Slowing down to speed up
Does it ever feel like it takes three (or maybe a hundred!) times longer than it should for your Marketing team to get from A to B? Whether it’s from brief to campaign execution, or just day to day decision-making that ends up in a frustrating loop of indecision, there’s few things more painful than being a CEO or CMO observing the wheels of the Marketing machine turning at a pace a snail could outrun. Or witnessing members of your team pedalling furiously, only to collide head first at a critical juncture and bring everything to a grinding halt. It's particularly excruciating when you’ve got Sales and Product teams tapping their toes impatiently at your door, muttering “Why is Marketing always so f&cking slow?”.
Sounding familiar? If so, it might be that you need to take a productive pause, to explore the underlying reasons why your team is finding it hard to move with pace (without sacrificing quality). Here’s a few of the most common root causes to look out for.
Accountability gaps and overlaps
When there’s a critical part of the process that is either no-one’s job… or seemingly everyone’s job, an inordinate amount of time gets wasted. Keep your ear to the ground for mumblings of “I thought they were supposed to do [task X]”, or “Well, that team says we should approach it this way, but I think we should do it that way”. These are clear signals that you need to work through your critical processes and value-chains, and clearly define who has the ball where. And who gets to make the call if there’s two alternative ways forward. Accountability for the doing, and accountability for the decision-making both need to be agreed.
Hot tip: Defining accountabilities should not be the product of who CAN do the work (ability)- but instead who SHOULD do the work (responsibility). You’ll find skillset overlaps throughout your marketing team, so the accountability decision can’t rely on who is able. It needs to be a deliberate decision based on a MECE definition of each functional team’s remit and distinct value-add, which should be established and clearly communicated by the Marketing leadership to steer the discussion.
Strategy Fail
Have you got a clear Marketing Strategy? (I know that’s an obvious one, but I had to ask!). Lack of a true north (what Marketing needs to achieve, and how this relates to business goals) and the strategic roadmap that will get you there, is fundamental to guiding your team to make the right choices, easily. And if you do have a Marketing Strategy, ask yourself:
Does it give your team sufficient guidance regarding your strategic choices, so that they can make decisions easily in the day-to-day, using this as guardrails?
Does your team buy into the strategy (ie. do they respect it enough to use it as a guide?) How much time and effort did you put into engaging them in its development, and immersing them in the context?
Has it been cascaded down into functional team strategies and plans? And have these been cross-referenced with their peers, so that the whole Marketing team is not only pulling in the same direction, they’re coordinating their oars?
If any of these things are in doubt- they need remedying, stat.
Cultural Crutches
All the strategy and process in the world won't overcome cultural norms that run counter to efficiency. In the right doses, these cultural attributes are super healthy, but overplayed, they are kryptonite to being able to hustle. One we see all the time - Collaboration in overdrive. The team is so painfully aware of the need to be inclusive that they are completely unable to move without a cast of thousands being consulted. Typically you’ll see lots of ‘FYI’ natured emails and meetings, sent to a wide audience- which then inevitably ends up with someone who has a non-critical opinion derailing the entire exercise with their point of view.
Course correction on this point is dependent on getting accountabilities and strategy sorted by the way- only then can you wean them off decision by committee. And a clear prioritisation and decision-making framework, to help them make those difficult trade off calls between ‘right and right’ will do wonders to alleviate re-litigation and busy-work.
So take a step back and look for evidence of these things in your Marketing team today… time’s a wastin’! And if you could use an objective, experienced set of eyes and ears to help you figure it out, or work through the fix- drop a line to a WINGMAVEN.
