Real work · CData · People leadership
Leading through leaders, not becoming the decision bottleneck.
A Director's job is not to make every campaign decision personally. It is to build the clarity and accountability that let managers lead their teams.
As Director of Demand Generation at CData, I directly managed three Senior Managers, each responsible for their own team. Hiring, coaching and performance reviews were part of the role.
Scope and challenge
Three managers. Three teams. One operating direction.
With demand priorities moving across teams, the challenge as I saw it was to set consistent expectations without centralizing every choice. A queue of decisions waiting on the Director would have constrained the managers rather than strengthened the organization.
How I led the managers
Set decision rights
Clarify which decisions belong with each manager, which need cross-team coordination, and which come to me.
Make priorities explicit
Translate demand objectives into owned priorities, dependencies, reporting expectations and trade-offs, so the teams can execute without waiting on every approval.
Coach for judgment
Use coaching and performance reviews to develop the managers and sharpen how their teams recognize when to act and when to escalate.
These describe how I approached the role, looking back. They are not a formal RACI, scorecard or management experiment deployed at CData.
What I was accountable for
Autonomy for the managers. Accountability with me.
- Coaching and performance reviews for my direct reports, and hiring within the role.
- The priorities, dependencies and trade-offs across their teams.
- The decisions that needed a Director, including channel and vendor investment.
No team sizes or measured management outcomes are claimed, and CData's SQL and pipeline growth is not attributed to how the teams were managed.
Examples from the role
Coaching and cadence, not more approvals.
Coaching a lead to set shared rules
I coached my nurture lead to build shared communication rules across Field Marketing, webinar and Sales teams, so nurture education would not be crowded out.
Making learning part of the cadence
Execution volume was crowding out analysis, so I introduced structured post-mortems, asking each team to capture what worked, what did not, and what to change next.
These are examples of practice, not measured results. No performance change for any team or individual is claimed.
Contact
Building a demand team that has to scale?
I bring manager-of-managers experience alongside cross-functional GTM systems leadership, and I am open to full-time Senior Manager, Director, and Director-track roles.