Many companies are product, sales, marketing, or value driven (i.e. cultural values play a role in actual decision making across the board). In your experience, what has been the main function/stakeholder to lead, and how has that impacted your role as a marketing leader?

There is no right answer. It depends on the strategy - if it's more driven by self-service (PLG) or sales.

In sales-driven organizations, sales bring revenue and, therefore, have a lot of power. This is even more true if there is a CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) that oversees Sales and Marketing. On many occasions, CROs come from a sales background, which means that sales get a lot of weight. The fact that compensation for sales is short-term may drive the organization to make more short-term decisions, and that's a problem and contrarian to the marketing mindset.

The fact is that Marketing rarely calls the shots unless the Founder/CEO is a marketing-driven person.