By Jeanine Moss & Nicole DeMeo
Every organization has moments that don’t fit neatly into a plan. The question is who you call when they happen.Â
What CMO Office Hours Actually Is
Not every challenge arrives on schedule. A competitor makes an unexpected move. An investor takes issue with something in your deck. A crisis breaks on a Friday afternoon. A once-in-a-moment opportunity appears with a 48-hour window. A junior team member needs guidance their organization cannot currently provide.
These are the moments that define outcomes – and they are precisely the moments most organizations are least equipped to handle well. Not because they lack talent, but because they lack immediate access to the kind of seasoned, been-there-done-that expertise that knows exactly what to do and can move without hesitation.
That is what CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Office Hours is built for.
Elite Advice, On Demand
Outfront reserves dedicated hours for the leaders and organizations it works with, available whenever something arises that requires experienced strategic judgment. Not a ticketing system. Not a scheduled monthly check-in. Real access, in real time, to people who have navigated the full spectrum of what leadership and communications demand.
The range of what gets handled during office hours is deliberately wide. On any given day it might be an email to a leader you want to recruit for an important volunteer role, a response to a complex client situation, talking points for an all-hands meeting, or a message to an investor who has raised a concern. It might be coaching a team through sensitive negotiation, advising on a technology implementation, or helping a junior team member think through a decision they have never faced before.
The common thread is not the type of challenge. It is the need for clear, experienced thinking, fast.
Crisis Is Where It Matters Most
Outfront’s founders are seasoned crisis communications experts who have guided organizations through some of the most consequential moments imaginable – natural disasters, social and political upheaval, reputational threats, and the kind of high-stakes situations where the wrong word at the wrong moment causes lasting damage.
That expertise is available through office hours. When something difficult breaks, and for any organization operating at meaningful scale, something difficult always eventually breaks, clients have immediate access to people who have seen worse, stayed calm, and know how to lead through it. We help leaders assess the situation clearly, determine what needs to be said, to whom, in what order, and through which channels. We help them avoid the most common and most costly crisis mistakes: saying too much too soon, saying too little too late, or letting silence be interpreted as guilt.
Opportunity Is The Other Half
Crisis is only half of what office hours addresses. The other half is opportunity, the moments that require the same speed and precision but in a more expansive direction.
Creating a new alliance. Convincing a supplier who has not said yes yet. Approaching a policy-maker with something that needs to land exactly right. Submitting a brief that has to be both technically sound and strategically persuasive. Extracting commitments from committee members who are not yet convinced. These are high-stakes communications moments that require craft, experience, and a clear understanding of what the other side needs to hear in order to move.
During office hours, we may co-author the communication directly. We may build a decision tree that maps out how different responses should be handled depending on how the situation develops. We may advise on the sequencing – who hears what, when, and why the order matters. Whatever the moment requires, we bring the thinking and the craft to bear on it immediately.
The Junior Team Problem
One of the most underappreciated functions of CMO Office Hours is what it does for organizations that are growing faster than their marketing and communications leadership can keep pace with.
Not every organization has a Chief Marketing Officer. Many have talented junior teams doing exceptional work without senior strategic guidance above them. Office hours fills that gap – giving those teams access to experienced mentorship, strategic direction, and the kind of confident decision-making that comes from having navigated these situations before. It is not supervision. It is the senior voice in the room that every team needs and not every organization can yet afford full-time.
What It Is Really For
CMO Office Hours was created to address three things that quietly undermine organizational momentum: the things that fall through the cracks because no one owns them, the timely opportunities that disappear because no one moved fast enough, and the obstacles that stall progress because no one knew how to get around them.
It is embedded strategic leadership without the overhead of a full-time hire. It is the expert in your corner, available, experienced, and ready, for whatever the day decides to bring.
Next in the Nutshell Series: The Whole Leadership Practice, In a Nutshell – The most sophisticated strategy in the world runs on human energy. What are you doing to sustain yours?
Previously in the Nutshell Series:Â
