10-step path to Agile and Lean high-performance teams
Marketers everywhere are struggling to cope with the increased complexity of building relationships with customers across a myriad of touch points in an ever saturated media environment. Every day I wake up and wonder how to achieve breakthrough, to differentiate our brand and to achieve some form of interest and resonance in the eye’s of the customer. The challenge just seems to be so big. The usual marketer response to this is twofold:
1.) Identify the big ticket items and focus on developing an all encompassing solution to resolve all the challenges in one go.
OR
2.) Acknowledge that the challenges are too immense, so break them up into a number of discrete projects that you can run independently.
The challenge with the first approach is that there are so many moving parts that you can get swamped by the enormity of the task. It reminds me of that quote:
“Don’t try and eat an elephant in one sitting”
This approach has the same weaknesses that waterfall development process has for software developers. By the time you have worked out how to solve the challenge and put your all singing and dancing campaign in place, the market and your desired customers have moved on.
The challenge with the second approach is that the individual projects can lose their connection with each other and ultimately with the overall goal. This means that the outcome of each specific project may end up becoming the only objective and this is where there is a real danger for that objective becoming a proxy. In other words, the outcome of the project has been successful to move the dial but NOT in an area that has direct value to the customer and therefore to building a sustainable business. An example:
“If all those additional prospects that you have brought to your website are not the most likely to buy then your efforts have fallen on stony ground”
Marketing needs to find a new way of dealing with business complexity, media saturation, channel proliferation and the ever increasing needs and expectations of today’s customer. We as marketers need to be able to do this in a way that embraces an objective, insight-driven, dynamic and learning based culture.
Two industries that have undergone significant transformations are the Auto Industry who adopted Lean Manufacturing and the Software Development industry that embraced the principles of Agile Methodology. Both these techniques follow two common principles. The first is to only invest time and resources where there is discernable and validated value that can be delivered to the customer. The second is to break up how this is achieved into bite-sized manageable chunks or batches that enable rapid delivery of small incremental steps that are again directly connected to the overall goal of customer value.
Here is a 10-step guide to help you combine these two principles into a working model that ensures continual enhancements to customer value at a rapid, incremental pace:
1.Map the journey
Understand the big picture. Establish a journey dashboard that uncovers and confirms your performance at every step of the customer journey from first touch to the point of advocacy.
2. Understand current performance
Make sure your data is accurate and use sufficiently detailed metrics that you are able to identify exactly what activities influence performance in each area. If you have data missing your first priority must be to fill those gaps.
3. Identify constraints and areas of weakness
Undertake an analysis to identify what constraints exist that prohibit you from improving performance. The next key priority must be to remove these constraints.
4. Breakdown into small batches
Through the journey approach you will build an understanding of the interdependencies and the impact of each and every touch point on the customer relationship. Focus in on the specific areas where you are underperforming and establish each one as a “Batch” project.
5.Create a hypothesis for resolving each “Batch” project
Develop a hypothesis for improving performance for each specific batch. If I do “x” then the specific identified batch metric will improve by “y”. The hypothesis must be objective and it must be measurable.
6.Self-organize a “Batch” team
For resolving each issue, you will want to assemble the best possible team. On the basis that 95% of the Intellectual Property of a company is in the minds of its employees, this is where you must start. Identify the colleagues who can help you deliver the best solution and assemble them into a cohesive team.
7.Create a “Batch” room
You need to be able to quickly connect this team together so that everyone gels and knows what is expected from them, even when their contribution may be minimal. If you are all co-located then establish a rally point. If not, consider using tools like Sococo to create a virtual room.
8.Assemble “Batch” resources
It is imperative that everyone has the same information and therefore the same understanding of the issue, the batch objective and the strategy that you will be following to resolve it. A great approach is to use an enterprise messaging platform like Slack where you can create a dedicated channel and then connect all your communication and resources in one place.
9.Implement and test “Batch” solutions
Consider all possible scenarios and then as a team make a collective decision on the approach that you believe will deliver the highest level of improvement. If there are two or three options that are felt to have a similar level of merit then run an objective test to identify the best solution.
10.Reassess the journey
Don’t just assess the impact of the solution on just the batch issue itself. You must always reassess the solution in light of the overall outcome of building a more successful business, by looking at the entire customer journey and validating the increased value to the customer. This will also assess whether this solution has changed any of the interdependencies and therefore strengthened the performance of the overall customer value chain.
The key is to keep your mind focused on the big picture at the same time as ensuring that your actions are all directed at delivering validated improvements in small, quick turnaround batches. This will result in a very objective, commercially orientated and value driven business that is characterised by an agile, rapid, flexible and highly dynamic team approach to improving customer value.
If you would like more information on how Sococo and Slack have been integrated to create a collaboration and communication ecosystem, that fully supports batch working for high-performance teams, please feel free to send us an email, or call us at +1 (650) 265–7013.
