Zombie Tacos and Focus
Are you asking the team to do too much?
I was at Zombie Tacos in Chicago for breakfast this week at an event by High Alpha. Networking over coffee and tacos someone asked me - what's the most common mistake you see marketing teams make?
My response - "inability to focus."
As I drove back home after breakfast, I thought about my answer a bit more.
It felt incomplete.
It's incomplete without a full understanding of the reason.
One of the big advantages start-ups have over more established competition is speed. The ability to go from idea to execution in hours. No big meetings, internal buy-in or brand guidelines to abide by.
But there is a delicate balance to that. Trying to go 100 miles an hour, finding product market fit, identity channels you can scale and build a reliable go to market strategy as fast as possible without careening off the road is not easy.
But, how do you know when you are asking the team to do too much?
How do you know when the team isn’t doing enough?
The answer isn’t easy.
And the outcome of doing either can kill your success.
Doing too much? You yo-yo from project to project, never giving anyone enough space to go deep enough and you end up with a bunch of half assed tests, campaigns and approaches that didn’t yield the results or yield any learnings. You burn the team out.
Not pushing hard enough? You are leaving opportunities on the table and wasting time by not rapidly figuring things out. Missing out on your one big advantage as a company - speed, and watch as your competition excels with you on the sideline.
So what is the answer? How do you find that balance? Here are 5 ways I have found work well:
Have a north star goal for your marketing team and only prioritize projects that help you hit that target. For most early stage start-ups this should be a revenue focused metric. Prioritize and say no to anything else.
Have the team work in 2 week sprints and measure the time it takes to ship projects. This will help you identify capacity and bandwidth of the team but also ensure focus and helps you identify possible blockers that are slowing your team down.
Take the time to understand and document why something fails or succeeds. One of the easiest ways to accelerate growth is avoiding the same mistake twice and doubling down on what is working.
Have a plan when failure happens. Most of your campaigns will fail at first and thats okay. But rather than jumping to the next shiny thing. Ask the team what they would do differently to achieve success. Iterate and ship again.
Have a conversation. Don’t be afraid to ask the team if they are feeling burnt out or ask hard questions like why this can’t ship faster. You are in it together and most people will share honestly if they feel like the intentions are good.
Thanks for reading!