Resources · Matrix · Sent by email · Updated

THE MARKETING CAPABILITY MATRIX

What the plan needs, what the team has, and a deliberate decision about every gap.

What's inside

  1. 1

    Fourteen capabilities scored on a five-level scale

  2. 2

    The self-score versus manager-score comparison, usually the most useful conversation

  3. 3

    One decision per gap, train, hire, outsource or descope

One email with the file. One follow-up with a single question. Nothing else.

If you would rather have this done with you than to you, this is the work I do. See services

Match the plan against the people

The matrix puts what the plan requires next to what the team can actually do today, then forces a decision on every gap: train, hire, outsource, or drop the ambition. That decision is where capability work begins. The last option is the one most planning processes leave out, which is why so many strategies quietly assume capability that never arrives.

Use it before you approve the budget

Filled in after a plan is signed off, this becomes a list of reasons the plan is late. Filled in before, it changes what gets approved. The gaps do not go away by being discovered later, they just get more expensive.

COMMON QUESTIONS

What is a marketing capability matrix?

A grid mapping the skills a plan requires against the skills your team currently has, with an explicit decision recorded for every gap. It turns an assumption about capacity into a documented choice.

Should I fill this in with the team or about them?

With them. Filled in about people it becomes a performance review nobody agreed to. Filled in with them it surfaces the things individuals already know they are guessing at, which is the information you actually need.

What if every gap points at hiring?

Then the plan is bigger than the business, and that is a useful finding. The realistic responses are to sequence the plan so capability builds over time, or to outsource the parts that are genuinely specialist and keep the rest in house.