Top-tier marketing organizations design their processes around responsibility, around accountability, not around efficiency. 

Have you ever designed a process that is as efficient as possible but it is not clear who owns that process? Who makes the decisions about what happens? And what if it's the wrong process? There has to be a constant reinforcement loop of accountability because it makes everything go faster. 

In this post, we will look at processes and the different ecosystems of an organization that, together with structure and talent, form part of the 7 keys to making your company an ideal environment to work in. 

In the end, everyone blamed someone when no one did what anyone else could have done'' is the best phrase. This idea is found in slow teams. This is at the heart of the poor performance. Not to be malicious but, phrases like, ''I didn't want to step on his/her toes'' ''I thought he/she was doing it'' and nobody did it... And if no one does it, it can't have an impact, so top level Marketing organizations have these 3 types of processes:

I guarantee you that your companies have focused too much on processes around the WHAT. Such as: what are we going to do, but we don't focus on others such as: how do we do it, which is a vital question to be effective, and who does what, to take forward those responsibilities and accountabilities.

What are we going to do?

You should answer the following questions:

What are we building?

When is it to be delivered?

What is the impact on the business?

There are many roadmaps out there that have a lot of detail and end up being a huge chart of nuances and steps. Everyone in the company should be able to access this and know at a glance when it needs to be delivered. That makes us responsible, to know when we have to respond.

In our day-to-day work, we use the Kanban method for the latter, a type of system based on agile methodology. Why do we think it is the best?

Because in operating environments where priorities change frequently, it is necessary to introduce requirements at any time.

With this method, we achieve maximum transparency, match team capacity with work in progress and focus on cycle time (how long it takes for a task to go from backlog to completion).

And to reflect our Kanban and make it accessible to everyone, we use Trello.

Make sure the information is easy to find at first glance and that is smoothly legible. That is what will bring value to the business.

How do we do it? Request Forms, Asset Trackers & Quality Frameworks

Request Forms (Google docs; Pipefy): you may be working leading different teams, international offices, and you are the responsible and centralized place for any request from any of the members of those teams. You can navigate through their roadmaps, but they have no visibility between each other. They usually have a request form and, therefore, you have to be able to process them.

Asset trackers (Asana, Trello, Nutcache): asset tracking. The main reason we use this is that you can instantly see exactly where you are going.

Quality Frameworks (Google docs, Proprietary): Marketing is made up of several hours of incredibly creative professionals. Where can you put those hours to make them work better? If you don't know how to break down those hours and what impact they have on the business, you are not going to be able to make the necessary adjustments.

This matter reduces weeks of interactions because, in the end, we're wasting these people's time. You have to be able to design a process and have it laid out. Alignment from the beginning is the most crutial part of all of this.

Who does what?

The last and most important thing: who does what. Most companies, because they are very small or because they have just started, do not have these processes in place. There are only 12 or 15 people, so they think it doesn't matter. They think they know who does what. And all of a sudden, it starts to not be like that.

If you implement this quickly, from moment one, it's going to shape your culture in the long run.

One of the methods you should start implementing as soon as possible is the so-called DACI method.

What it means is that every cross-cutting project, that is cross-departmental. It has to have a DACI framework:

D= driver. That person is responsible for the timelines. The one who manages everything and organizes it.

A= a single approver. This person is in charge of approving. This is the one who decides when things are planning to be done. Only that person can determine what is finished and what is not. 

C= the collaborators. People who have something to say about an issue. An important point of view. They have expertise in a domain and should be listened to.

I= informed. Everyone must have a global vision of what each of their colleagues has to do. They should know the decisions that have been taken and about the final result.

And then, in addition, there is always the need for retrospective analysis. Retrospectives are vital. The team needs to get together and give feedback on things they think did not work. This exercise creates perfect teams: the ability to say it was my fault. With this, we are looking for honest and sincere conversations. We are not looking for retaliation, it has to be done and we have a channel for it.

Tactics

• Have a monthly/quarterly process of reviewing the roadmap leading to key business metrics.
• Invest in team-building around business vision / entrepreneurial thinking.
• Each project requires a "driver" and an "approver".
• Make exceptionally clear in weekly communications who is responsible for which metric.

Ecosystem

This is the idea of fully versatile cross-departmental teams. We must organize ourselves into fully stacked, multifunctional 'squads'. This must be vital.

We have Marketing, Product, Finance, etc. departments and professionals. The problem is this: everyone has their roadmap. However, when they get together to share things, each one only cares about what they have to say, regardless of what the others have to say. But be careful, we depend on each other.

For example, as CMO you will always depend on the CX. Marketing, your brand, depends on CX specialists. You may not know what they do, and they may not know what you are doing, but you will have to do it together. That's how you should structure yourselves.

You have to align Marketing, Engineering, Product and Analytics (one of the most difficult tasks). You need to be as closely aligned as possible and, although it is difficult, it will help you act more quickly when problems arise.

Tactics

• Align marketing, product, engineering and analytics leaders around the 'squad' format.
• Agree on the top 3-6 approaches for the next 6-12 months.
• Agree on KPIs for each 'squadron'. All elements of their roadmaps.
• Execute quarterly program reviews.
• Be open to moving faster. Make programs so that the other teams know what we are doing, share knowledge, email each other constantly and then cross-train. This has to be done in parallel.

In the next post, we will discuss the importance of good management and leadership. A leader should know how to manage his or her teams well as well as how to lead.