Leadership Roundtable: Diagnosing and Resolving Marketing Dysfunction

Why This Discussion Matters Now

Most organisations don’t enter a new year short of marketing activity. They enter it short of marketing clarity.

Campaigns are launched, agencies are briefed, dashboards fill up, and teams stay busy. Yet many leadership teams still find themselves asking the same question by late Q1: why does marketing feel so active, but so hard to trust? In our experience, that tension is rarely caused by effort. It is more often caused by a lack of leadership, strategy, and capability working as a single system.

That is why Paul Mills, Founder of VCMO, ran this leadership roundtable.

In this discussion, four Chartered Marketers and SOSTAC® Certified Planners — each operating as Fractional CMOs and advisers across startups, scale-ups, mid-tier organisations and enterprise environments — unpacked why marketing dysfunction appears to be increasing as we move into 2026, how it shows up in day-to-day reality, and what leaders can do to diagnose it quickly before it compromises growth.

The aim is not to add another layer of marketing theory. It is to provide a pragmatic leadership lens: how to spot dysfunction early, how to understand what is really driving it, and how a structured 30-day diagnostic can replace reactive activity with direction, governance, and momentum.

Watch the Roundtable (Video - 45 Minutes):

“The key thing to understand is that marketing dysfunction is not a performance issue. It’s often a leadership, strategy and capability issue.”

Paul Mills, Founder, VCMO

Why Marketing Dysfunction Feels More Common Entering 2026

The sense that more organisations are entering 2026 with marketing dysfunction is not an illusion. It is the product of several pressures converging at once.

The past few years have been defined by volatility rather than stability. Economic uncertainty, shifting buyer behaviour, digital acceleration, talent churn, and heightened board-level scrutiny have all increased simultaneously. In that environment, many leadership teams have moved into what can best be described as survival mode: a heightened demand for speed, quick wins, and short-term reassurance.

Marketing, by its nature, becomes the pressure valve.

Budgets are cut, then expected to work harder. Teams are reduced, then expected to deliver faster. Agencies are asked for immediate results, often measured through easily visible metrics rather than commercially meaningful ones. The strategic horizon shortens, while expectations intensify.

As one panellist observed, the result is that marketing becomes less of a growth engine and more of a shock absorber.

“Businesses have been operating in constant reaction mode. Economic pressure, talent churn, digital acceleration and board-level scrutiny have all increased at the same time. Marketing is expected to fix revenue gaps quickly, often without the clarity, structure or authority to lead strategically.”

Lydia McClelland, Fractional CMO and SOSTAC® Licensed Trainer

This compression of time horizons creates a fundamental tension. Marketing can generate short-term signals, but sustainable growth is built over longer cycles: through clear positioning, disciplined go-to-market strategy, and consistent capability development. When organisations demand immediate certainty in an uncertain market, they often default to visible activity rather than structural alignment.

That dynamic was particularly evident through 2025. Many businesses, coming off the back of post-pandemic recovery, inflationary pressure and unpredictable demand patterns, found themselves seeking rapid reassurance rather than long-term advantage.

“There was a real sense of survival mode. People wanted quick wins, fast proof, and immediate returns. But marketing works across long and short horizons at the same time. When everything is judged on speed alone, the long-term engine starts to misfire.”

Rachael Wheatley, Fractional CMO and Board Advisor

Overlaying this is the acceleration of AI and automation. While these tools have transformed productivity, they have also introduced a new source of noise. Output has become easier to generate than judgement. Teams can now produce more content, more analysis, more campaigns, more dashboards — but without a corresponding increase in strategic clarity.

One panellist captured this with a particularly apt metaphor.

“We’ve moved so far forward with AI, but we’re still in digestion mode. We haven’t finished the meal. The volume of output is huge, but without the strategic lens, it just compounds the discomfort.”

Ruth Napier, Fractional CMO and Transformation Lead

In many organisations, AI is being treated as a substitute for thinking rather than an accelerator of it. Business plans are generated, content is produced, and strategies are drafted, but often without sufficient contextual understanding, commercial grounding, or leadership challenge. The result is activity without coherence, and speed without direction.

Taken together, these forces explain why marketing dysfunction feels more visible entering 2026 than in previous cycles. It is not that teams are working less hard. It is that the environment has become more complex, while the leadership structures guiding marketing have, in many cases, not evolved at the same pace.

The system is under strain. And when systems are under strain, early warning signals begin to appear long before performance visibly drops.

The Earliest Warning Signs of Dysfunction Forming

Marketing dysfunction rarely arrives suddenly. It develops quietly, through patterns of behaviour that become normalised long before performance visibly deteriorates. By the time revenue targets are missed or pipeline confidence weakens, the underlying causes have often been in place for months.

One of the earliest indicators is a shift from strategic intent to tactical reaction.

Activity increases, but purpose becomes harder to articulate. Campaigns are launched because they are requested, not because they are prioritised. Junior marketers are asked to “just get things out” without being able to explain how their work connects to commercial goals. The organisation becomes busier, yet less certain about whether it is moving in the right direction.

“You see an increase in activity, but people can’t really explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re saying yes to everything, but it isn’t anchored to a plan or a clear strategy.”

Rachael Wheatley, Fractional CMO and Board Advisor

Closely linked to this is the erosion of clarity around proposition and audience. When leaders ask seemingly simple questions — What do we actually sell? Who is our ideal customer? Why do clients choose us over alternatives? — they receive different answers from different parts of the organisation. Language fragments. Assumptions replace evidence. The absence of a shared definition of value becomes a silent constraint on growth.

This lack of clarity is often masked by familiarity. Businesses continue to operate on inherited narratives, outdated personas, or loosely defined segments, assuming they are still valid because they once worked. In reality, markets shift, competitors evolve, and customer expectations change. Without deliberate strategic refresh, organisations drift.

At the same time, decision-making becomes increasingly influenced by the “loudest voice in the room”. A competitor launches a new campaign. A board member shares an article. A founder has an idea in the bath. Initiatives are triggered by anecdote rather than insight, and replication replaces differentiation.

“You start seeing teams jumping from campaign to campaign, responding to whoever is shouting loudest, rather than following a clear strategic direction. It’s constant reaction rather than deliberate progression.”

Lydia McClelland, Fractional CMO and SOSTAC® Licensed Trainer

Another early signal is the absence of a robust planning backbone. Many organisations believe they have a marketing plan, but in practice what exists is a calendar of activity or a list of deliverables. Without a clearly articulated situation analysis, objectives, strategic choices, and success measures, execution becomes disconnected from intent. Work happens, but learning does not compound.

Finally, there is a behavioural shift inside teams. Energy becomes scattered rather than focused. People work hard but feel permanently behind. Roles blur, priorities conflict, and burnout risk increases. Reporting may be plentiful, yet insight is scarce. Data is produced, but decisions do not materially change as a result of it.

None of these signs, in isolation, appear catastrophic. Collectively, however, they indicate that the system is losing coherence. Leadership attention is stretched, strategy is implicit rather than explicit, and capability is being asked to compensate for structural ambiguity.

The organisations that recognise these patterns early are able to intervene before dysfunction becomes entrenched. Those that do not often find themselves, a few quarters later, asking why marketing feels expensive, unpredictable, and difficult to trust — without realising that the warning lights were visible much earlier.

How Dysfunction Shows up Day to Day — and Why Size Doesn’t Protect You

One of the strongest themes to emerge from the discussion was that marketing dysfunction is not confined to any one stage of growth. Start-ups, scale-ups, mid-tier firms and large enterprises experience remarkably similar symptoms. What changes is not the nature of the problem, but its scale and the number of stakeholders involved.

In early-stage and scale-up environments, dysfunction often manifests as over-reliance on a small number of individuals. Founders remain deeply involved in marketing decisions, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of habit. Junior marketers or newly promoted managers carry significant operational responsibility but lack the authority to challenge priorities or shape direction. Activity is intense, but fragile, because it depends on a few people holding too much context in their heads.

As organisations grow, the same issues become structural rather than personal. Ownership fragments across internal teams, agencies, and functional silos. Marketing, sales, product and leadership operate with good intent, but without a shared commercial narrative or agreed priorities. Reporting increases, but insight does not. Processes multiply, but coherence weakens.

What the panel consistently observed is that dysfunction is rarely about the quality of individuals. It is about the absence of a system that aligns strategy, leadership and execution.

“You can have very capable people working extremely hard, but if there’s no clear strategy and no leadership structure to connect their work back to business objectives, it can feel chaotic rather than coordinated.”

Lydia McClelland

A defining characteristic is the lack of repeatability. Teams feel as though they are constantly reinventing the wheel. Campaigns are created, evaluated, and then quietly abandoned rather than refined and scaled. Knowledge resides in individuals rather than in processes. Success, when it occurs, is difficult to replicate because the underlying drivers are not clearly understood.

“In dysfunctional teams, everything feels harder than it should. There’s lots of effort, but very little sense of momentum. In high-performing teams, there’s a flow and a line of sight — people know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how it contributes to the bigger picture.”

Rachael Wheatley

In more complex organisational structures, such as partnerships and professional services firms, the challenge is magnified by governance. Multiple decision-makers, competing priorities, and consensus-driven cultures can dilute strategic clarity. Without a strong central marketing leadership function, initiatives become political as well as tactical, and alignment becomes harder to achieve.

“In partnership environments, the number of stakeholders with influence multiplies. Without senior marketing leadership that can navigate that complexity, it becomes extremely difficult for junior or emerging leaders to drive coherent strategy.”

Ruth Napier

Across all stages, the behavioural signals are strikingly consistent:

• Teams operate in constant reaction mode
• Priorities shift frequently, driven by anecdote rather than insight
• Reporting focuses on activity, not decision-making
• Roles and responsibilities blur, creating overload and burnout
• Marketing feels busy, but not strategically confident

What differentiates high-performing organisations is not that they avoid these pressures, but that they redesign leadership and governance as complexity increases. They recognise that scale demands different structures, different decision rights, and different levels of strategic oversight.

Where that adaptation does not occur, dysfunction becomes normalised. Marketing continues to operate, but its ability to drive predictable, sustainable growth steadily erodes — not through lack of effort, but through lack of alignment.

What Happens When Dysfunction Is Left Unresolved

When marketing dysfunction is allowed to persist, the cost is rarely immediate. It accumulates quietly, through erosion rather than collapse. By the time leadership teams recognise the scale of the problem, recovery is already more complex and more expensive than it needed to be.

The first casualty is trust.

As plans fail to deliver predictable outcomes, marketing becomes increasingly defensive. Sales teams grow frustrated by inconsistent pipeline quality. Finance struggles to link spend to return. The board begins to question whether marketing is a value creator or simply a cost centre. Conversations shift from opportunity to justification.

“When dysfunction is left unresolved, trust erodes. Marketing becomes defensive, sales becomes frustrated, and leadership loses confidence in the function. Once that confidence is gone, it’s very hard to recover.”

— Lydia McClelland

This loss of confidence has structural implications. Investment decisions become cautious. Ambition is tempered by uncertainty. Rather than asking how marketing can accelerate growth, leadership teams begin to ask how much can be cut without too much damage. The function is judged on short-term optics rather than long-term contribution.

The impact is magnified in businesses with long sales cycles. In professional services, enterprise technology, life sciences and complex B2B environments, the lag between marketing activity and revenue realisation can be measured in months, not weeks. When dysfunction persists for a quarter or two, the consequences may not be visible until much later — at which point the pipeline gap is already baked in.

“In long-cycle businesses, you don’t recover in a month. If dysfunction has been in place for six months, the commercial impact can take twelve months or more to unwind.”

— Rachael Wheatley

In investor-backed and portfolio environments, the stakes are higher still. Marketing is scrutinised not only for growth, but for predictability, scalability, and contribution to valuation. Weak governance, unclear attribution, and tactical reporting undermine confidence in the revenue engine itself.

“In PE-backed environments, marketing has to demonstrate commerciality, not just activity. It needs to show how it’s contributing to growth, how quickly it can adapt, and how disciplined the controls are.”

— Ruth Napier

Left unaddressed, dysfunction also damages internal capability. High-performing marketers become frustrated by the absence of direction and leave. Those who remain become risk-averse, focused on delivery rather than leadership. Sickness and burnout increase. Silos harden. What began as a strategic misalignment becomes a cultural one.

The most damaging consequence, however, is strategic drift. Without clear leadership, marketing loses its role as a driver of market insight, positioning and growth direction. It becomes reactive, operational, and marginalised from core decision-making. At that point, even well-funded initiatives struggle to regain momentum because the system itself no longer supports coherence.

This is why marketing dysfunction should be treated as an early-warning signal, not a tolerable phase. It is rarely self-correcting. Without deliberate intervention, it compounds — quietly undermining confidence, capability and commercial performance over time.

High-Performing Versus Dysfunctional Marketing: The Leadership and Energy Difference

One of the most revealing parts of the discussion was how consistently the panel described the feel of high-performing marketing teams compared with those operating in dysfunction.

The difference is not primarily one of workload. In both cases, people are busy. The difference is in energy, confidence, and the quality of decision-making.

In dysfunctional environments, effort feels heavy. Teams operate in a state of permanent catch-up. Priorities shift frequently. Individuals become protective of their remit, less collaborative, and increasingly risk-averse. Reporting is produced, but it is used to defend activity rather than to guide choices. Over time, anxiety replaces curiosity, and execution becomes cautious rather than creative.

“In dysfunctional teams, the energy is scattered. People are anxious, overloaded, and permanently on the back foot. They’re working hard, but they don’t feel in control.”

— Lydia McClelland

In contrast, high-performing marketing functions display a markedly different dynamic. There is a sense of flow rather than friction. Ideas move quickly from concept to execution because priorities are clear and decision rights are understood. Teams are confident in why they are doing what they are doing, and how it connects to commercial outcomes. As a result, creativity and pace reinforce each other rather than compete.

“What really stands out in high-performing teams is the energy and the confidence. There’s momentum, optimism, and a feeling that things are moving forward with purpose, not just activity.”

— Rachael Wheatley

This difference is most visible at leadership level. In organisations where marketing is performing strategically, the person leading the function operates as a close ally of the CEO and CFO. They contribute to commercial planning, challenge assumptions about markets and customers, and translate strategy into go-to-market direction. Marketing has a voice in the room where growth decisions are made, not simply a slot on the agenda to report numbers.

In dysfunctional settings, that relationship is weaker. Marketing is positioned as a delivery function rather than a strategic partner. Its presence at senior leadership level is often limited to performance updates rather than strategic dialogue. Metrics focus on outputs — campaigns, clicks, events, engagement — rather than on contribution to revenue, margin, or enterprise value.

“You can see the difference in the relationship with the board and the CFO. In high-performing teams, marketing speaks the language of commercial impact and strategy. In low-performing ones, it’s often stuck reporting activity rather than influencing direction.”

— Ruth Napier

The behavioural signals follow naturally. Where leadership is clear and strategically anchored, teams exhibit confidence, collaboration and pace. Where leadership is absent or ambiguous, teams become defensive, fragmented and reactive. Over time, this shapes not just performance, but culture. Marketing either becomes a trusted driver of growth, or it is quietly repositioned as a cost to be controlled.

This contrast underscores a central theme of the roundtable: marketing performance is not primarily a function of tools, channels or headcount. It is a function of leadership design. When strategic ownership, commercial fluency and organisational authority are present, performance accelerates and confidence rises. When they are missing, dysfunction takes root — regardless of how hard people are working.

Diagnosing and Resolving Dysfunction: The 30-Day Leadership Lens

A consistent theme across the discussion was that marketing dysfunction rarely requires months of analysis to understand. What it does require is a structured, leadership-led diagnostic that looks beyond activity and into the system that shapes it.

The panel described this as a 30-day reset: a focused period of enquiry designed to replace assumption with evidence, surface misalignment, and establish a shared view of what needs to change. Crucially, this is not a marketing audit in the narrow sense. It is an organisational diagnostic, using marketing as the lens through which strategy, leadership, capability and governance can be examined.

Five perspectives repeatedly emerged as the most revealing.

1. The Strategy Lens: Are we clear on what we are trying to achieve?

The starting point is not campaigns or channels, but the business itself. Is there a clearly articulated business strategy, and does the marketing strategy genuinely flow from it? Are the organisation’s purpose, priorities and growth ambitions understood beyond the boardroom?

From there, the focus moves to the fundamentals of market strategy: clarity of proposition, definition of ideal customers, segmentation, and competitive positioning. Leaders should be able to answer, consistently and confidently, who the organisation is for, what problems it solves, and why it should be chosen.

As the panel noted, where these answers differ by function or seniority, marketing execution will inevitably fragment.

2. The Leadership Lens: Who truly owns marketing direction?

Diagnosis then turns to leadership and governance. Not simply who carries the job title, but who holds authority, influence and accountability for marketing outcomes.

This includes examining the relationship between the CEO, CFO and marketing leadership, the extent to which marketing has a voice in strategic decision-making, and whether the function is positioned as a commercial partner or a delivery service. It also involves understanding how leadership style, historical relationships and organisational politics may be shaping priorities and behaviour.

A critical part of this lens is psychological safety. Effective diagnostics create space for honest discussion without defensiveness, making it possible to surface structural issues without personalising them.

3. The Capability Lens: Are people and systems set up to succeed?

Capability is not simply a question of talent. The panel emphasised the importance of assessing whether teams are operating within a system that enables success.

This includes role clarity, skills depth, access to appropriate technology (such as CRM and marketing automation), and alignment with adjacent functions, particularly sales. In many cases, highly capable individuals are constrained by outdated tools, unclear processes, or unrealistic expectations.

The diagnostic asks not “Are they good enough?” but “Are they equipped, supported and structured to deliver what the business now requires?”

4. The Process Lens: Is there a repeatable, strategic planning backbone?

Process provides the connective tissue between intent and execution. Here, the focus is on whether the organisation operates with a coherent planning framework that links situation analysis, objectives, strategy, tactics and control.

Without this backbone, activity lists masquerade as plans, and learning fails to compound. The panel highlighted the value of disciplined strategic frameworks, such as SOSTAC®, in creating shared language, clear prioritisation and structured review cycles. The goal is not bureaucracy, but repeatability and clarity.

5. The Reporting Lens: Does insight drive decision-making?

Finally, attention turns to measurement and control. Effective reporting does more than describe what has happened; it informs what should change.

Leaders should examine whether current metrics provide actionable insight, support prioritisation, and enable timely course correction. Are commercial indicators such as pipeline quality, conversion efficiency and customer value visible? Are reports used to challenge assumptions and improve decisions, or simply to justify past activity?

As the panel observed, the absence of meaningful control mechanisms often allows dysfunction to persist longer than it should.

Taken together, these five lenses form a practical, leadership-level framework for diagnosing marketing dysfunction and resetting performance. They move the conversation away from tactical optimisation and toward structural alignment: ensuring that strategy, leadership, capability, process and governance are working as a coherent system.

In the next section, we will bring these insights together and outline what effective resolution looks like in practice — and why early intervention is one of the highest-leverage decisions leadership teams can make as they enter a new planning cycle.

From Dysfunction to Direction: What Effective Resolution Really Looks Like

The discussion across the roundtable made one point abundantly clear: marketing dysfunction is rarely the result of poor effort or weak intent. It is the natural outcome of growth, complexity, and pressure colliding with leadership structures that have not yet evolved to match them.

In every example shared, the turning point was not a new campaign, a new tool, or a change of agency. It was clarity of ownership, alignment of strategy, and the introduction of senior judgement at the right level. When leadership teams created space to step back from activity and examine the system shaping it, the path forward became visible remarkably quickly.

Resolution, in this context, is not about fixing tactics. It is about restoring coherence.

That means:

• Re-anchoring marketing to business strategy and commercial outcomes
• Establishing clear leadership authority and decision rights
• Ensuring capability, process and technology are fit for current scale
• Introducing governance and reporting that inform decisions, not just describe activity
• Creating a shared language between marketing, sales, finance and the board

When these elements are aligned, something important changes. Marketing stops feeling like a constant source of uncertainty and starts behaving like a controllable growth system. Confidence replaces defensiveness. Focus replaces noise. And performance becomes easier to sustain, not harder to achieve.

Perhaps most importantly, the energy inside the organisation shifts. As the panel observed, high-performing marketing functions feel different. There is momentum rather than friction, clarity rather than confusion, and a sense that effort is compounding rather than being dissipated.

This is why early diagnosis matters. Dysfunction is rarely self-correcting. Left unaddressed, it erodes trust, capability and commercial confidence. Addressed deliberately, it becomes an inflection point — an opportunity to reset leadership, strengthen strategy, and build a platform for predictable growth.

A Final Reflection

If any of the patterns described in this discussion feel familiar — reactive planning, unclear ownership, misaligned reporting, or marketing that feels busy but hard to trust — it may be a sign that your organisation is operating with yesterday’s leadership model in today’s environment.

Many leadership teams begin by running a short, structured diagnostic across the five lenses outlined above: strategy, leadership, capability, process and reporting. Some prefer to explore this through a quiet, no-obligation conversation. Others start with an online diagnostic to assess where clarity and alignment may be missing.

Both approaches are designed to provide insight before action — and direction before activity.

In environments where growth matters, and confidence in marketing is commercially critical, that pause for diagnosis is often the highest-leverage decision leaders make at the start of a new planning cycle.

If themes in this discussion resonate...

If any of the themes discussed here reflect what you are seeing in your own organisation — whether it’s reactive planning, unclear ownership, misaligned reporting, or marketing that feels busy but hard to trust — it may be useful to pause and sense-check what is really driving performance.

We offer a no-obligation consultation with one of our Chartered, board-level marketing leaders to help you explore whether your current marketing leadership, strategy and capability are aligned to the scale and ambition of the business.

The intention is not to sell a solution, but to provide an informed external perspective and help you clarify where the real constraints — and opportunities — may lie. Feel free to contact us when the time feels right.

About VCMO

VCMO is a UK-based provider of fractional marketing services, supporting B2B SMEs—ranging from funded scale-ups to mid-tier and private equity-backed businesses—through key moments of growth and transformation. Its Chartered Fractional CMOs and SOSTAC® certified planners embed strategic marketing leadership into organisations navigating product launches, new market entry, acquisitions, and leadership gaps.