The Secret to Marketing Agility is Harnessing Human Potential
Building a marshmallow and spaghetti tower. Figuring out how to drop an egg without breaking it. Escaping from a locked room. You’ve encountered these kinds of exercises at some point in your education, professional development, or just for fun. Each involves teams leveraging something humans do best - collaboratively solving an ambiguous puzzle.
Life is an ambiguous puzzle. Both software development and marketing – areas where agile approaches are prevalent – are knowledge work that is crazy with ambiguity, complexity, and unpredictability. Although some executives try to make marketing work like a reliable machine, the truth is that markets are more like weather. Great marketing is more like raising a child, managing a stock portfolio, or playing a baseball game than like building a car.
“People and interactions over processes and tools”
The statement above is the first value-statement of the original Agile Manifesto and 6 of its 12 principles are about people. Human superpowers enable us to improvise and innovate when faced with change. Agility will not materialize without these capabilities.
As agile marketing gains traction, operations tends to get the most focus. Are we using Kanban correctly? How long should our sprints be? What kind of project management app should we use? The Agile Manifesto says, “while there is value to the items on the right (processes and tools), we value the items on the left (people and interactions) more.” The founders understood that organizations most successful with agile will be those that best harness human potential.
Here are the six (of 12) principles from the original Agile Manifesto that advise us on people practices.
People-oriented Agile Manifesto Principles
“Business-people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.” This principle speaks to the need for interdisciplinary teams. Functional experts need tight, trusted bonds with users and customers along with frequent conversations. Not just a survey or a quarterly business review or a documented or data handoff.
“The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.” Ooooh! This can be a tough one. Self-organizing, in this context, expresses how the people closest to the problem are those best suited for determining the “how” and “when” of solving it. It guides towards greater decentralization. Empower cross-disciplinary teams who are bonding with customers. Foster entrepreneurial spirit. Give people ownership of their work – creation and execution, start to finish.
“Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support the need and trust them to get the job done.” Agile isn’t a free-for-all. The organization provides strategy, guidance, resources, infrastructure, and assistance. Leaders foster the kind of culture that bolsters what people and teams do best, while helping them deal with human limitations.
“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes, and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” This principle speaks to how teams must not only improve the product, but they must also improve the way they work, too. Create a continuous learning environment.
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001, before iPhones, YouTube, Zoom, and the plethora of social and collaborative technologies knowledge workers use daily. Perhaps face-to-face isn’t always necessary today. However, this principle speaks to the value of using the richest information exchange available. Showing is better than telling.
“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.” Workers are humans and need a reasonable work level to perform best. Agile methods replace traditional staged waterfalls, that tend to produce periods of feast and famine. Of course, everyone must work a late night occasionally, but it’s better to work consistently and avoid huge crunches.
Manifestos are created in ways that highlight differences between the old way and the new. In the case of the Agile Manifesto, the originators in Snowbird, Utah wanted to eliminate the failings of traditional, mechanical, process-heavy waterfall development processes. As the agile movement has matured, the meaning of the manifesto is beginning to be realized. Aspects of the new way (especially the operational aspects) are now taken for granted among agile practitioners. It’s time to emphasize people in the next steps.
People are at the heart of agile success. Processes and tools are not trivial to change. People changes take significantly longer. Yet, it’s the people elements that will impact long-term outcomes more significantly. Companies that aspire to agility must promote an entrepreneurial spirit, improve social dynamics, develop continuous learning and better problem-solving capabilities. Look at agile processes and tools through the lens of how they bolster human effectiveness under ambiguous, complex, uncertain conditions.