Build a marketing organisation that can execute the strategy
Marketing team design and operating-model support for businesses that need clearer roles, better priorities, stronger capability and more accountable delivery.
hitsuzendō aligns leadership, in-house teams, agencies, processes, budgets, technology and commercial measures around one practical way of working.
Built for businesses whose ambitions have outgrown their operating model
A marketing strategy can be sound and still fail in execution. Growth often exposes unclear responsibilities, missing capabilities, competing priorities and working practices that were never designed for the organisation's current scale.
- ✓The marketing team has grown reactively without a clear organisation design.
- ✓Roles overlap in some areas while important capabilities remain uncovered.
- ✓The Founder or CEO is still making too many day-to-day marketing decisions.
- ✓A new CMO or senior leader needs to understand and improve the existing function.
- ✓The strategy is agreed, but execution remains slow, inconsistent or fragmented.
- ✓Marketing, sales, product and customer teams are working to different priorities.
- ✓Too much responsibility sits with agencies and too little capability is retained internally.
- ✓Budgets and resources are spread across activity without clear commercial priorities.
- ✓Planning, approvals and reporting create work without improving decisions.
- ✓The business needs experienced leadership before making another permanent executive hire.
The decisions this work helps you make
- 1What should the marketing organisation be responsible for?
- 2Which capabilities should sit in-house and which should be supplied externally?
- 3Which roles and leadership layers are required now, and which can wait?
- 4Who should own each important decision, budget and commercial outcome?
- 5How should priorities be agreed and protected?
- 6How should work move from strategy through briefing, delivery, measurement and learning?
- 7Which agencies, suppliers and technology platforms still add value?
- 8How should marketing work with sales, product, finance and customer teams?
- 9Which measures should leadership use to evaluate performance?
- 10Does the business need a permanent hire, interim leadership or fractional support?
Where marketing execution gets stuck
The team is organised around historic roles rather than current priorities.
Job titles exist, but decision rights and accountability remain unclear.
Too many initiatives compete for the same people, budget and attention.
Planning is activity-led rather than commercially prioritised.
Campaigns move slowly because briefing, approval and ownership are fragmented.
Marketing and sales disagree about lead quality, ownership and follow-up.
Agencies operate independently without one integrated plan or clear accountability.
Technology has been added without simplifying the way the team works.
Reporting describes activity but does not help leaders make decisions.
Capability gaps are addressed through isolated hiring rather than organisation design.
Senior leaders spend too much time coordinating work that the operating model should resolve.
Six connected capabilities for stronger marketing execution
Support can focus on one immediate organisational constraint or connect the complete marketing operating model around the business strategy.
Marketing organisation and team design
Create a team structure based on the work the strategy requires rather than inherited job titles or reporting lines.
Typical work
- ✓Current organisation review
- ✓Target organisation design
- ✓Team-design principles
- ✓Leadership and management layers
- ✓In-house and external capability model
- ✓Role families and reporting relationships
- ✓Current and future capacity requirements
- ✓Phased organisation roadmap
Organisation recommendations should reflect the business strategy, stage, budget and realistic ability to recruit or develop the required capability.
Roles, responsibilities and decision rights
Clarify who owns the work, who makes each decision and how teams collaborate without unnecessary duplication or delay.
Typical work
- ✓Role purpose and accountability
- ✓Role charters
- ✓Responsibility mapping
- ✓Decision-rights framework
- ✓Cross-functional ownership
- ✓Leadership expectations
- ✓Approval and escalation paths
- ✓Governance forums and meeting purpose
hitsuzendō can define the commercial purpose and capability requirements of roles. Employment contracts, formal grading, employee relations and legal responsibilities remain with qualified HR and legal advisers.
Marketing planning and operations
Create a practical operating rhythm that connects strategy, priorities, budgets, campaigns, resources and performance.
Typical work
- ✓Annual and quarterly planning
- ✓Priority-setting framework
- ✓Campaign and initiative planning
- ✓Briefing and approval workflows
- ✓Budget ownership and controls
- ✓Resource and capacity planning
- ✓Marketing calendar and operating cadence
- ✓Performance reviews and learning cycles
Capability, leadership and team development
Identify the capabilities the strategy requires and create a practical route to build, recruit, access or strengthen them.
Typical work
- ✓Capability assessment
- ✓Skills and experience mapping
- ✓Leadership capability review
- ✓Capability-gap prioritisation
- ✓Role and hiring briefs
- ✓Candidate-assessment support
- ✓Team-development priorities
- ✓Knowledge transfer and playbooks
- ✓Change and adoption support
hitsuzendō can support role design, hiring priorities and candidate assessment but does not operate as a recruitment agency unless a separate specialist recruitment service is explicitly agreed.
Agency, supplier and partner management
Create a clearer external-partner model so agencies and suppliers extend internal capability rather than fragmenting ownership.
Typical work
- ✓Agency and supplier review
- ✓Scope and responsibility mapping
- ✓Agency-model design
- ✓Briefing and governance
- ✓Performance measures
- ✓Fee and resource transparency
- ✓Supplier rationalisation
- ✓Pitch and selection support
- ✓Transition and onboarding planning
Procurement, legal and relevant specialist teams should remain involved in contractual, regulatory and supplier-risk decisions.
Performance, technology and cross-functional alignment
Connect marketing delivery to the systems, data, teams and commercial measures required to improve performance.
Typical work
- ✓Marketing performance framework
- ✓Executive and team scorecards
- ✓Marketing and sales alignment
- ✓Product and customer-team alignment
- ✓Workflow and technology review
- ✓CRM and marketing-platform ownership
- ✓Data and reporting responsibilities
- ✓Commercial feedback loops
- ✓Continuous-improvement priorities
This work defines requirements, ownership and operating practices. Detailed platform selection, configuration or implementation can involve the appropriate technical specialists.
Marketing operations and RevOps are connected, but not identical
Marketing operations focuses on how the marketing function plans, resources, delivers and measures its work. Revenue operations connects marketing, sales and customer-success processes around pipeline, forecasting, systems and revenue performance.
Where the primary challenge concerns pipeline management, sales operations, CRM architecture or revenue forecasting, the Revenue Strategy and RevOps service may be the more appropriate starting point.
What you can bring hitsuzendō in to do
- 01
Diagnose
Review the organisation, capability, work, resources and operating practices to identify the constraints affecting execution.
- 02
Design
Create the target organisation, roles, operating model, governance and implementation roadmap.
- 03
Clarify
Establish priorities, accountability, decision rights and cross-functional ownership.
- 04
Enable
Improve planning, workflows, leadership capability, agency management and performance reporting.
- 05
Embed
Help leaders and teams adopt the new structure and ways of working through practical implementation support.
- 06
Lead
Provide fractional, interim or project-based executive leadership while the organisation builds its permanent capability.
How the engagement can be structured
The right structure depends on whether the business needs an independent diagnosis, a defined organisation project or leadership through a period of change.
What the first 90 days can look like
A wider organisation and operating-model programme can follow this structure. A focused diagnostic, role-design or agency-review assignment may be completed over a shorter period.
Understand the organisation and the work
- ✓Review the business strategy, marketing priorities and current organisation.
- ✓Map roles, responsibilities, capabilities, agencies and important workflows.
- ✓Interview leadership and key cross-functional stakeholders.
- ✓Review budgets, planning, governance and performance reporting.
- ✓Identify immediate capability, ownership and execution constraints.
Output
A current-state diagnosis, capability map and prioritised set of organisational issues.
Design the target operating model
- ✓Define the purpose and responsibilities of the marketing function.
- ✓Create the target team structure and organisation principles.
- ✓Clarify roles, decision rights and cross-functional ownership.
- ✓Design the planning, workflow and governance model.
- ✓Prioritise capability, hiring, agency and technology requirements.
Output
A target marketing operating model and phased implementation roadmap.
Implement and embed the change
- ✓Introduce the new planning and governance rhythm.
- ✓Support leaders and teams in applying their responsibilities.
- ✓Improve priority workflows and cross-functional coordination.
- ✓Begin agreed hiring, agency or supplier changes.
- ✓Establish performance reviews and continuous-improvement actions.
Output
A functioning operating rhythm with clearer ownership, priorities and leadership accountability.
What the business receives
How improvement can be measured
Measures should reflect the purpose of the operating-model change and the commercial work the team is expected to deliver.
Clarity and governance
- ✓Role clarity
- ✓Decision ownership
- ✓Approval time
- ✓Escalation frequency
- ✓Cross-functional accountability
Planning and delivery
- ✓Priority completion
- ✓Campaign cycle time
- ✓On-time delivery
- ✓Unplanned work
- ✓Resource and capacity visibility
- ✓Budget allocation against priorities
Capability and organisation
- ✓Priority capability coverage
- ✓Leadership capacity
- ✓Time to fill critical roles
- ✓Internal and external capability balance
- ✓Adoption of agreed ways of working
Agency and technology
- ✓Agency performance
- ✓Supplier overlap
- ✓Technology utilisation
- ✓Workflow efficiency
- ✓External expenditure against defined priorities
Commercial contribution
- ✓Marketing-sourced and influenced demand
- ✓Customer acquisition efficiency
- ✓Campaign effectiveness
- ✓Pipeline contribution
- ✓Customer retention and value
- ✓Performance against agreed commercial objectives
Measures are selected according to the organisation's objectives and available evidence. They support accountability and improvement but are not presented as guaranteed outcomes.
Experience leading teams through growth and change
Andrew Duggan's experience includes leading marketing, commercial, digital, retail, customer and transformation functions within global organisations and fast-moving growth environments.
The work has involved team leadership, organisation design, budget allocation, agency selection, supplier governance, executive reporting and coordination across marketing, sales, digital, operations and customer-facing teams.
This combination of in-house executive leadership and advisory experience helps hitsuzendō distinguish between an organisation chart that looks logical and an operating model that can work under real commercial pressure.
Historical experience from Andrew's previous in-house and advisory roles is not presented as work delivered by hitsuzendō unless explicitly identified as such.
Frequently asked questions
What is marketing operations?
Marketing operations is the system through which marketing is planned, resourced, delivered, measured and improved. It can include priorities, budgets, workflows, technology, data, agencies, governance and performance reporting.
When should a business redesign its marketing team?
Common triggers include rapid growth, a change in strategy, unclear accountability, persistent capability gaps, fragmented agency use, slow delivery or the appointment of new executive leadership.
Can you review an existing marketing team?
Yes. The review can consider the work the strategy requires, current roles, capability, capacity, leadership, workflows, agency support and cross-functional dependencies. The objective is to improve the operating model, not simply reduce headcount.
Do you provide recruitment services?
hitsuzendō can help define roles, prioritise hiring requirements and support candidate assessment. Specialist recruitment delivery can be handled by an appropriate recruitment partner where required.
Can you help us manage agencies and suppliers?
Yes. Support can cover the agency model, scope, briefing, governance, performance, supplier selection and the balance between internal and external capability.
Can you work with an existing CMO or marketing director?
Yes. The work can provide independent diagnosis, specialist operating-model support or additional leadership capacity while preserving the authority of the existing executive.
What is the difference between marketing operations and RevOps?
Marketing operations focuses on how the marketing function works. RevOps connects marketing, sales and customer-success operations around pipeline, systems, forecasting and revenue performance. The two should align, but they solve different organisational problems.
Can you provide interim or fractional leadership?
Yes. Fractional or interim leadership can provide executive direction while the business implements change, develops its existing team or prepares for a permanent appointment.
How can the engagement be structured?
The work can begin with a rapid diagnostic, a defined organisation project, ongoing advisory support, or fractional and interim leadership.
Build the team and operating model the strategy needs
Whether you are redesigning the marketing function, clarifying accountability, improving execution or adding experienced leadership, start with the organisational constraint affecting performance most.