How Marketers Can Gain Productivity Back in 2015

500 Hours

GRO

VO’S COUNTDOWN

PRO D U C T I V I T Y

VOL. IThe

Accountability Issue

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Making Your Number Everyone’s Number

Create Measurable Goals and Make Them Visible

Promote an Accountability Culture

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Solve the “I’ll Just Do It Myself” Problem

Empower a Capable Workforce

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What Accountability Looks Like in 2015Marketing accountability usually means justifying marketing spend with data-driven metrics. But to streamline productivity, accountability can be about a whole lot more: ensuring each player is empowered to contribute directly to the team’s, and your proj-ect’s goals. Without accountability, optimal performance will be elusive. In this short white paper, we’ll help you:

Turn Unproductive Habits into Productive Ones... Vague Qualitative Aims

Signs: Workers don’t connect actions

with results

Opaque or Unknown Benchmarks

Signs: Detached or complacent

team members

Lack of Responsibility

Signs: Defensive workers, suspicious

stakeholders

Bottlenecks and Control Freaks

Signs: Blocks and barriers to getting

things done

Team Not Working at Capacity

Signs: Miscommunications and

interdependency

Create Measurable Goals

Workers learn from failures, adjust quickly,

and know what they are working towards

Make Your Goals Visible

Team is laser-focused on a singular goal

even if each member plays a separate part

Promote an Accountability Culture

Communicative, collaborative and support-

ive team members

Solve the “I’ll Just Do it Myself” Problem

An environment where all workers contrib-

ute and can be trusted to do so

Empower a Capable Workforce

Knowledgeable and T-shaped, your team is

individually capable and efficient

“Each day you are leading by example. Whether you realize it or not or whether it’s positive or negative, you are influencing those around you.”

—Rob LianoBest-selling Author & Life Coach

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Strategy #1:

Create Measurable GoalsIn the quest for efficiency, quantifiable goals are the ruler to measure your success against. Without these standards, you won’t be able to detect progress and create acountability.

• DEFINE SUCCESS: Marketing goals should be linked to specific, quantifiable business outcomes

because doing so allows you to report back to stakeholders in the language they know best: dollars

and cents.

• INVEST IN INSTRUMENTATION: Adopt the best infrastructure, tools, and instrumentation to

produce the data needed to develop a fully accountable, performance-driven, outcome-based mar-

keting team.

• RELY ON DATA: Think beyond ROI to discover creative ways to find meaning in your analytics.

Testing your performance over time establishes truth in your results. Good or bad, it shows you

when to get nimble and adjust strategies.

• COMMUNICATE SUCCESSES & FAILURES: Marketing ultimately requires stakeholder buy-in

and support, so demonstrating —and more importantly, reporting and communicating about—your

outcomes at regular intervals is key to creating a culture of transparency, trust, and accountability.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

—Peter DruckerProfessor, Author

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Strategy #2:

Make Goals VisibleBeyond quantitative measures, clarity within your team is as important as the clarity needed when communicating with stakeholders, clients, or your audience. Accountabil-ity is driven by defined goals, check-ins and reviews, and cross-functional interaction. Loose, vague or undefined goals create a detached and complacent team. Therefore, for accountability to work, teams should strive to:

• ESTABLISH BENCHMARKS: Every team member from the top down needs a formal number to

work towards, such as impressions, CPM, revenue, or ROI. These sub goals ideally link and contrib-

ute to a larger goal, known to the entire marketing team. This encourages everyone to work on their

part to drive the same aim.

• CHECK IN OFTEN: Establish an accountability system, either sharing a status document or track-

er, or by assigning accountability managers tasked with challenging the drive and performance of

the team in between reviews. Have systematic and formal check-ins monthly, weekly, or even daily

to remove blockers and to keep the objective(s) top-of-mind.

• BLAST IT FAR AND WIDE: Make the goal(s) clear, public and palpable to the entire team or better

yet, physically visible—whether plastered all over the office, displayed on a leaderboard, or high-

lighted in a daily progress email.

• INCENTIVES & REWARDS: Acknowledge individuals and the team for their achievements, but

also establish tangible rewards if large goals are met, such as socials, events, time off, bonuses, etc.

“The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability.”

—Simon MainwaringBranding Consultant

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Strategy #3:

Promote an Accountability CultureSometimes goals aren’t measurable, visible, or driven by a number. An accountability culture is one that promotes collaborative teams and best practices. Without these val-ues, marketers feel they’re working in a vacuum, fearful of a “number” they have to hit without the support of their peers or ownership over their path. As a result, the work can become dull, sterile and stripped of meaning. To create qualitative goals in your organi-zation:

• PRAISE GOOD WORK: Recognize the good, note-worthy contributions of your team members

and colleagues, even if it falls outside of a “number” goal.

• SHARE BEST PRACTICES: Regularly share industry knowledge and best practices with col-

leagues.

• SET PERFORMANCE STANDARDS: Define the set practices, standards, and values that spell

success for your team, however you define it, and uphold these stringently.

• ENCOURAGE OWNERSHIP: Build an attitude of professionalism, commitment, and guard-

ianship over tasks through goal setting, key performance indicators (KPIs), and proper delegation

channels.

• FOSTER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Map out what professional development looks like

at your organization so each marketer has a clear career trajectory. Also encourage continuing edu-

cation and the improvement of one’s skills even outside the boundaries of the job.

• EMPHASIZE GOOD WORK HABITS: Promote good time and attention management, health

habits, and professional etiquette.

“If you would persuade, you must appeal to their interest rather than intellect.”

-Benjamin Franklin

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Strategy #4:

Solve the “I’ll Just Do it Myself” ProblemEven if you’ve incentivized your team with goals, often the desire to “get it right” pre-vents marketers from sharing responsibility as freely as they could. This can kill a team’s productivity when busy managers fail to delegate, or do so poorly. A formal and struc-tured process for assigning work bears less risk and develops team members that can be counted on. The consequences for not doing so are bottlenecks, frustration, and over-taxed employees. To remedy this:

• ONLY DELEGATE TO THOSE INVESTED IN YOUR GOALS: Leverage the value of others who

understand the team’s objectives and have a stake in the outcome. For re-occurring tasks, delegation

will pay dividends even if at first, it might take longer than if you’d done it yourself.

• CLEARLY DEFINE SUCCESS: Know and communicate what a job well done will look like so you

can hold your delegate accountable.

• BE EXPLICIT ABOUT INTENTIONS: Consider and communicate the amount of control you in-

tend to keep over the task using delegation levels from high-control, “Do exactly what I have asked

you to do and nothing else” down to low-control, “Research the topic, make a decision and report

back” (Hersey 1969).

• BE SMART: Refer to the business acronym S.M.A.R.T to ensure all delegation tasks are: Specific,

Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic, and Time-bound (Doran 1981) .

• DON’T ACCEPT INADEQUATE WORK: Don’t set a precedence for accepting work you’re not

satisfied with, or you’ll end up doing the task over again. Use delegation as an opportunity to teach

standards of performance in order to develop the accountability of your team.

“I either delegate something, dump it, or deal with it.”

—Daniel L. DoctoroffCEO & President of Bloomberg LP

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Strategy #5:

Empower A Capable WorkforceA marketing team with plenty of opportunities to learn, train, and develop professional-ly will no doubt be a successful one. Conversely, if a team is too dependent on each other to find the performance support and real time solutions needed to solve the industry’s toughest problems—productivity will stagnate.

• DELIVER RESOURCES: Offer Help-desks, IT assistance, Quality Control or other resources that

assist marketers to perform better and troubleshoot issues autonomously.

• INVEST IN HIGH-QUALITY TRAINING: Offer training via a cloud-based solution or eLearning

program to aid in engagement, attendance, and retention, and regularly test employee’s knowl-

edge to maintain performance standards.

• PROCURE AN LMS/CMS: Use it to house an online repository of shared, useful marketing in-

formation, training materials, or performance support (resources that aid “just in time” or “at the

point of need” assistance).

• MAKE IT MANDATORY: Hold your team accountable for their development via assigned con-

tent, tracking, or penalties for uncompleted assignments.

• SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Support or subsidize in-house or external de-

velopment for all employees, related to their roles or future roles.

“The best training program in the world is absolutely worthless without the will to execute it properly, consistently, and with intensity.”

—John RomanielloEntrepreneur, Angel Investor

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Conclusion:Accountability leverages the drive and capabilities of your team so that everyone is aligned towards the same goals and works hard to get there. If you make your standards of performance quantitative and visible, delegate well, and promote a culture of owner-ship, providing the right tools to empower and support your team—then the sky is the limit for your team’s productivity in 2015.

Grovo is the quickest, simplest way for organizations to train their teams. The cloud-based platform

features an intuitive, easy-to-use interface to create, deliver and track training, as well as a customizable

library of 5,000 highly effective, one-minute video lessons covering 170 Internet tools, digital applica-

tions, and professional topics. Grovo provides a science-backed microlearning methodology to teach

the critical skills for today’s fast-moving world. To learn more, visit grovo.com. To learn more about the

digital skills gap bleeding $1.3 trillion from U.S. productivity each year, visit digitalskillsgap.com.

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