qWelcome to Narrow Lanes, I'm Greg Sobiech. This week, I spoke with Bob West, a leadership expert with an impressive career, including roles as Chief Strategy Officer at Palo Alto Networks and Executive Director at Deloitte. Bob is also the co-creator of the Medalist Mindset framework, which brings principles from elite athletics into leadership and team dynamics.

This conversation is all about what business leaders can learn from high-level sports. With the Olympics recently concluded, I was struck by how many winners credited visualization for their success. Bob opened my eyes to how visualization and goal-setting can be powerful tools for achieving business success, something I haven’t fully embraced until now.

Bob shares examples from his career and personal life, illustrating how leaders can unlock peak performance through his “Narrow Lane” approach. This includes key principles like mental toughness, authenticity, continuous improvement, and visualization.

If you’ve ever wondered how to bring Olympic-level focus to your business, this episode is for you.

From Delve Deeper, this is Narrow Lanes.

Today, I had a conversation with Peilin Corbanese, a powerhouse in digital transformation and business strategy.

Her accolades speak volumes about her knack for optimizing businesses through data, tech, and leadership.

Peilin's mission? To drive performance by linking data to technology and cutting through the noise with relevant truths.

She firmly believes that while chasing perfect data is important, businesses should keep making decisions with the data they have—even if it's not perfect.

Building deep relationships and empathy is key, pairing business savvy with data insights for better outcomes.

A successful strategy hinges on two elements:

Business optimization—the emotional side, focusing on team engagement and empowerment, and data-driven results—the logical side, emphasizing hard metrics like ROI and tech advancements.

As a performance marketer, I’ve always viewed business through the ROI lens. But I’ve learned that when you fuse business optimization with data-driven results, you unlock outsized success.

From Delve Deeper, this is Narrow Lanes.

Today, I had a compelling conversation with Gary Tickle, the former President and CEO of Nestlé Nutrition North America.

This guy is one of the sharpest marketers and leaders I've ever encountered. What struck me most was his emphasis on fostering a culture of experimentation within marketing teams. He put it bluntly: “We need to innovate and constantly add value to the customer, but to do that, you must give everyone permission to fail.”

Failure? It’s tough. Especially in marketing, where the stakes can feel sky-high. But here’s the kicker: success and real value are born from failing hundreds of times. Personally, I’ve learned far more from my failures than from my successes. Each misstep has been a stepping stone to something greater.

From Delve Deeper, this is Narrow Lanes.

Today I spoke with Ben Green, Chief Revenue Officer for Charity Water. 

Their mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to every person on the planet.

Whether you are in marketing - for a commercial minded - or mission driven organization - this conversation will be relevant. 

Ben shared with me his marketing philosophy, which he calls “Look in, Look up, Look out”. 

‘Looking in’ is about marketers not just owning - but dominating their most valuable audiences, their ‘superfans or superdonors’, with one simple message.

So much Marketing value - can be unlocked by looking IN first, and in this episode you’ll find out how. 

From Delve Deeper, this is Narrow Lanes.

Today, I spoke with Jennifer Garcia, who currently leads Product Marketing strategy at JP Morgan Onyx and has previously held senior roles at Instagram and Google.

With such extensive experience in big tech, I was curious about what drew her to financial services and how she proves the value of marketing in an industry historically less accustomed to embracing it.

In this episode, Jennifer unpacks the concept of ruthless prioritization. She defines it as focusing on the most impactful marketing efforts and blocking out noise, a theme central to Narrow Lanes.

This principle was hammered home for her by an ex-boss at Google who exemplified ruthless prioritization: he would regularly clear all meetings in his calendar to focus solely on one big project.

As much as I admire this approach, I struggle to implement it myself due to concerns about others' perceptions. Jennifer and I discussed the downside of prioritization, the stigma attached to not appearing busy, and strategies to overcome this mindset.

This conversation helped me wrestle with these challenges, and I left with clarity on how to be more focused and less guilty—insights I believe will be useful in your demanding role.

From Delve Deeper, this is Narrow Lanes.

Today I spoke with Jennifer Roberti, CMO at Save the Children.

They are on a mission to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic opportunities, as well as providing emergency aid in natural disasters, war, and other conflicts.

This episode is all about the need for marketers to have a long-term vision and the importance of taking calculated risks. 

Jennifer shared with me her insights on balancing the emotional and logical aspects of marketing, she emphasised the importance of both brand engagement and practical metrics. We also discussed the similarities between finance and marketing strategies when building for the long term and delivering outstanding results. 

Jennifer's philosophy revolves around building long-term relationships with diverse audience segments and continuously innovating to stay ahead of the curve. She also highlighted the personal challenges of balancing work and home life in today's fast-paced, remote work environment.

Navigating the complex landscape of marketing leadership is difficult. It requires you to drive meaningful engagement for your organization for the long and short term.

From Delve Deeper, this is Narrow Lanes.

Greg Sobiech speaks with high performing leaders to discover how brands create exceptional value and grow revenues for their business through obsession and sacrifice.

The leaders who succeed today are those who are relentlessly obsessed about a handful of the most important things.

Being ‘obsessed’ means channelling all your team’s energy into what really matters. ‘sacrifice’ means deliberately choosing to do the ‘hard things’ because they will deliver greater value in the medium to long term.

For each guest we explore their guiding principles, career history and obsession and sacrifice.

Welcome to Narrow Lanes.

This week I am speaking with Francesco DeFlaviis. Principal, Chief Advancement & Communications Officer at Partners In Health. 

Partners in Health is an International non-profit that provides healthcare in the poorest areas of developing countries. 

Francesco believes the only way for marketers to stay in leadership roles for 5 years plus, and have the runway to create lasting transformative value is to be polyvalent. This means that marketers can be useful in more than one way. This person must have both broad and deep expertise and experience.

He recommends that marketers get outside of their comfort zone, and take on many new roles, more often - to build up proficiency within areas where they currently lack experience.

For instance, Francesco believes that marketers need to be proficient in the application of 1st party data - to drive revenue growth. This is crucial because when 3rd party cookies go away, brands will need to embrace their own 1st party data if they want to grow.

This week I am speaking with Brian Rowley, who has held significant marketing roles at industry giants like Panasonic and Verizon, and now leads as CMO at BrightSign, a global leader in digital signage.

Brian shared his firm belief in the power of listening—a crucial skill for marketers aiming to truly connect with their audience. No doubt, we all understand the importance of communication that resonates with consumers, but to know and not to act, is not to know at all. How often do we step outside the office to engage directly with the people we're trying to reach? Perhaps, not as often as we should.

Reflecting on my own experiences at Digitas and Bath & Body Works, I realize that getting away from the computer screen and the endless spreadsheets to interact face-to-face with consumers was rare—something that needed to change.

Brian also touched on how the COVID-19 pandemic restricted his team's ability to connect in person with consumers, pushing them to discover innovative ways to understand and engage with their audience effectively.

This week I'm speaking with Allyson Klein, former VP of Marketing for Micron, and General Manager of Data Centric Marketing at INTEL. Currently, Allyson is a Principal at Arena Marketing, a leading marketing agency serving the technology industry. 

If there is one thing I want you to take from this episode it’s the profound impact of simplifying your message to your customers and being authentic in leadership and communication which has been a guiding principle throughout her career. 

This principle has helped her get to the highest levels of marketing leadership in multi billion dollar tech giants and has shaped her approach to marketing which is all about clear, genuine messaging as the cornerstone of corporate success.

Allyson forced me to critically evaluate my own approach to leadership and communication and I can say that I will be making some changes to how I run my company as a result.