Functions and Roles: Frameworks for Success
Technology businesses are hard on marketers for 3 reasons; a) the product obsoletes itself every 3-5 years b) technical differences matter c) the investor model rewards winner takes all strategies. The result is that very smart competitive folks try to self-organize into effective teams to beat the competition to the punch of a sustainable (read profitable) customer vision. Unfortunately, this vision point is just that, an unknowable end-point. That means its a journey and that spells complexity which in turn can spell waste.
If teams spend the bulk of their time explaining things to each other, they are by definition not spending their time executing externally.
As an example, I know the differences between what VC, private equity, midcap investors, large cap investors, growth investors and value investors do and want. I appreciate the differences between series A, B, C investments. By understanding this, you only have to tell me ‘they are private equity value investors’ to understand the rules of the game.
When it comes to marketing, there is often confusion in understanding the game or the rules of the game. Does the team really understand the differences between branding and awareness or brand identity vs. brand promise vs. brand attributes and so on and so on. This confusion extends across functions like product marketing and product management or business development vs. corporate development. While this confusion is good in the sense that the dialog is already structured beyond ‘we need good marketing’, it has a potentially negative impact on how marketing functions and roles are fufilled.
The sales team has the same problem and they often speak about having a common language for sales stages, processes, goals and methods.
Even the management team can have this problem, especially in cross-cultural companies. At one company (with Israelis, Europeans and Americans on the team) we agreed to preface our remark with either: a) this is question (but I’m not questioning you) b) this is statement of fact c) I question your conclusion (ie. skepticism of logic, judgment or facts) d) I would like to add to or better understand our decision making/execution process. We needed to do this because our cultural differences in communication were confusing our business dialog. “What do you mean that you question it?” To solve this, I might say “process point, we need to brief employees first” and a response might be “Randy, skepticism, they can read at the same time as press/customers/investors and we’ll brief them later”.
OK so confusion is the enemy of productivity and communication is a causal factor. What is the point? Get buy in on that point up front and often in order to get fast agreement on the common language and suddenly more stuff gets decided and done.
Example: ‘I am industry programs director and he is director of marketing and she is field marketing, who owns the ‘content’ for the Paris event and associated promotions?’ Answer from me ‘here is a list of things (graphics, mailers, ads) and a list of functions (creative, theme messaging, point messaging, writing, design, production, distribution) and the process or list of steps (goals, resources, strategy, creative tactics, logistical tactics, production planning, execution and project management), lets go through the process to identify the things and then jointly own the functions and go by email to see best idea win and where folks best contribute’. Suddenly we are talking about real things and not where product marketing starts and ends.
Teamwork ALWAYS outperforms individual work in ALL cases for EVERYTHING. People often don’t get this or attempt to avoid this reality for more reasons than I have the hours to rant about it. In any case, you don’t have time to educate them. You need to get the team working effectively quickly. Take the magic marker from Bobby, explain the paragraph above and then say ‘does that make sense? in a super humble, genuinely questioning tone’. Keep doing that over time and see what happens.
When asked who owns it, answer you both do and it needs to be the same number, now go agree on the number and come get me when you need brainstorming, content or production help. Tomorrow at 8am works best for me but we could also do 9am.
Your role as a leader (in whatever capacity at whatever level), is to get the team bought in (they understand it, agree to it and agree to be accountable) and working effectively together (they like or tolerate each other, they respect and complement skill strength/weaknesses and act to protect the team at their own cost—to be repaid later). Use mutual frameworks to shape roles to create shared success.
Confusion is the enemy of our team! Let’s stamp it out wherever we see it inside or out. Let’s rescue each other by gluing your framework to mine fast so we can get the real work done. With the real work done, we get smiles, money and happy-hour. Crush confusion, more happy-hour!
My next blog post will lay out the ontology of the most common 100 functional frameworks and the unified string theory that unites them via a multi-dimensional cognitive framework that is both the frame and the work for all frameworks 😉 If your team in anyway objects to the ‘Confusion is the Enemy of Happy’ philosophy, you can have them meet as a committee on the weekends to debate the underpinning theories of XYZ and ABC frameworks.
Bottom line: get beyond defintional debates on roles and functions quickly by using common (often well recognized) frameworks so that the team functions and accomplishes its goals through trust, committment, accountability and peformance measurement.