Biggest Challenges Faced by a Director of Marketing at Hedley and Bennett
Alice's biggest challenge as Director of Marketing at Hedley & Bennett is "stakeholder management," a skill honed through years of client service experience, requiring balancing daily priorities with long-term strategy while navigating the diverse needs of a founder, cross-functional teams, and customers. The complexity arises from needing to "get the right people's voices in the room," understanding personalities and skill sets to achieve alignment.
Stakeholder Management, Cross-functional Teamwork, Strategic Planning, Leadership, Communication
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Alice Khabituyeva
Director of Marketing
Hedley & Bennett
Trinity College (Hartford, CT) and 2017
UCLA Anderson
Economics
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
Communication and Marketing
Took Out Loans, Immigrant
Video Highlights
1. Alice's biggest challenge is stakeholder management, which involves balancing daily priorities with long-term strategic goals while incorporating input from various stakeholders including her boss, founder, cross-functional teams, and customers.
2. Effective stakeholder management requires understanding individual personalities and skill sets to navigate diverse priorities and achieve both short-term and long-term objectives.
3. This skill is transferable across various roles and is crucial for success, highlighting the importance of prioritizing and incorporating feedback from diverse sources
Transcript
What is your biggest challenge in your role?
My biggest challenge definitely is stakeholder management. I don't think that goes away in most roles, but as I've gotten more senior in my career, and as the companies have also gotten smaller, my stakeholders are my boss as the first stakeholder.
I'm at a founder-led company, so the founder is very involved in the company. I have to keep her in mind as a stakeholder. Our cross-functional teams, our product director is a stakeholder, the VP of Finance, who's in charge of budget, is a stakeholder.
And then of course, the team that I manage, and then customers, our CX team, everyone that actually orders the product and gives input. Anyone that is giving any sort of input or feedback should be treated like a stakeholder.
A lot of the challenge comes from not only having to prioritize day to day and then balance that against longer-term strategic execution, but it's also about getting stakeholder input along the way. How do you do it the right way? How do you get the right people's voices in the room?
You have to really know personalities, you have to know skill sets. You have to be able to navigate the people part of that in a way that aligns to what you're trying to do day to day and what you're trying to accomplish in the long run.
I think it's such a transferable skill. I learned it through all of my client service experience of how to navigate different priorities based on client input. It's something that is just sometimes lost, I think, as a skill set. It's super important and a big challenge.