and marketing isn't a problem, it's a process. I do not subscribe to marketing is abundance of art and science. Marketing is a process. And like any process, you can break it down to its constituent parts and look for ways to improving that. So that's the mindset I took when I learned that on the shop floor. I took that immediately back to my function.

and began to look at areas for improvement across the whole marketing value chain.

Damon Baker (02:40)
So why is it in your opinion that you think marketing leaders especially resist glean until they see it up close like you did?

Martyn Etherington (02:47)
⁓ it's quite easy. I think marketing leaders sometimes fall, not sometimes, often fall into the camp of being pleasers. They put looking good above doing good. What I mean by that is they want to appease the sales teams, the business units, the product teams, the executive leadership teams. But I take a more contrarian view of that, Damon, and

I really focus on doing good and in the end you look good. So many CMOs in that position, they don't want to invest the time nor do they want to invite the scrutiny in terms of being measured for what they do, their impact to the business, down to every part of the marketing function can, should be and ought to be managed and measured accordingly.

Damon Baker (03:36)
Looking back, do you think you starting as a skeptic shaped the way you lead transformations today? that enter into the Calcimism anyway?

Martyn Etherington (03:46)
Yeah, I think, I mean, I wasn't a skeptic, I was a cynic. So I've gone from a cynic to skeptic to really now to where I am right now. I'm a real advocate of this process reason because it's worked. I've now done this. I've now taken Lean and all of its components from strategy development down to strategy deployment. I've done four successful company level Lean implementations.

and then 12 implementations of marketing, probably which I would say that nine of them have been successful. So that's why I'm an advocate. So I've gone from that civic skeptic to seeing the results that it gives me and the business and also how we contribute to the business. That's why I'm an absolute passionate advocate of lean, not just at a company level, not just on the manufacturing floor, but basically every function.

within a company.

Damon Baker (04:44)
When you arrived at BMC Software, marketing wasn't driving growth. In your words, it was a service bureau, a request machine full of vanity metrics and disconnected from the business. Can you go deeper into that?

Martyn Etherington (04:59)
Yeah, I do. And what I saw when I first arrived was a team that really had lack of vision, lack of strategy. The metrics were what I call vanity metrics that were monitored but not managed. And there was no real return on marketing investment. So given all of that as a backdrop,

became very, very evident that the reason behind that was nobody really clearly defined the role of marketing. How it should be set up, it should be structured, how it needs to contribute to the business. So the business units, the product teams, sales and the partner teams just saw it as a service bureau. Go and produce XY Fold ⁓ brochure, go and produce this collateral, go and run this event.

without any idea of how it's impacting the business or furthering the business or driving real growth.

Damon Baker (05:54)
You have a rather interesting interview process, and I'd to deeper into this. So you were actually able to diagnose some of these gaps prior to even joining VMC software. Can you take us through the secret sauce that you use? And I think you've done this in several other roles with that too.

Martyn Etherington (06:13)
Yeah, before I join any company, I want to try and take a walk in the shoes of a customer.

Martyn Etherington (06:21)
a gimbal walk, can call it a voice of the customer, but really is going through a customer experience journey. And so for BMC, what I did was pretend that I was a potential customer. And I went from awareness interest, so even down to typing in some keywords, phrases that CIOs would use when they're looking at a BMC offering and or a solution. Where do we actually appear?

in the search ranking. How did the competition stack up against us? Then when I did get that search term or key pop up, where did that take me? Did it get me to the content I was looking for in order to make myself smarter? How was the whole experience? Did I get access to demos? Did I get access to people to follow up? I even put my name down on

Follow-up calls, please have someone call me It was quite frankly a disappointing then it's changed Dramatically now, but then nobody called me. I also went through the same process for competitors So that told me a number of things that told me about the experience. I was experienced as a potential customer Also with the lens of looking at with our competitors

And from that perspective, Damon, what it enabled me to do was then to start to diagnose what was going on behind the scenes. So that's really how I arrived at that. So I had a very good view. And then before I even started interviewing, what were some of the challenges behind the scenes? And they were confirmed as I met more and more people through the interview process, and which I built up in a very comprehensive picture.

some of the challenges that I would potentially inherit.

Damon Baker (08:09)
So you're describing what lean practitioners would know affectionately as a value stream. And in marketing sometimes the word customer journey is used. So essentially you're taking yourself through the customer journey of BMC software. And I imagine as you're doing that.

You're also thinking about all the waste that you've experienced along that process. So what did that journey reveal to you about how disconnected the marketing function had to come from the customers of EMC Software?

Martyn Etherington (08:42)
Yeah, even before I got behind the scenes, even the language that we were using then versus now, for instance, once I got to the website, the content I was consuming, the white papers, the blogs, the brochures, were all written from an inside out perspective. What I mean by that is us, ours, we, leader, really speaking from a product perspective outwards.

Now a good customer centric brand or company would always have content written from a customer's perspective, outcome, business, results, value, you, yours, even down to that vocabulary. So from the get go, I could see we had more of an inside out focus and strategy versus an outside in. That then also gives me a good indication of what culture I was walking into in terms of the way that we had our

mindset the way we thought about business the way that we thought about projecting our business and it was really that inside out versus outside in perspective

Damon Baker (09:49)
seems like a very simple, logical, pragmatic way of thinking about a process. So why is it, in your opinion, that marketing leaders in particular underestimate the power of experiencing their own customer journey firsthand when in fact they're the ones who designed these process workflows that you talking about?

Martyn Etherington (10:09)
Yeah, think there's a couple of things there. I think if it goes back to my earlier point where a lot of marketing functions and leaders fall into trying to appease too many people without doing what is right for the business. So it takes really a bold or even a fearless leader to start really having a contrarian view. And let me give an example. Two weeks into my tenure, I plastered the wall outside of our CEO's office in Santa Clara.

I papered the wall with every piece of content, collateral, webpage, message, logo. And what I saw there was a real, I can't describe it, anything other than a real dog's dinner. And what I mean by that is plastered the wall. And what I wanted to do was have everyone who walks past that wall. And there's a question underneath, there was a title which said, this is how we appear to our customer.

And then a statement at the bottom of that wall saying, can we do better? Question mark. And clearly it was a little bit rhetorical. Clearly, absolutely we could. But what it illustrated was how disjointed we were in our message, our positioning, our brand. And that's how our customers experienced this. So that was really the sort of the ice bucket moment, if you will, for my team and others within BMC.

that there was certainly things we were missing. We were disjointed. We were taken inside out versus outside in perspective. And we were missing the customer journey and presenting a clear, compelling story of why we mattered to that customer and what our value propositions are.

Damon Baker (11:51)
This story is not without resistance and doubt and I know that you encountered a lot of cultural inertia along the way. You obviously didn't hesitate to take on the role, so nothing in that customer journey that you walked through yourself scared you away, so you said yes. But as you got into it, you described the resistance came hard and fast and it came from your own team.

Martyn Etherington (12:16)
Yeah, there was a couple of things when I first joined, I was welcomed open arms saying that we wanted a leader. We wanted a seat at the table, the executive leadership table. We wanted a voice to represent us. We wanted structure. We wanted process. Fast forward, I gave them all of that and some and that's when the resistance took place. So it's one of those things where careful for what you wish for.

And that's when I started.

Damon Baker (12:40)
like, want to be

I like diet and exercise until you put me on the treadmill.

Martyn Etherington (12:45)
Absolutely, absolutely. I want it for free. I don't want to work for it. And quite frankly, I don't want to change the way I do change. I think change the way I think. So yeah, absolutely. I started to see that resistance very, very, very early on. So when I started shining lights on the things like that, the brand war, the message war outside the CEO's office, it was not being punitive. It was challenging that growth mindset that continuous improvement mindset.

should we, could we, ought we to be better? And when you do that, you're basically challenging people's perception about themselves, the value that they bring. So my challenge, although it was never meant to be punitive, it came across as being punitive. So I saw some resistance from my own team, the leaders, that started to shut down, saying, well, this guy's coming in shining light on all the things that are broken.

I wasn't doing it for any other reason. Once you've understood some of the areas that requires attention and or are broken, can you fix them? So that's what the resistance had, it's human nature and I think we all experienced that. But it took a very long time to get the vision across of what we're coming to achieve and then get the people on board to actually drive that change in the end.

Damon Baker (14:06)
What I really like about your approach is it's subtle and if you don't...

Pick up on sort of the intent behind it, you can kind of miss the plot. Let me explain what I'm talking about. You presented facts and information in a way that made the emotion detached or the judgment attached from why things are the way they are. So nowhere in that did you describe so-and-so created this process. How could that, how could we be such an idiot or how could we be so remiss and have missed all these things? And you left it open-ended and presented information

management away that force people to embrace the reality and the reality being the journey that our customer takes through our

Martyn Etherington (14:49)
Yeah, and I actually I was very fortunate. I'm not sure, Damon, when you were down, I that we were there at the same time. But one of the leadership conferences we had, we had a speaker called Dr. Carol Dweck. And she was the author of The Growth Mindset. And she had this notion and I encourage anyone to look up.

Carol Dweck growth mindset the power of yet on YouTube it's a 10 minute video and it talks about the power of yet because we're all brought up at school pass or fail same in business you're either at plan or you're not so pass or fail she talked about the power of yet

I use that language to make it less threatening about having stretch goals. We may be in the red, we're not a plan, we haven't hit the plan yet.

And what I learned with that day is it takes away that that punitive feeling that we suck, I suck, I'm not doing my job, I'm not good enough. And it provides that reassurance that we know what we have to go do, but we are not there yet. And I think that was the biggest turning point of what I actually started to see people going, maybe I get this, maybe it's not as threatening as I first feared.

Damon Baker (16:10)
Can you describe in your own words what is a positive deviant? Seems like a paradox, a jumbo shrimp or an honest politician. What is a positive deviant?

Martyn Etherington (16:23)
Yeah,

very interesting. this is the days when long, long time ago in airport flight was delayed. This is the time when they were sold magazines at the news stores at airports. I picked up National Geographic and in that I had this really good article positive deviance and I'll cut this long story short. Basically in Africa, in these villages, there was high infant mortality rate. And so what this team did was

pick out what they call the positive deviants, the females of that village who people looked up to and trained educate them on.

hygiene, fresh water, taking care of themselves, immunization. And that message spread throughout the villages. And long story short, infant mortality rates went down, the health of the mothers were better, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I took that notion of finding the positive deviance within my organizations.

And these aren't the leaders necessarily. These are the people one, two, three clicks down from the leadership teams. But they are the people you go to. They're the people in the old days of the water cooler, what's going on? Who do you know, what's going on here? What do you know? How can you help me do my job? Those are the people I focus on. There's probably a cluster of six, seven, eight people around my organization around the world.

I use them as the change amplifiers and if those got if they were on board, the others would rally around very quickly. So the notion of when you do change management, 20 % of the team will get it dramatically. That was a positive deviance. 60 % will follow the 20 and there's 20%.

will never get it in a month or some days, that invariably was really a focus on that positive deviancy and built the whole change program around those people that would actually get on board, could see the vision and would actually help me convince the others that this is the path to take.

Damon Baker (18:23)
Yeah, this is a critical inflection point. The point of no return, so to speak, where you really purposely bring lean to marketing. So you committed in your own words to treating marketing like every other part of the business. Accountable, measurable, and lean. And you even said, burn the boats and gave the resistors no room to hide. What gave you the conviction to bet your tenure on bringing lean into marketing?

Martyn Etherington (18:52)
I think actually I knew no other way. So if I mentioned earlier on, I've done four company level lean transformations successfully, but I've done 12 marketing lean transformations.

probably nine of which were unsuccessful. We can talk about the other three later, but I knew that coming into this, this was the only way. If we were going to be relevant as a function relevant to our customers, to the sellers, to the channels that we actually sell through, and then also finally relevant to the business, there was no other way of doing this.

In order to have a very clear strategy that aligns to the company strategy, a set of KPIs that we can manage, not monitor, and those KPIs that then cascade down into the organization, that we then review every week at our stand-ups and do a deep dive at every month, that gave me that conviction.

So I had the conviction, I had no hesitancy of burning the boats, none, zero. I did have a hesitancy of our ability to do the transformation in a timely fashion that wouldn't leave me exposed of not being able to make that change and being backed up with results and fact and data.

Damon Baker (20:12)
Did you have, let's say, group of traditional creatives on the marketing team who maybe think of marketing as you've opened with as this creative process that's lightning strike ingenuity?

How did you make this relevant to them while not dismissing their strengths? Because I think you kind of have to have both, don't you? You have to have process rigor and the right process, but also when it comes to being creative in certain things like copy and value proposition and branding and advertising, you do want to be creative.

Martyn Etherington (20:47)
Yeah, again, I may take a contrarian view here, Damon. I just dislike the word creative because it almost lets somebody off the hook for being accountable and being relevant to the only real constituency that counts. And that's our customers. What I mean by that is even if you are quote unquote creative, there is a process you go through and there is tests you take. if you have creative, good creative is only good if

sells something. So if you actually do the treat creative as a process and then also test and validate that creative that position and message that value proposition with the customer

That also, that's the way that I showed and demonstrated to quote the creative people that lean has a role to play even in their realms. So again, everything's a process. If everything's a process is open to the adoption or the usage of lean to make it even better than it is today.

Damon Baker (21:49)
Yeah, so I think often times you see marketing firms and agencies and even ads and campaigns getting awards and you have to wonder what was the ROI behind some of these things and what did it deliver or was it just a quote unquote creative ad by some criteria.

Martyn Etherington (22:11)
yeah, Damon, don't get me talking on marketing awards. I am absolutely passionate about awards that don't count for anything. They're the trophies you put on the sideboard, mean nothing. The only award that I like is have we moved the needle, have we grown the business, have we improved the customer experience, and that's the only award that we should ever be interested in. So I never enter for any awards, period. Never have done, never will do.

and that's how we run our business.

Damon Baker (22:40)
So at this point, you're building momentum, you're stacking wins, and you start to have some CEO sponsorship. So your CEO and CFO quickly become some of your biggest allies, and you deliver early proof points that marketing can actually operate with the same rigor as sales or operations, which in between you and I, you knew that that was going to be the outcome, but maybe for others inside the organization, that was a big aha. What were the first visible wins that made the skeptics finally pay attention?

Martyn Etherington (23:08)
Yes, so I was very consistent throughout the interview process that I would bring rigor, operational discipline and results to the marketing function. think everyone said, that's what we're looking to hear and they scratched their chin safely. But kudos to our CEO and CFO has been nothing supportive, knowing that there's actually being a major disruption of people, process and everything. But the first indication that I actually was starting to get support was

When I joined there was a very large advertising campaign. I won't tell say what it is, but We were spending significant amount of dollars on this. We've been in the market four to six months I believe when I joined and I looked at the fact and data I looked at the before and after funnel creation. I looked at the before and after website traffic I looked at many many data points and It was very clear we were spending

significant resources, but we weren't moving the needle. So we had a fault in the gas and the revs were high, but we didn't have any gear. So it's very, very easy. I shut down that program, that campaign, was able to redeploy dynamic resource allocation, redeploy that into other areas that would generate business, manageable business. And I was also able to take a percentage of that money that we've otherwise spent and able to give that back to the CFO.

And then I was able to give some of that resources back into the CRO at that time and some of his direct reports in the region. So a couple of things.

Damon Baker (24:41)
Wait wait, hold on, hold on, hold

on, hold on. Marketing gave money back to finance and marketing gave money back to the CRO. Can you say that? Did I hear that correctly?

Martyn Etherington (24:53)
Yeah, you heard that correctly and I think that couple of things, Damon, I think one that established that I was very, very earnest about removal of waste. It also showed that if we were moving the needle, I wouldn't spend that money. And if we won't spend that money, I couldn't find ways to invest in the business. I would give it back.

and we did and I think that was the realisation to both the CEO and the CFO at that time that we were serious about making a difference and that we wouldn't waste resources purely because we had the just given budget.

Damon Baker (25:29)
Yeah, you view finance as an accountability partner to validate results and I would argue that most finance functions and marketing departments don't get along and probably don't spend a whole lot of time together. So what's different?

Martyn Etherington (25:46)
I would say it's early intent. think also we developed a reputation for being operationally rigorous. We cut out waste and we're not constantly going back to the CFO saying we need more money. And I said to both our CFO and CEO, I will not come back to you and ask for a dollar more.

until a couple of things. Number one, I can tell you what our return on marketing investment was. And so when I first joined, if the CFO gave me a dollar, I could only give him a dollar back. At the end of last year, I was able to give him five dollars back.

that indicates that we're really serious and earnest about delivering growth, delivering return on investment. that's what really is proof through experience. It was proof through results and it's proof through doing what we said we're going to do in stages of that transformation of the marketing function.

Damon Baker (26:47)
You describe a lot of marketing teams, including the one that you inherited, as being focused on looking good versus doing good. And to me, that's cultural. And now you're starting to change that culture. So in your mind, what were some of the most important levers you had to pull in order for that culture shift to happen where people saw it the same way you did in terms of doing good versus looking good?

Martyn Etherington (27:12)
Yeah, think you've got to stay on message. You've got to the conviction.

employees look see the world through their managers eyes so you're going to have that power of conviction if i'd actually stopped if i waited for the rest of the organization to catch up we would never have done it so we we dragged initially in the early days dragged the organization towards that lean journey

⁓ People were thinking in the back of their minds, well, I've been here in the reviews. If I keep my head down, don't make eye contact. I'll probably outlast, I'm outsmart the CMO. But I wasn't to be. We gained momentum, we made changes, we upgraded, took credit, removed people. And that people then saw the seriousness. And then we started operationalize it. We have our every...

Every Thursday we have our standups and then once a month we have a monthly ops review and our standups is really review our action plans and then top level KPIs and every month we look at our tier one tier two KPIs and have very very again focusing only on the red.

Again, that was culturally very hard for the company to do, for the marketing function to do. But that's how we run our business. So people, they go from the eye roll to a defensive posture of folding their arms into leaning in, knowing that this will not go away anyway soon. And that is the way that we actually justify not only our existence.

but justifying how we have a positive impact to our funnel and to our growth journey as a company, not just as a function.

Damon Baker (29:38)
I want to give you an example of conviction. In your first month, you canceled 200 marketing events and stopped advertising. And in most companies, that would be career suicide for a CMO. So what gave you the courage to make that call in the first 30 days? And were you thinking to yourself, oh, shit, what am I about to do?

Martyn Etherington (29:56)
Well, actually the children events in my...

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right with the advertising big campaign, I stopped that within, I think it was four five weeks of my tenure. But the events situation happened probably about 18 months into my tenure. So here's an example. We had everyone involved in running events in the company.

Damon Baker (30:18)
and what's an event is

an example.

Martyn Etherington (30:20)
Yeah, exactly.

We had over 300 events going on in a financial year. And so it was very, very clear. I started to some analysis on return on marketing investment for these events. And it's shown me a number of things. Number one, most of the events we'd actually put in place never had a strategic objective. A design outcome certainly didn't have a return on

Damon Baker (30:22)
It's getting gender-oriented.

Martyn Etherington (30:50)
investment. So it's very very easy to cut those ones out. So in the end long story short we cut out 200 of those 300 events and lo and behold not a negative detriment on our sales funnel.

and zero impact on ourselves. fact, we came off in our strongest year in the company history, 40 plus year history on the back when we took those 200 events out. Again, not doing it through recklessness, doing it because there was no fact and data to justify what we were doing was the right thing to do. So we have an events governance now that makes sure we are absolutely stringent

on ensuring if we put a dollar into an event, we get at least $5 back. Moreover, our voice to the customer tells us, as we want to see less events from BMC,

We want BMC to show up where we show up. We want to go to the AWS events, the GARNER events, the SAP events. That's where we expect you, BMC, show up, not on trying to get us to justify more travel to go to your specific events.

Damon Baker (32:00)
This is a classic example, in my opinion, of how people confuse activity with impact. So doing more could result in more things, but they haven't done the work that you're talking about. When they've thought through strategically the goal or the problem to be solved and how we're going to measure what winning looks like. And then at the end of the event, doing a post-mortem and even asking ourselves, was your ROI on that? How many leads did that generate? So that is a mindset change to everything.

Martyn Etherington (32:28)
all without question i think it goes back to my original statement which was ⁓ looking good

is sometimes easier to do than actually doing good. And I think the events was again one example of really everyone's a marketing expert. DeliverMe event because whatever it solves all it's a cure elixir for everything and quite frankly it's a cure elixir for very little. And as we start to transition from that legacy marketing mind frame mindset to a more contemporary voice to the customer

driven, digital centric, that's been a big journey and the only way we've actually been able to make that journey is based upon the fact and data and going back to holding ourselves accountable for every dollar we spend of BMC money, we've got to give back five dollars at least, which is the benchmark, ten is world class, we've got to pass towards ten but that won't happen probably in the next year to 18 months but you've got to have a return on investment and

The events are really not a good return on anyone's investment, quite frankly.

Damon Baker (33:35)
Yeah, so to me this was the tone setting point in the journey and these cuts had zero negative top line or bottom line impact. In fact, the MC went on to have its strongest year in 40 years. So the story flipped on its head and data trumped everybody's opinion about the impact that these events had on the business. So how did that...

outcome in your mind permanently change marketing's credibility inside of the company.

Martyn Etherington (34:06)
Well, think a couple of things. think one, we do have an equal voice at the table. We are no longer seen as the all you can eat buffet or service bureau. It also when we have a debate or even an argument, because everything is not kumbaya.

is driven by fact and data versus POV point of view or quite frankly BS you constantly hear we've got to go do something and to do and when you say to drive what to drive what outcome silence so that activity driven versus outcome driven is something we've actually I wouldn't say we've broken completely but we've made a big dent in that that that philosophy and ⁓ one now that we hold ourselves accountable

Monthly for driving a set of KPIs we make transparent to anyone who wants to see that we make transparent every dollar we spend There's nothing hidden unless the other beauty with lean is if you do it well You can justify it through the KPIs you the metrics and it opens you up to transparency and transparency is going to be a good thing in all functions

Damon Baker (35:09)
So just to role play for a second, let's imagine I'm the sales leader in the old organization pre-Martin, pre-cultural transformation, and I came to you with this request, hey, Martin and team, we need a lean generation campaign because we're losing in the market against XYZ competitor, so I need you to build a campaign for us. How would that request have been handled in the old way inside of marketing?

Martyn Etherington (35:37)
Yeah so we would have what I call a marketing tunnel versus a marketing funnel. The big difference is one will come in one will pop out there's no gates there's no qualification and so we did a lot of things probably not very well. So fast forward to putting in a marketing funnel

Damon Baker (35:43)
We'll them.

Martyn Etherington (35:56)
Every request comes in and we have a set of gates and criteria. One, first of all, does it align with the company's strategic level and also marketing strategic objective? If the answer is no, you don't do it. If it says yes, it goes to the next stage. What outcome are we trying to drive towards? What problems are we trying to solve? We have a funnel gap in Europe. How much is that funnel gap? Talk about the outcome versus the

activity and only once we've defined and set the bounded the outcome then we Talk about what are the best programs to go and drive and achieve that so David the original question is we've got a marketing funnel We have gates and we align everything we do back to a strategic objective and a strategic outcome This is so easy to say and it almost sounds flippant is everyone rolling their eyes going that dirt

But I tell you what, it is extraordinarily hard to do and extraordinarily hard to hold the discipline when you have people banging down the door saying, I need an event here, I need to do this. And holding that level of discipline and rigor has been the toughest thing that we've done. I think we've done a good job in being easy to work with, but at the same time holding the line on rigor and operational excellence.

Damon Baker (37:19)
in your experience in all the companies you've worked for.

What percentage of them would you say had year over year marketing productivity requirements for spend in terms of ROI? So instead of just budget plus year after year, like we had a million dollar budget this year, we should get a $1.2 million budget this year because the company is growing 20%. Therefore, spend needs to grow 20%. You can see how people can get pretty lazy. So when you're kind of looking back, did you ever encounter a situation where

marketing as a department was forced to be more productive year over year with the spend.

Martyn Etherington (37:58)
Yeah, guess why that happens. That happens in it probably. would say over 50 % of the organisation, if not more. The reason being is marketing have not been able to articulate the value that brings back to the business. So you're seen as a cost centre. You're not seen as an investment. Fast forward if you can show that you can get $5 back for every dollar you're given and point to the funnel growth and then the one closed business

that's growing that then actually so we've been able to actually maintain and if not gradually during my three years grow our budget because of that and that's my challenge to all CMOs out there is you will constantly get your either be flat

which means if you are flat year on year with inflation and cost of wages and stuff you're going down in budget. The reason that's being is because you haven't been able to articulate the impact you make to the business. Simple as that.

Damon Baker (38:58)
I want to shift gears to your leadership style which you describe in your own words as Hugh Grant versus Gordon Ramsay. Can you describe what that means? I think I have an idea but I'd love to hear it from you.

Martyn Etherington (39:11)
Ha

Well,

actually, it's like someone asked me to describe my personality and I said it's probably 50 % Hugh Grant, the charming Englishman and then 50 % Gordon Ramsay, so throwing their hands up in the air and dropping some industrial Fruity language and being highly demanding. And the reason why I say that is I read a very, very good book. It's called, Now You're In Charge, Now What?

And it talks about coming into a company, coming into BMC. It talks about what persona, what is your entry persona when you come into the organization. I've gone into other organizations as my Gordon Ramsay persona. This going into BMC, as I learned about the culture, as I learned about the people, as I interviewed more and more people, spoke to customers and many other people.

I knew that if came as my Gordon Ramsay persona, I'd have anarchy, would have that organ rejection and the organisation would spat me out in a nanosecond. So I really had to adopt that Hugh Grant philosophy, just that sprinkling of Gordon in there. But that really helped me really establish a little bit more credibility. was more coaching versus directing and being belligerent. And at that power of not yet,

Damon Baker (40:24)
you

Martyn Etherington (40:27)
those languages and softer language to affect the change because the culture of BMC is a very very good culture by the way not criticizing it it's very very powerful but you've got to be able to learn to work within that culture and not be alien to that culture so that's my my two personalities and anyone coming into any

new organization, I would coach them to really look at the culture and adapt your persona to make sure you actually get the best results.

Damon Baker (41:00)
You know what's interesting about the Gordon Ramsay side of the persona is if you watch him in his shows, and I remember one, can't remember the name of it, he goes in and he works with the restaurant owner and...

gives a lot of the tough love that you're talking about, yelling, screaming, demanding. But then quickly after, he'll pull that person aside and there's a softer Hugh Grant side of the message and why it's important and why he had to do that. even Gordon Ramsay has a Hugh Grant side to his Gordon Ramsay side. And he balances those two things in equal proportion. But I think he knows when he has to do one or the other. And I think that's where the message you're trying to

Martyn Etherington (41:33)
You

Damon Baker (41:42)
say, read the room and recognize what the culture needs at this point in time and that could vary by individual too.

Martyn Etherington (41:49)
Yeah, I also did not go one step further.

also recognize some of my experiences, my gray hairs, and I've been in the industry for 40 years. So that will give you a clue to my age. There is a generational shift too. Gordon Ramsay works with a certain generation. But Hugh Grant works better with a younger, more demographic, who are more nurtured and more sort of a softer leadership approach. So again, it's adapting that persona to meet

culture and also the generational audience you have as well.

Damon Baker (42:24)
So now the transformation is really proving out and Lean is essentially the new normal inside of the BMC software marketing department. So you've taken marketing ROI from $1 equals $1 to $5 is $1 of spend, so 5 to 1 ROI. Cut millions of waste out of processes we've already covered and even then more importantly, this is the operating model inside of how the business runs and inside of marketing. So what do you believe marketing

marketing

is one of the, or I guess why do you believe that marketing is one of the most powerful places to apply? You're a big believer to start there and that's a powerful place to start, which is not a commonly held perspective to be quite honest from my point of view.

Martyn Etherington (43:11)
I know no other way of actually running a business now. It's been so ingrained in me. But I would encourage other people to look at it and work with people like yourself at LeanFocus because what you've been able to do is help position marketing as a competitive advantage. And because there's been that everyone quotes this Spencer Stewart, the revolving door of the CMO, the life expectancy is two, two and a half years, and now probably is growing to three years.

reason that's been revolving doors because you haven't been able to establish credibility and credibility through driving results and those results are driving the top line and bottom line growth. And I think that's what Lean has done given me is the tool set, the mindset, the philosophy, the rigor to actually manage my business versus monitoring my business and managing the business to drive growth. And that's why, fingers crossed, I've been here just over three and I'm coming through.

and half years and we're just getting going. We are not the finished product. I do not want any listener to think, he's got it all sorted. We have challenges ahead of us. We have challenges every single day. This is a journey. It will never be done, but it gives us a great foundation to show that we contribute to business, we help growth, and we also are stewards and good stewards of a company's significant resources too.

Damon Baker (44:38)
How do you prevent the bungee cord effect so at some point Martin will move on and maybe move to the next role? One of the sayings that I heard back when your old boss, Patrick Byrne from Tectronix said that lean is always one generation away from dying.

Meaning there's a leader that might be keeping a lot of this culture alive. That if he or she were to part, you're at risk that some of these systems and these ways of thinking and the culture around all the things we've been talking about this far, start to slowly erode. So if you're to kind of say, are the critical things that need to be in place in marketing when you depart that have to be sustaining, we're going keep that culture going. What would you point your finger at?

Martyn Etherington (45:28)
Yeah, without question, people. So my leadership team, they've been hand selected, hand picked, combination from internal people and external people. They've come along with me on this journey. I've also got a lean practitioner who runs my operations. He is really basically the heart and soul of operations, establish credibility very quickly. People look to him. He does training, makes it very, very important to

the individual. But I do believe that Patrick was really right with saying, lean is just one step away from obsolescence. now look, if I go ahead time that I hang up my boots and go on to do other things, is it going to be continued? I don't know, it depends who my success if it's one of one of my team now.

there's a very, very strong chance it will continue. If there's someone from the outside comes in, probably likelihood it'll get dismantled very, very quickly. And that's part of the reason why ⁓ marketing has lost a lot of credibility within organizations, because that change and that lack of accountability. So a long-winded wave, Damon, is saying, I don't know, but I...

say that it's not guaranteed that we'll continue. It only be guaranteed if one of my team becomes my successor and we can keep with the current team in place. If that's not the case then all bets are off.

Damon Baker (46:50)
keeping on that thought process. Are there any key processes that the marketing team has taken ownership of that the exercise of consistency and rigor that if a new person coming from the outside were to take out without understanding why they're there, would give you cause for concern.

Martyn Etherington (47:07)
I think...

I think really looking at the whole model and if you're not familiar with Lean, you can look at some of the tool sets, the KPI bowlers, the action plans, the problem solving process as intellectual overhead. Yeah, work. It's a big thumbprint. It's a big footprint on the organization. And does it really move the needle? And you've got to have experience. is something I can, and probably in Lean focused business, you probably have the same challenge.

Damon Baker (47:19)
This is busy work.

Martyn Etherington (47:37)
can't read this. You can't watch a YouTube video. Lean is really adopted through experience. And that's why I've become an advert, because I've experienced this now for the last 12, almost 15 years. And I've seen it work. So that's really why that really is going to be, really going to be experienced in order to sustain that.

Damon Baker (47:59)
I describe lean as like swimming. can read all the books you want and watch people swim and yelp when you dive in the pool and start swimming. That's the quickest way to learn it. Do it.

So now you're sharing some success inside the organization. You start to change the narrative inside the company and the industry really. So your story really challenges in my mind the myth that lean is just for manufacturing. And prior to making David Letterman, the top 10 list of things I hear when I talk to prospective clients, that would be right up there as, yeah, we've heard about lean. It's that manufacturing thing. And they haven't had the benefit or privilege of some of experiences.

than I have had. So how has, in your view, applying the end marketing changed the way the rest of the company sees marketing inside of BMC?

Martyn Etherington (48:53)
Look, I'll be frank, I don't think everyone gets it. I think people are intellectually curious of what we're doing. think it may be little quirky, but overall, the results speak for themselves. So we're doing something right. We've got the operational rigor that we've become known for across the whole organization. So I think it's viewed upon as a sort of...

as a little bit of a novelty. That's Everington and his lean religion and they seem to be doing all the right things. I'm not sure if it's right for my business, but let them get on with it as long as they're delivering results. We'll leave them alone. So I think that's probably the concept. But the other functions got their own versions of it in different lights and different flavors, but probably don't call it lean, but many of same philosophies.

Damon Baker (49:43)
You're kind of like describing that guy in the gym who we all look at and go, wow, what does he eat and how does he work out? And I'd really like to learn what he does, but then you go home and you're down. I'm good.

Martyn Etherington (49:58)
It really is that you've got to have that calorie deficit. And if you don't have that, you're not going to lose weight. You can have the best membership of a New York gym. But unless you go there and put the miles in every day and you eat less and you sleep well and drink better, then you're not going to get fit. You're not going to get healthy. You're not going to drop the pounds. And then the other lesson I've learned and

This is probably my biggest example of why lean works. There is a British racing team, the British cycling team, run by a guy called Dave Bralsford.

Damon Baker (50:27)
you

Martyn Etherington (50:35)
Dave Brownsford introduced to the British cycling team, I think it's back in 2008 when the Brits had never won a gold medal in the Olympics and never won a Tour de France period. He brought in something called the aggregation of marginal gains over continuous point in time. So what for instance in cycling,

Damon Baker (50:44)
you

to love for.

Martyn Etherington (50:57)
what it means is you look for those marginal gains and it's the compounding those gains will overall affect the overall performance. Fast forward. I think we've now won, I think, probably 12 to 18 gold medals in the Olympics. We've now had four, think, Tour de France, someone's going to quote me on this, but something like four.

individual winners of the Tour de France, all based on that concept. And there's another book called Atomic Habits. in it, actually references the Ralphsfords philosophy of the aggregation of marginal gains. And in Atomic Habits, if you change your habits 1 % every day, that works out to be something like 130%, 137 % over a period of the year. So if you apply that mentality to not only

personal life but apply that to 1 % gain every single day in a process or in your own function. Imagine what that will be in year one, year two, year three with compounding. that's hopefully able to draw a outside view of why lean and this notion of ⁓ improved and constant improvement works not only just for marketing for businesses but British cycling teams and also individual if you want to get fitter.

faster and more lightweight.

Damon Baker (52:22)
Sounds like a six-letter K word that you and I know really well. Kaizen. So I'm going to test your marketing skills on the spot, Martin. you ready? So you have to create demand for lean and marketing. How would you market lean to other CMOs out there who may be listening to this conversation now or in the future?

Martyn Etherington (52:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

⁓ Yeah,

two words, actually three words, results and job security. The first one leads to the second one.

Damon Baker (52:54)
Brilliant. Martin, your journey is proof that main principles don't stop at the platform. They belong in marketing, they belong in sales, they belong in HR. Anywhere where work is to be done, quite frankly. And you've shown how the same rigor that drives quality and speed manufacturing can also transform a marketing function into a true growth engine that the company can rely upon. Where can people who are listening to this conversation connect with you or follow your work that's going on at BMC?

Martyn Etherington (53:23)
Certainly from LinkedIn, I do share a lot of my thoughts and views publicly. Also the things that don't go well. I think you get to my stage of my career, you get lot more confidence in showing what doesn't work and boy, in lean you can make a lot of mistakes. I'm willing to share those purely because I want to illustrate there is a journey, it's not linear and there are certainly peaks and troughs. yeah, LinkedIn is the best way and just

I am me and LinkedIn if you want to learn more and certainly we'll talk to you about my experiences but also partnering with Lean Focus as well. I've done it now three times across two companies so happy to do that too.

Damon Baker (54:07)
Thank you so much again, Martin, and thank you for your kindness and of course your partnership over the years. For everyone listening, if you think lean doesn't apply to your function, Martin's story is living proof that it does. Share this with a colleague who you still think lean is just for the factories

and as always, stay focused, stay lean.