This is one of the most cogent breakdowns I’ve seen of how systems-level dysfunction gets misdiagnosed as departmental failure. The interstitium metaphor is powerful — especially in a corporate context where the connective tissue (cross-functional clarity, strategic cohesion, and honest diagnostics) is often invisible until it breaks.
What’s refreshing here is the refusal to scapegoat marketing or sales when the root problem is strategic incoherence. So many companies treat symptoms at the edge while ignoring the structural imbalances at the core. The truth is, until strategy gets operationalized across departments with shared language and real accountability, you’re just pushing sand uphill.
The reminder to create space for constructive truth-telling — not defensiveness or political maneuvering — is what separates companies that scale intelligently from those that implode silently.
The best early warning system I've found is tracking customer complaints across different departments. They always point to the root cause before your internal metrics do.
In Cambodia, the real problem that I had was my view that "things" were ever going to solve problems. We eventually changed from giving things away to supporting people with the knowledge and connections to empower themselves, themselves. While that alone wasn't going to solve anything, it had the potential to contribute to shifting the systems that were holding those problems in place.
Often times it is changes in mental models that are most needed. The mental model that "it is the department's fault" not the missing or misaligned interconnections in the system. The mental model that one employee is the "bad apple" when in fact, it is a system's problem, and no matter who you put in that role, they are fighting against the system that is not designed to help get the results of the management is wanting. Etc.
Another important component, is the belief that you can solve complex systemic problems. We focus on symptoms, but symptoms can't be "solved" - which is what we are trying to do in many of the examples that you give when people are holding a CMO or others accountable to systems problems. They are asking the CMO to solve a symptom. We can't solve a symptom, but we can contribute to shifting the system that is creating that result that we don't like. That requires a different lens and a different approach to the roles that each of us take in a company, or any other system.
I love this overview you have created through the CMO lens! Thank you for building on this work, Carilu!
This is one of the most cogent breakdowns I’ve seen of how systems-level dysfunction gets misdiagnosed as departmental failure. The interstitium metaphor is powerful — especially in a corporate context where the connective tissue (cross-functional clarity, strategic cohesion, and honest diagnostics) is often invisible until it breaks.
What’s refreshing here is the refusal to scapegoat marketing or sales when the root problem is strategic incoherence. So many companies treat symptoms at the edge while ignoring the structural imbalances at the core. The truth is, until strategy gets operationalized across departments with shared language and real accountability, you’re just pushing sand uphill.
The reminder to create space for constructive truth-telling — not defensiveness or political maneuvering — is what separates companies that scale intelligently from those that implode silently.
More of this, please.
Thank you!
thank you for sharing The Interstitium article. Fascinating
The best early warning system I've found is tracking customer complaints across different departments. They always point to the root cause before your internal metrics do.
So true! Voice of the customer is hard to ignore.
💯
Love this, Carilu!
In Cambodia, the real problem that I had was my view that "things" were ever going to solve problems. We eventually changed from giving things away to supporting people with the knowledge and connections to empower themselves, themselves. While that alone wasn't going to solve anything, it had the potential to contribute to shifting the systems that were holding those problems in place.
Often times it is changes in mental models that are most needed. The mental model that "it is the department's fault" not the missing or misaligned interconnections in the system. The mental model that one employee is the "bad apple" when in fact, it is a system's problem, and no matter who you put in that role, they are fighting against the system that is not designed to help get the results of the management is wanting. Etc.
Another important component, is the belief that you can solve complex systemic problems. We focus on symptoms, but symptoms can't be "solved" - which is what we are trying to do in many of the examples that you give when people are holding a CMO or others accountable to systems problems. They are asking the CMO to solve a symptom. We can't solve a symptom, but we can contribute to shifting the system that is creating that result that we don't like. That requires a different lens and a different approach to the roles that each of us take in a company, or any other system.
I love this overview you have created through the CMO lens! Thank you for building on this work, Carilu!