Don’t hire help.Hire a decision.

A photographer is booked for Thursday. The marketing manager needs the CEO to choose between two campaign ideas. The CEO wants to know why there’s a campaign at all. Three capable people are now solving three different problems, and the photographer’s meter is running.

The usual response is to buy help. A new agency. A senior hire. A consultant to “bring some strategy”. Any of them can be right. Most of the time, none of them fixes the problem, because the problem isn’t a shortage of help. It’s that nobody owns the call.

My view: most “we need an agency” problems are “we need a decision-maker” problems wearing a pitch deck.

Find the job that’s actually vacant

Before you compare proposals, open last week’s calendar. Which decision kept coming back? Who should have been able to make it? What stopped them?

The answer tells you what you’re actually short of. Take an illustrative manufacturer that wants to grow its service business.

If the CEO can’t choose between mining sites and commercial workshops, that’s a choice about markets, margins and the ability to deliver. A consultant can help make it. A better brochure can’t.

If the company has chosen workshops, sales knows the good fits and the offer is sound, but nothing makes a workshop owner stop and look, that’s a creative job. Brief a good agency tomorrow.

If the work is ready but nobody can agree on price, sign off media or tell sales which leads to chase, that’s a leadership job. Someone needs the authority to pull it together every week.

Three different vacancies. Three different hires. Buy the wrong one and you’ll pay for capable people to wait.

Four ways to buy help

A consultant, when there’s a question worth answering. Market entry, a confused range, two sales teams telling different stories. Agree up front which decision the work should unlock and who’ll make it. Sort out implementation before the final presentation, or you’ve paid someone smart to tell a busy team what it doesn’t have time to do.

An agency, when you need things made and moved. A good one will challenge the strategy as well as make the work. Give it a named decision-maker, access to customers and a clear definition of success. If your last three agencies all waited a fortnight for approvals, the fourth won’t do any better.

A fractional CMO, when a recurring set of senior decisions needs an owner. They work part time inside the business. Agree which meetings matter, which calls they can make and who acts between their days. Capable specialists with nobody to make the trade-offs is a strong part-time remit. Six direct reports needing daily coaching and three live launches is a full-time job wearing a smaller price tag.

An internal hire, when daily presence is the value. A permanent marketer develops people, learns the awkward product detail and catches small problems early. Choose the level honestly. Expecting a coordinator to set strategy, manage agencies and chase artwork while waiting for permission to spend a dollar sets them up to fail.

These can coexist. What matters is that everyone can point to one person when a trade-off needs making.

Ask the Tuesday question

Before you sign anything, ask any prospective partner one unglamorous question: “If sales wants a discount and marketing wants to hold price, what happens on Tuesday?”

A good answer names who brings the evidence, who decides and who tells the customer. “We’ll collaborate” leaves Tuesday looking a lot like last Tuesday.

And sometimes the cheapest fix is internal. If your marketing manager is capable and simply lacks the authority they thought they had, give it to them. That costs nothing but a conversation, and plenty of businesses never have it.

Where Hum fits

Hum combines senior marketing leadership with a creative studio, and offers ongoing leadership in two ways. Strategic Compass is for businesses with momentum but no clear marketing owner. It sets direction, priorities and governance, and your team implements with regular check-ins. Lead The Charge adds operational leadership. It directs internal marketing resources, manages agencies and owns the quarterly outcomes.

If you already have a strong leader who needs another pair of hands, back them and buy the hands. It’s a legitimate answer, and we’ll tell you if it’s the right one.

What to do on Monday

1. Open last week’s calendar. List every decision that came back more than once.

2. Next to each one, write who should own it and what stopped them.

3. Sort the list: is the gap a question to answer, work to make or a decision to own week after week?

4. Write the one commercial decision you most need made in the next 90 days, and who’ll have the final say, including permission to stop spending.

5. Put the Tuesday question to anyone you’re thinking of hiring. Hire the one with the clearest answer.

Then go back to Thursday’s photographer. If you still can’t say who decides what gets shot and why, don’t sign anything yet.

Sources & notes

• Hum, Fractional CMO (Strategic Compass and Lead The Charge detail)

• The manufacturer and the Thursday shoot are illustrative.

Continue with The best thing about your business never leaves the building. If you want a next step, see Hum’s fractional CMO page.