Leadership Field Guide

A CMO Community Guide to Elevate Leadership & Decision-Making in the Age of Disruption

Drawing on insights from our executive Forums, Industry Roundtables, and ongoing conversations with more than 400 CMOs and senior leaders, the Leadership Field Guide (LFG) explores the leadership tensions shaping today’s operating environment and the ways leaders are beginning to respond. Organized around four interconnected themes, it offers practical lenses leaders can use to navigate complex decisions with greater clarity and confidence. The LFG is a living, breathing resource that we are releasing in phases and continuing to build upon as our Steering Committee helps to source and uncover more insights, examples and tools.

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Introducing the Leadership Field Guide

Mar 10, 2026 2:35:46 PM 5 min read

From Tension to Mechanism: What Enterprise Leaders Are Beginning to Build

Mar 3, 2026 11:37:26 AM 4 min read

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LFG Insights: Enterprise Leadership in an Era of Transformation

Mar 11, 2026 1:57:48 PM 5 min read

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LFG Insights: Human + Machine: Redefining Culture

Mar 11, 2026 2:03:45 PM 4 min read

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LFG Insights: Redefining Growth and Marketing Fundamentals

Mar 11, 2026 2:11:57 PM 5 min read

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LFG Insights: Societal Impact, Cultural Credibility, and Ethical Leadership

Mar 11, 2026 2:19:43 PM 5 min read

Enterprise Leadership in an Era of Transformation

The CMO role is evolving rapidly, shaped by the enterprise context. In some organizations, CMOs are the strategic architects of growth; in others, they must assert their place at the table as the voice of the customer. We will explore how CMOs align with the C-Suite to drive enterprise priorities, maintain authentic customer connection in an era when AI is reshaping research and insights, and build organizational resilience amid volatility. The focus is on strengthening the CMO as both a peer to the C-Suite and a strategic integrator—ensuring marketing remains a growth engine, not a support function.

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Human and Machine: Redefining Culture

As agentic AI becomes an embedded part of marketing organizations (projected to account for 20% of teams within 2-3 years) CMOs face the dual challenge of rethinking capabilities and protecting culture. We will examine how to design organizations for the future, balancing in-house, outsourced, and AI-driven work, while fostering team cultures of trust, clarity, and adaptability. It will also address the growing strain on leadership stamina and mental health, exploring how to sustain high performance without sacrificing well-being. The focus is on creating environments where human creativity, empathy, and resiliency thrive alongside machine intelligence.

Redefining Growth and Marketing Fundamentals

Marketing is being rewired from the ground up. Brand building and advertising are facing new channels, discovery models, and consumer behaviors that demand agility and reinvention. We will explore how CMOs can redefine growth in a world where advertising shifts from traditional search to AI-driven discovery, where consumers expect brands to meet them across fragmented ecosystems, and where global competition plays by vastly different rules on data and regulation. The focus is on rethinking how success is planned, measured, and delivered—ensuring marketing remains both credible to the C-Suite and indispensable to enterprise growth.

Societal Impact, Cultural Credibility, and Ethical Leadership

In an era of heightened expectation and scrutiny, marketers face a defining question: should brands play a role beyond their commercial value, and if so, when, where, and how? CMOs now sit at the intersection of trust, culture, and commerce, balancing the expectations of consumers,e mployees, and communities with the responsibility to drive growth. The challenge is not to assume that role automatically but to discern when purpose truly aligns with authenticity, enterprise value, and stakeholder trust. Leadership now requires discernment, the ability to act or to choose restraint responsibly and sustainably in a world shaped by transparency, polarization, and AI transformation.

100+ CMOs and other C-level executives from 7-Eleven, Adobe, Alexander Wang, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, AutoNation, Bath & Body Works, Canva, Chime, Chipotle, Colgate, Church & Dwight, Diageo, Electronic Arts, e.l.f. Beauty, Federal Savings Bank, Gallo, Gap Inc., GoDaddy, Goldman Sachs, Google, HP, H&R Block, Hilton, Hyatt, Indeed, IHOP, Instacart, Intuit, Kellanova, Kickstarter, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft, Land O’Lakes, LVMH, Lyft, Marriott, Mars, Mastercard, McCormick, Michaels, Moët Hennessy, Mondelez, New Belgium Brewing, Nike, Nvidia, Papa Johns, Paramount, Peet's Coffee, PepsiCo, Petco, Pinterest, Pizza Hut, Publicis, Ralph Lauren, SC Johnson, Scholastic, SF 49ers, Stagwell, Sony Music Group, Starbucks, The Cheesecake Factory, Uber, Unilever, U.S. Bank, Vans, VaynerMedia, Virgin Voyages, and more.