Many VP and Director-level marketing leaders are skilled at managing upward, presenting results that signal competence and control, even when the reality underneath is more complicated. But when the version that reaches the CEO consistently outpaces what’s really happening in the department, it creates a quiet organizational problem: decisions get made against a picture that isn’t accurate. This article looks at why marketing leaders curate upward, what it costs when that becomes a pattern, and what a different kind of transparency looks like in practice.
If I asked your CEO a direct question about the current state of Marketing and I asked you – would I get the same answer?
You know the day-to-day reality in your department:
The submission form on the campaign landing page that broke, pausing leads for a week.
A key vendor relationship that used to work but now you’re pushing them for innovation (and not the other way around).
Reporting that looks cleaner than it is because someone spent five hours on Friday making it look that way…
You know exactly what’s going on.
But by the time that reality reaches the CEO… it’s been translated.
The rough edges smoothed out.
Marketing leaders add context and shape a narrative, so it reads as managed. The progress is presented, not the hairball underneath it. And because a marketing leader is genuinely good at their job, the messy middle stays invisible.
The problem isn’t the translation. It’s what it hides.
I’m going to push back on my own subhead here: the translation is also a problem. I can tell you from experience that a CEO appreciates getting the straight goods from you – because they get a sanitized version of reality from almost everyone. But that’s a thought for another day.
Back to the translation.
When the version upstairs is consistently more polished than the reality underneath, the organization can’t accurately assess what marketing really needs. Budget decisions get made against the tidy version. Timelines for the supporting technology you need get set against it. Expectations solidify around it.
And then you’re accountable to a picture you painted, not the one you’re living in.
I’ve sat with marketing leaders who are exhausted by exactly this.
Not because they haven’t been fully transparent.
Because they’ve absorbed the implicit message that their CEO, CFO and executive peers want confidence, momentum, and certainty. So that’s what gets served up.
The messier truth is that the infrastructure is not set up for this stage of growth.
Team members cycle between “handling it” and overwhelmed by the volume of work.
Results are still variable – truth is, you can’t guarantee consistency and/or an upward trend.
(What happens in Marketing, stays in Marketing, right?)
The gap between what marketing is and what marketing reports itself to be is one of the quietest forms of organizational risk there is.
Closing it doesn’t require a confession.
It requires a leader who is willing to make the real picture visible on their own terms.
In practice, that means doing the work before the conversation.
A real audit, not a narrative.
And then it’s a reset moment with your CEO. Cards on the table. Here’s what we’re working with, here’s what we need, and here’s a concrete path forward, including strategy, cost, timeline, resources.
Before you’ve had it, that conversation can feel risky. It almost never is.
Working forward from reality will be a relief.
