Takeaways from NVTC’s recent event on trust, tenure, and the relationship that makes or breaks your impact
If you’ve been in a CMO role for more than a year, you already know the statistic. Shortest tenure in the C-suite. You don’t need me to tell you why it stings—you live the pressure of it. What’s worth talking about is what actually moves the needle on that dynamic, and whether we’re being honest with ourselves about where it breaks down.
Last week, our NVTC Marketing & Growth Community hosted The CEO-CMO Compact: Earning Trust, Extending Tenure, Driving Growth—a conversation with three CEOs who were unusually candid about what they actually want from their marketing leaders. Janet Chihocky of Janson, Jennifer Felix of ASRC Federal, and Josh Resnik of FiscalNote said things out loud that most CEOs probably think but rarely articulate. If you work with a CEO, advise one, or are trying to figure out why a previous relationship went sideways, this conversation had some useful friction in it.
Here’s my read on what mattered.
They don’t want your answers. They want your instincts.
One of the most clarifying moments came from Josh: stop feeling like you need to have all the answers.
I know that’s not what most of us were trained to do. We show up prepared. We bring the deck, the data, the plan. We’ve been told—correctly, for a long time—that coming in unprepared is how you lose the room. But there’s a version of “prepared” that tips into performance, and CEOs can smell it.
Josh was blunt about this: presenting data as gospel (when you privately know the story is complicated) will erode trust faster than not having the data at all. The move isn’t to show up with less. It’s to show up with more honesty about what you know, what you’re testing, and what’s still uncertain.
Janet’s version of this was different, but rhymes: she wants to see that the CMO gets it—gets her, gets the brand, gets the client. That’s not a data problem. That’s a presence problem. And it’s the kind of thing that shows up in every room you walk into, whether you’re in front of her or representing the company without her.
Your job is translation—in both directions
Jennifer Felix offered the cleanest definition of the CMO role I’ve heard in a while: take the company’s strategy and translate it to the market, then take what the market is telling you and translate it back so the company can evolve.
That second direction is where most of us underinvest. We’re good at the outbound. We get the message right, the positioning sharp, the channels optimized. But how systematically are you actually feeding market intelligence back into the room where strategy gets made? Not survey data and win/loss reports—though those do matter—but the texture of what customers are hesitant about, what questions they keep asking before they sign, what they’re hearing from your competitors.
Janet framed it even more personally: build a relationship with customers, then come back and tell leadership what’s keeping the client up at night. That’s not a marketing deliverable, it’s a disposition. The CMOs who last tend to be the ones who see that as core to the job.
If you’re not in regular enough contact with customers to actually know what’s keeping them up, that’s the gap to close first—before the next campaign brief or board update.
Data removes opinions. Stories move people. You need both.
There was a productive tension in the room on this one, and I think it’s worth naming directly rather than smoothing over.
Janet made the case for story: data is an indicator, but story is the tip of the spear. Customers are looking for candor, not polish. Your job as a CMO is to know your brand’s story, believe that story, and make sure the whole organization believes it, too. Marketing isn’t a department—it’s a strategic function that runs through everything.
Josh made the case for data: being data-driven is the best thing you can do to remove ego from the room. Bring numbers, run tests, create objectivity. It’s harder for someone to override you with opinion when you’ve built an evidence base.
Both of these are right, and the mistake is treating them as competing philosophies. The story is what builds trust with customers and alignment internally. The data is what protects you when someone senior has a strong feeling that runs counter to what you know. You need both. If you’ve been leaning hard on one, it’s probably time to shore up the other.
Push back—but know when, and how
Every CEO on the panel said some version of: “I don’t want a yes-person.”
Josh was the most direct—he wants positive, respectful debate. He doesn’t want agreement that comes too easily. But once a decision is made, it’s made. No revisiting, no passive resistance. You debate hard, commit fully.
Jennifer added important texture here: the place for real pushback is 1:1, not in a public setting. That’s not about avoiding conflict—it’s about protecting the relationship so the conflict can actually be productive. If you’ve ever tried to push back on a CEO in a room full of their direct reports, you know how quickly it becomes about ego rather than substance.
Janet’s version was the most human: timing matters. Wait for the right moment. And when you bring the pushback, come with solutions, not just problems. “I feel your pain and here’s what I’d try” lands very differently than, “I don’t think that’s the right call.”
None of this is revolutionary, but it’s worth asking yourself: when did you last push back on something you disagreed with? If the answer is “I can’t remember,” that’s information.
What CEOs actually wish you’d do
A few concrete asks from the CEOs in the room that are worth taking seriously:
- Be proactive. Janet was emphatic—don’t wait for direction, and keep going until you’re told to stop. If you’ve been operating in a more reactive mode, especially with a new CEO or in a new environment, this is a signal worth heeding.
- Stay nimble. Josh wants to see teams testing something new every quarter, not relying on what worked last year. The environment is changing and your strategy should change with it. That also means thinking ahead about what skills you might need to bring in—not just what you have today.
- Listen to the business, not just the market. Jennifer’s ask was to deeply understand what drives growth for the company, and to keep asking that question. Not assume you know the answer from year one.
- Stop performing certainty. This one ran through the whole morning. The CMOs who build durable trust are the ones who tell the truth about what they know and what they’re still figuring out.
On AI: force multiplier or just distortion?
Because it’s 2026, the conversation of course closed on AI, and the framing was better than most I’ve heard. The question isn’t whether to use it—that ship has sailed. The question is whether you’re using it in a way that adds value or just adds volume.
Janet mentioned building AI tools with “relational codes”—essentially training outputs to stay true to the brand’s voice and texture. That’s the sophistication the moment calls for. Not AI that flattens everything into the same register, but AI that actually understands what the brand sounds like and why.
For those of us advising marketing teams, this is where I’d push: does your AI usage reflect your brand’s point of view, or does it just sand it down? The second one is a slow leak that’s easy to miss until the brand stops feeling like anything at all.
The through-line of the event, if I had to name it, was this: the CEOs who were most satisfied with their marketing leaders described people who acted like genuine partners—curious about the business, honest about uncertainty, proactive without being reckless, and deeply connected to customers.
None of that is particularly new. But there’s a gap between knowing it and actually doing it consistently, and that gap is where CMO tenure goes to die.
It’s a gap worth closing.