As marketers, our leadership and team performance are being scrutinized like never before. Customer engagement, markets, and organizations are chaotic and in the midst of disruption. It’s on us to deal with the chaos and move our teams past the critics to do what marketers must do: create value for our customers and realize value for our enterprise.
Becoming more agile is an effective way enterprises and marketing teams can realize more value. At this point you may be thinking, “But agile is for software developers, right?”, or maybe “We’re already agile.”
The journey to becoming a more agile organization enables better focus and creates space for valuable experimentation and learning to take place. We must consistently ask if the marketing tactics we execute, and accompanying metrics are actually moving the needle. This reflection helps improve our customer-value driven strategies and shifts our focus from what we’re busy with, to what value we’re creating and for whom.
As leaders, our role cannot simply be to mandate “let’s do agile.” Harvard Business Review recently included the following quote in an article on agile at scale, "When leaders haven’t themselves understood and adopted agile approaches, they may try to scale up agile the way they have attacked other change initiatives: through top-down plans and directives."
Before we ask for change, we must demonstrate it and live our desired future state. Ask questions, encourage an environment where asking why is not only accepted, but celebrated. Challenge when you hear “We’ve always done it that way.”
Kate Mills, Consultant with CMG Partners, calls us all out in her recent LinkedIn post “Why can't your team improve? I have some potentially scary news: the problem is likely you.” While you think you’re establishing all the right processes and giving your team opportunities to work in different ways, your team is still looking to you for permission to actually be different.
For the past six years, CMG Partners has enabled marketing and business leaders along their journey to strengthen capabilities through an agile mindset and practice. Our team focuses on people, leadership, and culture for sustainable and scalable adoption.
Are you currently thinking of ways to improve flexibility, focus, speed, and growth as a leader and within your teams? Have 30-minutes? Want to pick our brain on marketing organizational growth, team performance, and agile leadership, so that you can drive business results for your organization?
Contact Russ Lange directly via LinkedIn or via email at russ.lange@cmgpartners.com
