Trying to help solve a dispute at my startup (Series B, 90 ppl), between comms and marketing. Let me try and play this out…
We’ve got a 5 person Marketing team run by a VP of marketing (let’s call him Mark). Pretty common setup. The person we’ve tapped to as Head of Comms (let’s call her Connie) reports to Mark. Also common setup.
The company sells widgets to a very niche market. Connie has a background communicating to this niche market. Mark does not, yet Connie reports to Mark.
Mark sometimes wants to push for comms tactics that Connie believes would be damaging for the company due to the sensitive nature of the business, and Mark’s boss often sides with Connie.
This is making Connie frustrated, and now she thinks she should not reports to Mark. Further hurting the situation, Mark is four years Connie’s junior, and the the original head of Marketing that Connie came to work for left about 6 months ago. Connie has only been here for about 8 months herself, but now has a “I didn’t signup for this” kind of view of the situation.
What’s a reasonable solution here? One solution we are kicking around is breaking the two functions apart. Since we deal with governments, the idea of an “External Affairs” team has come up, a plan where we make Connie a head of “Public Affairs” to combine with our Government Affairs lead + their 1099, who we might hire to support Connie. Does this seem like a reasonable idea?
Also- would this be more appropriate for a different sub?
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