On one gig I did about three years ago, there was basically no ownership of marketing for the last six months. I started doing a bit more, then they brought in some new people and executives and sales guys and practitioners and what have you. Instantly, even though they kept barking about "leads" and "no progress," we ground everything to a halt for five months (so now 11 months) in order to do branding exercises and get the messaging right and all this other bullshit. At this point, they basically hadn't moved the needle a centimeter in a year and the executives were losing their minds and starting to fire guys. But it was all just meetings ... discussions ... no action ... nothing in the market ...