How to achieve your career goals ft. Deloitte’s CMO, Suzanne Kounkel

This is Grace Weekly, where you can find the best take-outs we have collected for you, taken directly from our “Smart Venture Podcast” and our interviews with the best of the best.

Did you miss our last newsletter and the best tips on how to become a better leader? Find it all out here in our interview ft. former co-CEO at Chipotle, Monty Moran.

This week will be about Deloitte’s CMO, Suzanne Kounkel.

Suzanne Kounkel is a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP and the Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte. She also ran Deloitte’s US Consulting Tech sector industry practice, one of Deloitte’s largest and fastest growing businesses. She sits on the Board of Directors for the Ad Council and is a member of the Adweek Diversity and Inclusion Council as well as ANA’s Global CMO Growth Council.

It’s all about the right choices.

How do you measure success? As an entrepreneur, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that success is simply a matter of ticking off a list of achievements. But in reality, success is much more.

“Eyes on the ball or you lose the game”

It's about making the right choices, learning from your mistakes, and growing as a person and a professional.

One way to do that? Learn from the journeys of people who have been there before.

Let’s dive into our interview with Suzanne and find out how to build an amazing career.

Parts of this newsletter are freely taken from our interview with Suzanne and adjusted for reading. Everything a person says in the interview only reflects his/her own opinion, not the newsletter or our brand.

GG: As a woman and a leader, what advice do you have for people that want to have a successful career?

SK: I believe that success is very personal. There are little things that make a difference. Making sure that you understand who you are and what you bring to the table is important. I joke that I play tennis to keep myself very humble, but part of what happens in tennis games is that you can't wait out the clock, you have to beat your opponent. One of the things that happen pretty quickly when you're playing tennis is that you can being led down a path where you're playing your opponent's game rather than your own. Know who you are, what you bring to the table that nobody else can or will, and then do that. I would often advise colleagues to lean in and actively participate in their work. Their contributions should be different, unique, and reflective of their individual perspectives, otherwise, there would be no reason for them to do that. I am a strong believer in working smarter rather than harder, so you need to be careful of where you spend your time. Be open to learning and growth. People often get stuck in their careers because they become comfortable in their routines. Push yourself outside of your comfort zone. If you're not feeling nervous at least once a week, it may be a sign that you're not challenging yourself enough.

When anxiety IS the deadline.

GG: At Deloitte, you held 8 different roles during your career. What is it about the company that attracts the best talent in the world and keeps employees engaged?

SK: I've been able to thrive and it has kept me curious and engaged for long because it is really all about engagement with people. Deloitte is invested in people making a difference. I want to make an impact, I don't want to just work for the sake of working or compensation. So I wanted an environment where I could do that, and feel like I have that every day. They are also very good about recognizing that the individual is important, they don't believe that they have omniscient knowledge about what would be right for "Suzanne" at this stage in her career, but they want to help. The way that we recruit, the way we develop people, and the way we do train and we do staffing, enables all of this. Every time I've thought about leaving - because asking myself “Am I in a spot where I'm doing the work I love and making the most impact?” it's a natural curiosity - every time I've had the chance to answer that, I've answered yes. That's why I've stayed at Deloitte all those years.

Find a workplace when Mondays aren’t like this.

GG: You have an ongoing series where you interview and have chats with CMOs and other C-level executives. What are some key learnings that you have developed after chatting with so many of them?

SK: It’s always fascinating to hear people's stories, and get inspired by what they are doing, and their energy. I learned that the "why" is more important than the "what". There is no perfect thing to do at a certain point in time with a certain set of tools. It's really about understanding how people think about things, which can lead to inspiration or help you make a jump from what worked in their environment to what could work in yours. Most of my inspiration comes from when I'm talking to people who don't do what I do the same way I do it. The world would be a simple place if it were like a puzzle with one right answer. The combination of what their company is trying to do, what are their skills and capabilities, and all of these coming together is how you would solve it. It's not as simple as saying, "I'm just going to talk to a bunch of people and somebody's going to say the magic I want to hear", but it is about the thinking process and how they're going about it. I may not be able to do exactly what they did, but if I can understand a little bit more about why they did it, that could lead me to some unusual things for me to try as well.

GG: How do you set KPIs for yourself? What are the core things that you needed to accomplish to be very successful in your role?

SK: The woman who was the CMO of Deloitte before I took that job, was a big marketing capability/operations person. She built a lot of capability and marketing ops support for the firm that we didn't have. That was her strength, and she's good at it. That is not my strength. And there was a reason; everything is always evolving and changing, both based on the external environment and the internal environment. So when I came in, I asked myself: "What are the things that I do that are different, and what does the firm need at this point that is different? Where does that come together?" I am a big believer in nested KPIs. So, there would my set of KPIs that I'm marching to, some that are a little bit longer term, and then there are some very specific, more traditional marketing goals that are being executed all the time, whether they're brand perception KPIs or campaign performance KPIs, sales targets, leads, or sales outcome KPIs. That integrated system keeps us all working together and rowing in the same direction.

You need to always adapt, even when life hands you over a Go-Kart.

GG: When the sales numbers and all these hardcore, concrete steps that evaluate your performance come in, you may make different choices about how or where the company should go or how you build the internal system. How do you balance out long-term and short-term goals?

SK: My advice would be, there are always leading and lagging indicators. You want to make sure that both are in there because obviously, your leading indicators will tell you before your lagging indicators hit. The other thing that I like to do when I come into a variety of roles is that if there are things that are going to take a long time to achieve, show people where you are going and what it will look like when you are done. Show them the important things we need to do before getting to that and tell them why. The biggest danger with short-term and long-term goals is that you lose the fortitude to get to the long-term goal. You get caught up in the short term, and you forget that there are these long-term goals. So part of it is just being dogmatic about laying out where you are going. You shouldn't get too caught up in the KPIs. They are a means of making sure that we're traveling on the right road. It's like when you use Waze, they're suggestions. But if you're a mile in and it says we've found a better route, take the route. You can adjust some of those things as you're on the journey.

“Grace Weekly - insights from the best every week”

So what do we take out from this? To achieve your goals in entrepreneurship you must approach it as a journey, rather than a destination. By constantly learning and growing, you can build a business that will not only succeed but thrive over the long term. And here at Grace Weekly, we have the tools for you to do just that.

Top takeaways from our newsletter this week:

Embrace what makes you unique.

Spend your time wisely.

Always challenge yourself.

The “why” is more important than the “what”.

Don’t be too caught up in KPIs

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