Dear Agile Marketing Leader...

I'm not going to lie - I'm super proud of (and very fond of) our agile marketers.  To a person these are some of the most customer focused, creative, passionate people I've ever had the pleasure of working with.  Every day I get a little smarter (not hard considering where I'm starting from) by observing and listening to them as they continually take steps forward as

agile individuals and teams.  

I recently asked a few of our agile marketers, managers and leaders - "what do you wish your manager / leader knew about agile (mindset OR framework) before started to work on (or with) an agile team?"  I got back so many amazing and powerful responses - I decided to summarize them and send them out to everyone!  So without further preamble or ado - 

Agile is (and isn't)...

• Agile is a methodology as well as a mindset, the mindset to work in the environment is very important.
• Agile is about the team, where members need to be willing to learn and take on new responsibilities.
• Agile is not about speed, it is about empowerment.  Empowerment to make decisions, to fail fast / learn and to create with a predetermined white space. 
• Agile teams are persistent and 100% allocated to their backlog- there are no "day jobs" other than the backlog.
• The role for marketing team members is quite different than in the past and it takes time to navigate and find where they can best add value.
• There’s no finish line: It’s never going to be perfect or done.  This isn’t an MBO that will be done at the end of the year. It’s a lifelong journey. What works now will probably not work a year from now and the sooner you get into the habit of reviewing things internally, the happier you’ll be.
• The backlog is built of tactical process steps that breakdown the bigger steps.   There are bigger items in the backlog, but the backlog isn’t a huge list of wish-list items.  Many times, it’s very much review X with Y person to ensure it’s added to the queue.
• One of the mainstays of Agile is empowering teams to make decisions, to test and learn, to pivot and course correct based on data, metrics, etc. Some managers may have a problem with empowering their people as they feel it undermines their responsibilities as managers.  To some, empowerment is just a buzzword.  Managers must learn to believe that they have an important stake in the success of Agile and that their support and nurturing can lead to more highly productive and efficient agile teams.

Agile leader advice...

• Don't forget to find things to celebrate, even if it's small.  It's easy to get bogged down in the bigger picture, and to start to feel overwhelmed. It's easy to miss out on all of the WINS that we have every day.... YOU can go a long way in helping your team stay positive by celebrating these small wins!  Here is a resource to help you celebrate!
• Push the envelope and question current process norms while still maintain integrity of our controls.
• Scrum Masters will be more successful in supporting their team if they have some additional training (Marketing Scrum Master Academy for example.)
• Embrace failure! Be open to accepting items that aren’t 100% perfect and know that the team will test and learn.
• The first time your team comes to you with an idea to fix things or has a good discussion in a retrospective – praise it a lot. And then praise the next one and the next one. Praise it to senior leaders. Praise it to anyone who will listen. Breaking the old way of thinking takes time and the team needs to see that agile mindset = recognition.  
• Once the team starts thinking about their work differently, there is going to be disagreement. Encourage the disagreement via lots of conversations because that is when everyone’s voice is heard.
• Take the time to truly understand your team’s comfort level with each other.  Do they need ways to give feedback anonymously on retrospectives? Do they talk over each other in meetings? Do they wait for that one person to speak on their behalf? If you know this ahead of time, you can work through how to ensure all voices are heard. 
• The people who do the work are excited about this.  Managers are used to being in control and making decisions; individual contributors are not. Don’t tamper excitement by staying so focused on resources or capacity or “we’ve done this before” kind of comments. Keep those to yourself.  Enjoy the fact that someone on your team feels empowered and excited about their work. Don’t talk them out of the agile mindset before they get started!
• Don’t pretend that this way of thinking was always possible within marketing.  Marketing has re-organized so many times and ALL of our leaders have been focused on role clarity and team alignment for the past three + years. In other words: All of marketing has been actively pushing people into silos. This is the first time in years that the silos are being removed.
• Agile team members who have been operating in the holistic marketing process know where obstacles/impediments exist at the outset of a campaign.  This early identification and resolution of these issues—many of which are out of the control of the Agile team—is key to on-time and within budget campaigns.  Managers and leaders are instrumental in escalating these issues and helping to get resolutions.  By doing so they show support and partnership with their agile team(s).
• Attend some agile team events (daily huddles, sprint planning, backlog refinement) to observe and get the real sense of how a true agile team works.  This would be so much better that a classroom or textbook could ever teach you.
• Be patient – the j curve is real.    It takes time for the agile team to learn to work together (assuming some are new), time to learn the agile process and ways of doing things.   
• Be open minded about all team members contributing equally.   However, be real that some are going to contribute and raise their hand more than others.  It takes time for everyone to feel comfortable to pitch in equally.

My sincerest thank you to all of our agile team members and leaders, who live and breathe our shared agile values every day!  Because of you, we get closer to our customer, closer to being more effective, efficient and more engaged.  You guys are amazing!

We all win together.