I’m a marketer who fell into the ‘empire-building’ trap. Now I know a bigger head count doesn’t mean better marketing.

Colin Piper, CMO of BuildOps, said he fell into an 'empire-building' trap.

Courtesy of Colin Piper A version of this post appears in the CMO Insider newsletter.

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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Colin Piper, CMO of BuildOps, an AI platform for commercial contractors.

Prior to that, he spent more than 10 years at Autodesk, eventually leading a large marketing team for its construction business vertical.

The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

Autodesk said in a statement that it has modernized and transformed its marketing department over the past four years.

Some people call it "empire building." You get your hands around your department, and you want to make sure it's growing.

The number of reports you have in your organization is directly tied to your worth at the company and, certainly, to the budget, which is very important to marketing.

I can absolutely relate to chasing some of that internal visibility and notoriety.

It's a trap that many people fall into, and I would say I did at Autodesk.

There were over 130 people globally just in my marketing department.

An unwieldy 30-person planning meeting There were so many layers of management that I felt like I was just managing people, not actually managing the business or marketing.

I got so far removed from the real day-to-day work.