Mediaboss Marketing

We recently introduced you to theAgile Marketing Navigator, a flexible framework for navigating agile marketing for marketers, by marketers in the articleA new way to navigate agile marketing. The navigator has four major components: Collaborative Planning Workshop, Launch Cycle, Key Practices and Roles. Within these categories, there are several sub-pieces for implementation.

In recent articles we covered the Collaborative Planning Workshop and the Launch Cycle. Now were going to dive into the fifth of our6 Key Practices: Waste removal.

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If youve ever looked inside your closet only to realize that you have a lot of clothes that you havent worn in a decade, youve got waste. Youre taking up space with something thats no longer providing value.

Well, the same goes with the way that we work. Oftentimes were only doing something because its the way weve always worked. However, that legacy process may be preventing us from being more agile (just like when we have to sift through 100 sweaters to find the one were looking to wear).

In agile marketing, waste removal is about cleaning out our work closets and making room for the practices that truly bring agility and purpose to how we do marketing.

Waste removal can happen by anyone on the team at any point in time and should be on everyones minds continuously. Agile is all about continuous, collaborative improvement, and this is one way to demonstrate that.

A specific time when Waste Removal can naturally occur is after measuring Cycle Time. During Cycle Time measurements, the team identifies where slowdowns in the workflow are happening and looks to improve the current process. Actually removing the waste in the process is the next step.

For many marketing teams, the majority of waste happens in the form of reviews or approvals. There are also unnecessary meetings, work happening outside of the team, or siloed/fractured processes.

Here are some common waste examples:

Do any of these waste examples sound familiar to you?

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While its easy and comfortable to say, Thats the process, or Its not my job to fix this, agile marketing is all about team ownership, accountability and striving towards solutions to complex problems.

If youre a leader, how do you encourage your team to take on this type of behavior? It usually starts with giving them permission and space to creatively come up with solutions for new ways of working. Its taking a step back and letting the team come to you with recommendations rather than the other way around.

Lets run with the example of endless rounds of creative reviews. The team has identified that its a problem. If the team isnt used to solutioning, you as a leader can help facilitate a brainstorming session, as a leader but dont give them the answers. The magic happens when the team comes to leaders with ideas.

Now that the team is in a brainstorming session, have them spend a few minutes identifying why this is a problem. Listen intently as their leader.

They may discover a few things such as:

Next, theyll ideate on ways to solve the problem. Take five or 10 minutes of silent ideation and have the team write sticky notes or something comparable with an online tool.

Their ideas may look something like this:

With these tips in mind, your team will be able to successfully navigate agile marketing and remove wasteful ways of working that arent adding value.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.

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Waste Removal: Getting started with the Agile Marketing Navigator - MarTech