According to a new “Marketers Stress Report” by Workfront, 80% of CMOs are feeling overworked and understaffed. Much of the job stress is directly related to how work is managed. Among the factors leading to high stress and high turnover are:

• Inadequate resources to manage projects (not enough team members, poor communication) 
• Inefficient processes, delays in acquiring approvals causing missed deadlines and work overload
• Working over a 40-hr work week on a regular basis
• Constantly trying to prove their value in a constantly evolving environment
• Constantly putting out fires

Combine all of that with the added pressure of grappling with how to make sense (and profit from) huge amounts of data aggregated from multiple digital platforms and you’ve got a formula for burnout, says health psychologist Mala Matacin, PhD. Matacin is an associate professor at University of Hartford in Connecticut. Her research centers around issues of gender and health in a variety of social and developmental contexts.

“Given the responsibilities of CMOs, I am not surprised that the average tenure is just over two years," she says. Marketing (look at the dramatic increase in social media) is changing a great deal and trying to keep up with new technology, advertising, etc. may just be too much to ask one person to be responsible for. A recent article from McKinsey.com suggests few senior-executive positions will be subject to as much change over the next few years as that of the chief marketing officer.

What’s a CMO to Do with All that Stress?

Traditional approaches, such as multi-tasking, don’t seem to work anymore.

“In the work-world, multitasking is almost a necessity and an expectation for employees. But, in the stress, wellness, and health psychology field, multitasking is known as a source of stress,” Matacin says. “When people can fully concentrate on one task (or primarily one task) at a time, they are more productive. They feel accomplished, and are less psychologically stressed.”

Another source of stress has become unavoidable for the CMO: “Technostress” is the angst created by technology. It used to be that technology was an aspect of work to help one perform a job better. Now the tool has become the focus of many jobs and, in digital marketing, the CMO’s world revolves around it. Today’s marketing technology produces vast amounts of data but marketers are struggling to make sense of it, let alone figure out how to profit from it.

Matacin says asking the question “what can an individual do to ease stress” puts the pressure on the individual rather than the organization.

“If companies asked the question, what can we do to make our employees happier, then we would have a very different work environment. The field of Positive Psychology has burgeoned in the last couple of decades and studies generally indicate that supportiveness, rather than pressure, in one’s environment (including work) makes employees more committed, productive, and happier.”

What’s also interesting, says Matacin, is that “CMOs may be one of the few corporate positions where there is the same number of women as men.” She thinks organizations need to look at the real and important needs of all employees, men and women alike, in terms of work-life balance and on-the-job success.

“As long as the environment is so pressured, what a single person does can be helpful, but I think that organizations are the ones who need to shift. Nowadays, there is little time “outside the office”—you can be on 24-hours a day. With that being said, there are many strategies that have been shown to decrease stress—things like exercise, meditation, diet, spending time off-line, getting sufficient sleep and making time to connect in person with friends, are no different for high-level executives than anyone else.”

Resources

• 'The Evolving Role of the CMO,' David Court, McKinsey&Company
• Why do Chief Marketing Officers Have a Short Shelf Life?', Forbes.com.
• 'Friday Five: The Stress of Marketing,' Andrew Careaga Blog   
• 'Stress in the Spotlight: Managing and Coping with Stress in the Workplace,' Claridge, B. & Cooper, C., (2014) Springer Publications. * Includes chapters featuring interviews with CMOs. CMO Council. “Predicting Routes to Revenue.” White Paper.