What's the CEO's problem?

I was all ready with an idea for this week's 2¢, when a post from Chris Ross at Gartner flittered through my LinkedIn feed.

In it (and I will have to include a link in the comments, as that’s the law), he talks about how CMOs need to be AI savvy, not because of all this flim-flam about how someone who uses AI will take their jobs, but because the CEO needs them to be.

CEO’s have pressures of their own - they need to be seen to be doing something with AI, as he says,

“boards and investors expect a coherent AI story, and a CEO without one may not be a CEO for long”

So here it is: the opportunity for a seat at the big table, with a key to the executive washroom of influence that senior marketers have been craving.

I’ve paraphrased Chris there (or maybe I should say Mr Ross, as he is the don of CMO writing), and his example of AI got me thinking more generally:

What’s the CEO’s problem?

What is it that we can do to understand that, help with it, and communicate back in the language of the business problem?

And I don’t mean sycophantically providing them with a “yes person” - they’ve got ChatGPT for that - but a clear understanding of what will get them fired.

It’s the message we preach with content marketing:

What better way to build trust than to be helpful?

We’ve built our careers on understanding the buyer, and subscribing to this content marketing mantra, yet how often do we take a glug of our own champagne, glance up the hall, and ask:

What’s the CEO’s problem?