Imagine the weekly meeting of a company’s executive team. The chief marketing officer (CMO) reports that all marketing metrics are on the rise. Brand awareness and web traffic are strong due to the latest ad campaign, which is loved by consumers and the press alike. Everyone is feeling good—until later in the meeting, when the CFO shares the latest financial results. Sales and market share are declining, and last quarter’s results are worse than ever. The CEO is frustrated. The company has a great reputation among customers, but impatient investors are clamoring for it to reverse the declines. How can the company bridge the disconnect and reignite the next wave of growth? Unfortunately, scenarios such as this one aren’t unusual these days. Company leaders are scrambling to find new avenues for growth, but economic uncertainty, unpredictable consumer behavior, fluctuating markets, and rapid geopolitical change have created a daunting environment. And often, an organizational glitch makes the challenge even greater. It’s not easy to find C-suite alignment, and that means it’s not always clear who is accountable for the customer. Responsibilities have become fragmented, spreading across marketing, sales, digital, and beyond as companies race to keep up with the evolving times by setting up new functions. Management has ballooned, with the average size of a Fortune 100 executive team increasing by half between 2020 and 2022 alone, according to executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles International. 1 When everyone is responsible for acquiring customers and driving growth, no one is. It’s a common issue. Using publicly available information, we analyzed the executive suites of Fortune 500 companies and found that companies with a single customer- or growth-oriented role in an executive committee (such as a CMO, chief commercial officer, chief revenue officer, or chief growth officer) see up to 2.3 times more growth than those with multiple roles. And even if the CEO has installed someone with that single role, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have also given that person full ownership and responsibility for the customer. The solution to this fragmentation is right under the CEO’s nose: Pull the CMO back to the center, have them align with the CFO, and get everyone moving in the same direction. Our newest research suggests that the disconnect between marketing and other parts of the business is growing wider. That wasn’t always the case. Marketing used to be the growth engine of every company . It championed the customer, demanding that CEOs focus on who was most important. It was responsible for everything the customer touched, saw, bought, and felt. It was the big integrator across an organization, bringing together different disciplines to focus on one thing: the customer. Marketing can still play that role and accelerate profitable growth. In this article, we explore the gap between marketing and business objectives. We examine how responsibilities for customers have become fragmented, how the impact of marketing can be unclear, and how marketing has become disconnected from the growth engine of many companies. Throughout this article, which builds on 2023 McKinsey research about the CEO–CMO relationship , 2 we share insights from our second McKinsey CMO Growth Research Survey, as 1 Alyse D. Bodine and Victoria S. Reese, “The evolution of Fortune 100 leadership teams, 2020 to 2022,” Heidrick & Struggles International, 2023. 2 Marc Brodherson, Jennifer Ellinas, Ed See, and Robert Tas, “ The power of partnership: How the CEO–CMO relationship can drive outsize growth ,” McKinsey, October 26, 2023. 2 The CMO’s comeback: Aligning the C-suite to drive customer-centric growth