There are two myths of modern work that every marketing manager will recognise.
The first is that job descriptions accurately describe all of the work you and your team does day-to-day. (They don’t!)
The second is that everything you do works like a project with a clearly-defined objective, performance indicators and neat sequence of tasks to the end goal. (It doesn’t!)
This year’s 2018 State of Work Report reveals only 39% of a marketers’ time is spent on what they were hired to do.
Essentially, job descriptions are stretching at the seams as you support colleagues and get drawn into meetings, email and messenger threads, and conference calls about creative briefs, client questions or internal debates about how the team operates.
On a clear day, you can just about account for your and your team’s time, but are struggling to account for the full impact of what’s being done.
The problem is that marketing departments, studios and agencies are more complex and collaborative than traditional thinking about project management allows.
Your challenge is to find a better way to understand work, track who is doing what and how it all relates to team objectives. But first, you need to stop thinking like a project manager.
Explain it, don’t describe it
The project manager mindset is to describe what needs to be done when, not why it matters. But every marketer knows if you can articulate why something is important, people are more likely to engage and care about the outcome. In Done Right: How Tomorrow’s Leaders Get Stuff Done, Alex Shootman explains, it all starts with taking complex issues or high-level strategic goals and breaking them down so people can see how it relates to them, their role and what their colleagues are working on. You must never lose sight of why a task is important.
Don’t underestimate how important this is: 40% of marketers can’t see how their work relates to strategic objectives; 41% have little idea what colleagues are doing. The cost paid is lower morale, motivation and productivity.
Don’t expand your planning … think about “what’s next”
Project planning tends to be expansive and embraces every possible contingency and option. But one-in-three marketers say poor prioritisation in their company gets in the way of doing great work. We’re planning for so much, we’re losing sight of what needs to get done! Alex argues that it’s better to focus on what you need to do next, what he describes as the best next action or BNA.
Ask yourself, what’s the one thing that you can do in the next week or two that will take whatever you are working on closer to completion and closer to the desired goal? Thinking about the BNA is a great way for marketers to prioritise their time around actions.
Use the right tool for the job
Project management software does exactly what the label implies: it helps you manage projects.
That’s not what you’re spending most of your time doing. These are tools that don’t cope well with ad-hoc work, one-and-done assignments, ongoing work, cross-functional initiatives, and all of the other daily tasks that characterise modern marketing work. They demand defined objectives, clear start- and end-points, and distinct participant roles.
So, there’s little surprise that 55% of marketers want to use a digital tool that’s smarter and better built-for-purpose than traditional project management tools. They want a modern work management platform that combines project management, automation of routine tasks — like chasing progress and notifications — but which also allows for easier and more effective collaboration on creative work.
Case-study: The Royal Society of Chemistry marketing team
Let’s imagine you’ve changed mindset, you’re prioritising best next actions, and you’re using a work management platform rather than a project management tool. What difference will it make?
To take one example, before the Royal Society of Chemistry’s marketing team switched to a work management platform, they were completing about 60% of 300 monthly tasks on time.
The society’s 150 annual marketing campaigns were delivered through a manual, multistep process – with each assigned project including multiple tasks. It was hard for managers to have complete visibility over all of the projects and tasks under way – and of all of the active projects, it was challenging to decide which should be high priority.
After deploying the new work management platform and new workflows, the same team now completes 89% of its tasks on time. Everyone has greater visibility of what is happening and what is coming next. Team members started to find they have time to set aside each week for their own projects and career development and learning.
The fundamental shift
When it comes to leading marketing teams, it’s not enough in the world of modern work to be an excellent project manager. Your team is working at a furious pace, trying to work collaboratively, and craving an understanding of how their tasks fit into wider strategic objectives. And their tasks often defy the logical objectives-metrics-tasks sequence that successful project management demands. Instead, you need to ensure you always explain why a task is important, and help your team prioritise by adopting the best next action as a governing principle. But your first step is to ensure they’ve got the right tool for the job. That’s a system that helps work — all your team’s work — get done right.
*All stats from 2018 State of Work Report
