What does a marketing director do?

What are some expecations of overall management capabilities for a Director-level marketing role at a tech startup?

• My boss an I are discussing my next professional milestone, currently labeled as a "Director" role.  We have a great relationship and, out of our own shared curiosity, are both writing our expectations of what key professional attributes you would expect from someone at a Director level at a startup (role-specific attributes will be a separate conversation).  My question for the Quora community - what are the 10 (or so) key attributes you would expect of someone in a Director level role at a 100-150 person, well-funded, tech startup?

• Answer:

  What a great question! Why don't others put the future of the startups and the future of professional development up for a reasonable debate? From my experience working at a startup (IT and manufacturing industries), it is a completely different animal compared to a huge company. Employees at smaller companies - and most importantly, startups - are just more motivated since their actions are easily translated into the impact to the customers and to the bottom line. They are also willing to take up duties just to get the job done, as opposed to being pigeonholed into a function with limited (yet clearly defined) responsibilities. Again, the response is "it depends". What is the structure of the startup? How far will you be from the CEO/president/founder/partners? Will you be influencing their decisions? Will you be leading the company (Director of Operations) or a part of the company (unit, branch, line - Director of Government Contracts)? Back to your question. You asked about the attributes. My own experience produced the following: humility even Directors don't know everything, and while they have a hand in how the company operates, they need to be honest about what they know and what they don't know: it's easy to fix the lack of knowledge but it's impossible to fix the appearance of knowledge existence loyalty a person needs to put company first: so regardless of the relationships and rapport that this person builds with others, sometimes tough unbiased decisions need to be made, and this person needs to make them on the spot without hesitation leadership this person will also need to inspire others to become leaders: not telling them what to do; to that extent delegation works but aside from the end result, the subordinate will need to be entrusted with the power to make certain decisions without having to run to you every moment of every day; enabling localized decision making is what separates a leader from the micro-manager (well, among other things) mindset though the person is about to be promoted, this person still needs to retain "can do" attitude, so in case a critical process requires support, even if it's something as small as performing subordinate duties for a day (if that person is out sick or has an emergency), it should not be below one's dignity to do it; if it needs to be done, it needs to be done, so this person needs to keep a bigger picture in mind - and the person needs to know what the subordinates are doing (business continuity). You had stated that you are being promoted - which means that you already know what it is like to be in regular operations, just make sure you don't lose touch with your roots ;) communications - internal: a great leader will always be available to the team, even if there is a huge deal pending or if there are already meetings scheduled with the senior management; problems on administrative level (behind the scenes) tend to turn up on the customer-facing side which is not acceptable and damage is not easily repaired - external: as a Director (sounds nice, doesn't it?) - you are entering a new realm of communications; from this point onwards, you will have an appearance of power to external entities(whether it's factual or not is beyond the point); with that, your emails can be forwarded, printed or otherwise sent to basically anyone, and anything that you say in your emails will be perceived as something that company had authorized to say. Yes, it's a whole new game from now on: if before you could have gotten away with a small typo now and then (be it spelling or grammar), now it will be unprofessional and you will become the face of the company. I would also suggest that you check the liability insurance at your place of work (for company's business and errors-and-omissions/professional) - you know, just in case. You may also want to look into communication courses or executive-level training - not because you need it but because you will need to be a little more eloquent than you are now. I don't know you and you are anonymous (bonus points for keeping your identity a secret) - but an executive who's about to become a Director would be in a position to come up with a response without posting in on Quora (meaning the level of your Bachelor of Science - read just the capital letters - aka eloquence needs to be very high). Thanks for a2a (no name given).