Farewell to working in silos

  Since March, marketing teams have struggled to modify their plans and find the bandwidth and resources necessary to execute against rapidly changing priorities and shifting budgets.

Although many have adapted well to working remotely and collaborating in real-time, teams continue to face the challenge of realigning resources with fewer staff and investment. To be prepared for the future, teams now need to pause, and assess how to operate effectively in order to address ongoing uncertainty with clarity and resilience. The first step is to understand the role and purpose that they’ll play within their organisations moving forwards, and then traverse the (often challenging, difficult and sensitive) road to get there. This kind of shift is hard, no question. However, it’s also an opportunity to lay the path for continued success, while becoming more agile, more collaborative, and better at meeting both business and customer demands.

Scott Somerville, E.ON’s Head of Advertising, PR and Campaigns, highlights the need to define a North Star from the outset.
He suggests that, “Being clear from the start and staying true to that goal is essential; while the journey to it won’t be linear, your teams will respect the decisions and changes along the way. Even when decisions are difficult, people will understand why they’re necessary to achieve your overall ambition.”

Of course, creating buy-in to a future vision also extends beyond your immediate team. Getting and keeping senior sponsorship is crucial, helped by maintaining a regular drumbeat with the powers that be. This is best helped by delivering meaningful wins, quickly. Sure, this sounds easier said than done — but finding tactical victories is your best tool for building support and supercharging momentum.

It’s particularly helpful when these are things the team itself has identified as a priority, as it shows you’re listening. This should lead to some early, tangible improvements: things that make their lives easier or allow them to develop into a nimbler marketing function. In the pursuit of speed, the risk is that things aren’t perfect on first go – and that’s ok. Scott emphasises the need to keep focused on the real questions at hand, and to avoid getting tied up in knots designing solutions that seem perfect — because that tends to mean they’re a mirage at best. “Always take time not only to get back to the original vision — the catalyst for change — but also to spend time getting to the heart of the fundamental issue. The real problem is rarely the first one we say out loud.”

Achieving a sense of distance is also necessary for not taking things personally. By anchoring decisions in the underlying vision, you can maintain perspective when emotions are at stake and jobs are at risk. You may well have concerns about the strength of your team — but the truth is, there’s not an organisation or group on the planet that couldn’t improve. It’s the people that don’t realise that who are the ones to be wary of. An ounce of humility goes a long way. The most significant underlying thread across all of this is the commitment to embracing change — and the unknown — to unlock potential. It’s only through doing this that teams can be confident to thrive in the future and based on my experience, there are some common elements that connect organisations succeeding in their ambitions.

They enable colleagues to champion the change

This not only results in greater engagement and buy-in across the team, but also has the potential to identify advocates in unlikely places. Champions can be found at all levels in the business, but those that are the biggest naysayers at first glance may be those to target. The trick to disarming those that are negative is to challenge them to get to the solution they’d be happy with. Once they get involved, and have a stake in the outcome, they often become amazing promoters.

They don’t try to do everything at once

Change takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight; ideally it needs to be implemented in stages, assessed regularly and refined as necessary. This is particularly true in more traditional organisations and in regulated industries, where there are large teams with a lot of legacy systems and structures to pick through.

They commit to the ‘three Cs’

To really make a department fit for the future we recommend the ‘three Cs’: Consultation, Collaboration and Communication. Change isn't in a vacuum, so Consultation within and outside of the team will give you a good idea of the challenges and pain points. Ongoing Collaboration across multi-disciplinary teams will help when designing the solutions, and Communicating the vision, plan and successes along the way will help to make the transition more successful.

While these strategies are effective for building a foundation for future, Scott suggests that businesses need to “Be brave. Remember why you committed to your vision, celebrate the successes and keep going.”

This article came from issue 8 of Marketing Society publication Empower. Read the archive here.