Underspending. Too often, organizations underspend on marketing and limit their ability to achieve specific goals. This segment touches on how to properly think about and allocate marketing dollars.

Another one of my favorite books and a process I often bring to my clients is detailed in "The 4 Disciplines of Execution" by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling.
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The four disciplines or 4DX is focused on helping organizations achieve their strategic goals. The key points include:

1. Focus on the Wildly Important: Prioritize a small number of critical objectives that will have a significant impact on the organization's success. This is key as it is easy to simply get bogged-down in every tasks.  Moreover, by selecting a small number of critical objectives that will move the needle it helps avoid being spread too thin.

2. Act on the Lead Measures: Identify and focus on the specific actions (lead measures) that will influence the achievement of the chosen goals. These are proactive measures that drive success. In other words, if your lead measure for increased sales is X phone calls per week to potential customers and you focus on that, then the lag measure, sales dollars, will take care of itself.

3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard: Create a visible and engaging scoreboard that tracks progress toward the goals. This helps in maintaining motivation, transparency, and a sense of accountability among team members. The bottom line is that we all perform better when we are being visibly tracked and there is a sense of competition.

4. Create a Cadence of Accountability: Establish regular meetings and routines for team members to report on their commitments and progress. This ensures that everyone is aligned and accountable for their contributions to the shared objectives. Accountability breeds enhanced performance.

The scrum brought together all your data and metrics and started the process of taking this information and turning it into concrete goals and initiatives. Now is the time to turn this into a real plan.

Get Specific.
Very specific. The scrum was a great start, but you want to go deeper. Your marketing plan should list out each goal or objective with a quantifiable measure for success and then under that objective, the tactical initiatives that will be employed to achieve that goal. Further, under each tactical measure, list out the subcomponents that need to be brought into play to make that tactical measure happen. Finally, who is the point person on each tactic and what is the due date. For every goal you need the details of what specifically needs to happen, who is going to do it, when it will be done, and what success would look like.

I am sharing another book this month that I highly recommend. If you have not read any books by Ryan Holiday, give him a shot. His books are thoughtful, easy to read, and insightful. Ego is the Enemy explores the destructive nature of ego and offers insights on how to overcome it.

All order must initially begin with chaos. The scrum is your arena for determining what is critical, what can wait, and how success will be judged in the coming year. It is a fiery debate of data, metrics, and touch of intuition. I am not going to lie, I kind of like it.

Let the Games Begin.
Set a date, establish the team, and have them start gathering the necessary data. You are going to want to have access to all the metrics and customer insights at your fingertips when the process begins. Moreover, establish one person in the organization to act as the lead person to organize the meeting. This person needs to have enough authority to get everyone to do their pre-meeting homework and show up at the required time. If this is left to no one, the meeting will most likely fall behind the list of everyday tasks and will not be done. Discipline in this area is critical. Make it an annualized function that happens at the same time each year – people will get used to it.

A Holistic Approach
Planning is not a job for just one department. A good plan requires many voices; sales, marketing, operations, finance, customer service – all should be involved.

Start with Your North Star: Customers
The customer is the ultimate compass. The initial scrum process is the time to recalibrate this compass and dive into customer insights. Focus on customer needs and challenges and how you can improve their journey from ordering to shipping to payment – anything that enhances their experience is on the table.

Data-Driven Decision-Making
Start with Data. While every company is different, your marketing team should be well-versed in the key metrics that drive success. These are the pulse checkers to determine how well the strategy is being enacted. NOTE: Whenever possible opt for lead measures over lag measures. Lead measures are the specific activities that an organization has determined will lead to success (e.g. – an established number of sales calls per week). Lag measures, on the other hand, can only be judged after the fact (e.g.- revenue) and therefore are too late to do anything to influence the outcome. For example, if the revenue number comes in 20% low for the month of April, it is too late when you have that number in hand (in May) to effect any change for April. If, however, you know based on history, that 20 sales calls per week per salesperson produces the desired amount of revenue than that becomes your lead measure, and you focus on that. The lag measure is then used to confirm or deny if the lead measure is accurate. In essence, if your lead measure is correct, the desired lag measure will take care of itself.

From Chaos to Order:
By the end of the scrum, you should have achieved the following:

1. ​Overall Strategy: Generally, where is the company going and how do they intend to get there.
2. Goals: Be specific. What do you want to accomplish and by when - what would success look like? Start with the end state in mind.
3. Tactics: You have your goals, now comes the time to start looking at what tactical measures will bring you the success you so desire. Take it down to the departmental level. A goal may involve multiple tactics and multiple departments so be thoughtful in your discussion. What will really get you the results you want? More about this in Part 2: The Plan.
4. Accountability: Who is in charge of what? Make sure every tactic has a name assigned to it and he or she understands what they need to get done.

The initial scrum process isn't a mere formality; it's the bedrock upon which your marketing strategy is built. It represents discipline, collaboration, and an unwavering commitment to customer-centricity. Remember that success is often a consequence of meticulous planning and agile execution. Embrace the initial scrum process, and you'll find yourself better equipped to navigate the marketing landscape with brilliance and foresight.

Maybe I just love the process, maybe I had good coaches, but in my years of running obstacle courses, throwing my body over mud-soaked walls, 5Ks, 10ks, pull up and push-up competitions, and a variety of other endeavors that pushed me beyond what I thought I could do, I never thought about the finish line or what waited for me there.

Why?

• Because trophies and medals feel cheap to me.
• Because the training, the preparation, and the event were always so much larger than the finish.
• Because the learning happens in the process. The finish is just an acknowledgement.

​So, while we as a society like to run for the finish line, keep in mind that the gift is not the trophy or a t-shirt but the endeavor itself. Enjoy the ride – even the hard parts. They made you who you are.