From First-Time Leader to Trusted Voice in the Executive Room
Background:
When Alexandru I. Baltat stepped into a Head of Lifecycle Marketing role at Finom, he inherited campaigns, but no real strategy. CRM was being used as a distribution channel, not a growth engine.
At the same time, he was navigating a company-wide restructuring, managing a small team, and figuring out how to operate as a strategic leader, not just a strong individual contributor.
He did not need more tactics. He needed a different way to lead his team.
What challenges were you facing when we met?
I’d just stepped into a Head of Lifecycle Marketing role at a European fintech. The company had existing campaigns, but no real lifecycle strategy - CRM had been treated as a distribution channel, not a growth engine.
I was the first person in this seat, inheriting a small team, a cluttered tech stack, and competing priorities from every direction. On top of that, I was navigating a major org restructuring, and trying to figure out what ‘good’ looked like at this level of seniority.
I had the functional skills, but I’d never had to operate as a strategic leader in an environment moving this fast.
Did you evaluate other alternatives?
I just worked harder. More hours, more slides, more detail. I said yes to everything because I thought that’s what the job required.
I read books, took courses, and leaned on what had worked for me as an individual contributor but the gap between doing and leading a function was wider than I expected.
What was the experience like?
Andrew fundamentally changed how I think about my role. Before working with him, I was trying to be the best contributor on my team. He taught me that the job is to create the environment where great contributors thrive.
Systems, hiring, alignment, and communication, not doing all the work yourself.
He gave me frameworks I now use every week: always presenting two options with trade-offs instead of asking for permission, sending pre-reads before important meetings to shift from presenting to discussing, treating my team’s operating model like a franchise so I can delegate with confidence.
Any message to someone on the fence about working with Andrew?
Within five months, I went from a shaky first CEO strategic presentation to being personally invited by the CEO to present our activation strategy to the full leadership team.
Our CPO reached out to my manager twice, unprompted, to recognise the work.
The tools Andrew gave me made this possible: pre-reads before every high-stakes meeting so I could lead discussions instead of present, the two-option framework to negotiate trade-offs instead of absorbing scope, and engineering-style capacity management to make workload visible and defensible.
I repositioned lifecycle from a campaign execution service to a revenue engine, built a team operating model my CMO adopted as a department template, and finally built my first financial model after years of avoidance.