Insight

I've been thinking a lot recently about what the next generation of CMO looks like.

For most of my career, I've believed marketing was fundamentally about one thing.

People.

Understanding them. Moving them. Creating brands they remember. Building trust. Winning hearts before wallets.

If you'd asked me what made a great marketing leader, that would have been my answer.

And it still is.

In fact, I think AI has made those skills even more valuable.

When everyone can generate content, strategy, images and code, understanding humans becomes one of the few things that doesn't get commoditised.

That's why I believe Humanizing B2B has become more important than ever.

But over the last twelve months I've had a nagging feeling. Something else has changed. Something much bigger than AI. I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Then I found myself reading about learning organisations. Knowledge graphs. Collective Intelligence Systems. Organisational memory. At first they felt like completely unrelated ideas. Then suddenly they clicked. They were all describing the same thing. Not better marketing. Better systems.

And that led me to a phrase I'd heard dozens of times before but never really appreciated.

Systems thinking.

Here's what I think it actually means.

Most marketing leaders have been taught to optimise activities. Improve the campaign. Improve the website. Improve the creative. Improve the sales deck. Improve the CRM. Improve the content. Systems thinkers do something different.

They stop looking at the individual parts...and start looking at the relationships between them.

Customer research shapes positioning. Positioning shapes messaging. Messaging shapes sales conversations. Sales conversations generate new insight. Insight improves campaigns. Campaigns create new learning. Learning strengthens the brand.

Everything is connected. Everything.

The question stops being...

"How do we make this campaign better?"

It becomes...

"How do we build a marketing organisation that gets smarter every single day?"

That's systems thinking.

And I think it's about to become one of the defining skills of modern marketing leadership.

Here's why.

Businesses don't have an AI problem. They have a memory problem.

Think about how much intelligence your organisation creates every year. Customer interviews. Brand research. Campaign data. Sales calls. Competitive insight. Messaging frameworks. Creative ideas.

Now ask yourself...

• How much of that intelligence will still be easy to find two years from now?
• How much will automatically improve the next campaign?
• How much will make the next new starter brilliant in their first week?
• How much disappears into PowerPoint, or Slack or somebody's laptop?
• Or walks out of the building when someone leaves?

For centuries, we've accepted organisational forgetfulness as normal. Almost as if it's the cost of doing business. I don't think it has to be anymore.

That's where AI gets really interesting.

The first wave of AI asked:

"How can we do more work?"

The next wave asks something far more important.

"How can our organisation become more intelligent?"

Those are completely different questions.

One is about productivity. The other is about capability. One saves time. The other compounds knowledge. One makes individuals faster. The other makes organisations smarter.

That's a systems challenge. Not a technology challenge.

Then Cannes happened.

Reading the reflections afterwards, I noticed something fascinating. Every conversation about AI eventually arrived back at the same place.

Humans.

Not because AI wasn't impressive. Because everyone eventually realised that brand, trust, creativity and emotional relevance haven't become less important. They've become more important. I completely agree. But I also think there was another message hiding underneath it.

Almost every discussion eventually became a conversation about how organisations need to operate differently.

• How knowledge flows.
• How teams connect.
• How learning compounds.
• How intelligence scales.

That's systems thinking.

Which is why I've landed on something surprisingly simple.

I think every modern CMO now has two jobs.

The first is to Humanize.

Create brands people remember. Build trust. Create emotional relevance. Win the market.

The second is to Systemize.

Create organisations that remember. Build systems that learn. Capture knowledge instead of losing it. Turn intelligence into a competitive advantage. Win inside the business.

One is your external operating system. The other is your internal operating system.

For years, we've obsessed about building better marketing. I think the next decade belongs to leaders who build better marketing systems. Because here's the thing. AI will become available to everyone. Agents will become available to everyone. The technology will level out. What won't level out is how intelligently organisations operate.

That's why I've become fascinated by systems thinking. Not because I'm trying to become an operations expert. Because I think it's becoming a core leadership capability for anyone who wants to remain relevant as a CMO.

The challenge isn't choosing between Humanize or Systemize.

It's recognising that the future belongs to the leaders who master both.

Humanize the market.

Systemize the machine.

I have a feeling that's what the next chapter of marketing leadership looks like.