Keith Ferrazzi - Leading Without Authority

When I was a young entry-level consultant at Deloitte in the 1990s, straight out of business school, I quickly discovered I wasnt cut out for building spreadsheets and crunching numbers. The work I was assigned left me feeling restless and bored, so I filled my off-hours doing things that were more interesting to me and, I felt, more beneficial to Deloitte. I made calls to ex-classmates, professors, and old employers to tell them all about my new employer and ask them for new leads. I booked myself as a speaker at small conferences all around the country on weekends, hoping to generate buzz and drum up business for Deloitte. I even organized a new business quality award in Illinois that advanced the states economic agenda while helping connect Deloitte Partners to regional business leaders.

The result? My first-year review was a humiliating experience Ill never forget. I just wasnt holding up my end of my assigned duties. But my supervisors saw promise in my hobby of generating new business for the firm. They decided to give me an expense account and set me loose to keep promoting Deloitte full-time, the same way Id been while off the clock.

In less than a year, I had developed an informal marketing function at Deloitte. With no one reporting to me and no real authority, I simply engaged everyone related to marketing that I could. I never let a title (or my lack of one) stop me. Early on, I asked to have dinner twice a year with Pat Loconto, Deloittes CEO at the time. During those meals, I did my best to be my authentic self, offering him my candid advice in the spirit of being of service to him and his legacy.

By leading without authority, I was determined to make an impact at Deloitte as we built a global brand name in the consulting business. I wasnt willing to wait ten years (typical at the time) to be anointed for some kind of leadership position. Instead, I built critical relationships with influencers inside and outside the company, and went on to become Deloittes chief marketing officer (CMO) and later its youngest-ever partner.

In 1994 I left Deloitte to become global CMO at Starwood Hotelsmaking me the youngest CMO at any Fortune 500 company at the time. This role, working with CEO Barry Sternlicht, gave me full authority over the marketing resources for all the companys divisions around the world. Together, we created a powerful global suite of brands that offered a consistent experience to our guests, no matter where they were. Over time, we consolidated Starwoods marketing resources, all in service of efficiency and global consistency, the same as our Deloitte team had done.

There was one person who fought my centralized authority. Starwoods head of Europe insisted that he and his marketing people were far better suited to decide where and how to spend Starwoods European marketing budgets. It was true that he knew the market more intimately, but my mandate was to invest in the global brand. We collaborated on European marketing, but he had to relinquish the control he would have liked.

Then Starwoods global president moved on, and guess who replaced him? Starwoods head of Europe. It wasnt long before I found my CMO position gutted, with most of my budget dispersed to marketing heads in regional divisions across the globe. My job was set to become a hollowed-out shell of what it had been; I was heading out the door.