In her 2012 bestseller ‘Mindset’ Dr Carol Dweck, one of the world’s

leading researchers in the fields of personality, social psychology and

developmental psychology, explained how changing the way people

think can help fulfil their potential. She highlighted the two common

mind-sets as:

the growth mind-set

the fixed mind-set

The difference between the two lies in how a person organizes their

work and how they deal with errors and setbacks. These differences

can clearly be aligned with the two approaches to marketing I

discussed in the first article of this series: the principles of agile

marketing. You will probably have guessed it: the fixed mind-set

focuses on command and control and complements the waterfall

approach well, whilst the growth mind-set is more flexible and

applicable to the agile marketing approach. I present both of these in

greater detail in the following sections.

Growth mind-set (Agile Marketing)

Dweck (2012) argues that the core of the growth mind-set lies in the

belief that every person can cultivate their basic qualities through

focused effort. People with a growth mind-set zero in on identifying

the key qualities they have (or ones that they would like to possess)

and exert concerted effort to develop these to the maximum. As a

result, they become more skilled, more effective and more efficient in

completing their tasks, they produce results faster and these are often

of better quality. Growth-oriented individuals usually thrive during

the most challenging times at work (rather than feeling intimidated)

and do not get involved in the blame game but focus on coming up

with solutions to current problems. People with a growth mind-set are

intellectually curious, possess high emotional intelligence and will

identify with the following statements:

Failure is an opportunity to grow.

I can learn to do anything I want.

Challenges help me to grow.

My effort and attitude determine my abilities.

Feedback is constructive.

I am inspired by the success of others.

I like to try new things.

Marketers who employ a growth mind-set are passionate about

learning new skills and developing their individual abilities. Hence,

they are much more likely to embrace the agile approach because they

will not be discouraged by failure while completing marketing tasks,

but would likely view them as an important learning process that

leads to ongoing improvements.

Fixed Mindset (Traditional Marketing - Waterfall)

Marketers with a fixed mind-set are often heavily involved in dirty

office politics because they feel comfortable in their role and do not

usually perceive a need to improve themselves by acquiring new

skills. According to Dweck (2012), people with a fixed mind-set are

confident in their existing skills and often feel compelled to prove

these over and over again.

It is fair to conclude that marketers that actively resist adopting the

agile marketing methodology have a high likelihood of possessing a

fixed mind-set. Think about it: is there a person within your team who

hoards information and keeps them from other members of the team?

Is there someone within the team who gossips and spreads rumors or

blocks creative ideas from materializing? These types of individuals

hinder agile marketing adoption within teams. Bad bosses and toxic

people most of us encounter in the work environment are perfect

examples of individuals with a fixed mind-set. These individuals will

often identify with the following statements:

Failure is the limit of my abilities.

I am either good at it or I am not.

My abilities are unchanging.

I can either do it or I can’t.

I don’t like to be challenged.

My potential is predetermined.

When I am frustrated, I give up.

Feedback and criticism are personal.

I stick to what I know.

In the 21st century, influenced by the shift from interruption to

permission marketing, marketing teams must change from traditional

demand and control (fixed mind-set) if they are to survive in today’s

marketing arena. Embracing a growth mind-set will help marketing

teams fulfil their potential of achieving increased business revenue

whilst supporting the delivery of a healthy customer experience, thus

justifying their existence to the rest of the organisation and

(particularly) the C-suite executives.

Marketers (by default) have a fixed mind-set which aligns perfectly

with the hierarchical company structure which favours the waterfall

project management framework. This works well in marketing

campaigns where we are able to predict outcomes (to some extent).

However, it can be a huge hindrance if the organization wants to be

flexible and able to respond to the needs of its consumers quickly and

effectively, in other words – if it wants to be agile. Developing an

agile mind-set which will support this transition from the waterfall to

the agile marketing framework, however, requires a culture of

openness that encourages mistakes to be made in order to allow teams

to learn from these and improve for the future. Barre Hardy of CMG

Partners, who authored a white paper titled ‘Agile Mindset’, said it

well: ‘Agile leaders put an end to the status quo and promote agility

by setting the tone and vision for what it means to be an Agile

organization, reinforcing and encouraging a shared Agile Mindset

along the way.’ However, this culture must permeate the entire

organization – and not just the marketing function.

Customer Satisfaction – the Holy Grail of Agile Marketing

It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand customer needs.

This is not necessarily due to a lack of trying on the part of the

marketers, but mostly depends on how well customers actually

communicate their needs to marketers. The old adage says ‘If Henry

Ford had asked his customers, they would have told him they want a

faster horse, not cars.’ (or something to that effect). Whilst it is true

that customers are often inside their own ‘box’, today’s marketers

cannot fully discount the input that customers are able to provide via

the gazillion media channels on offer today. Unlike their counterparts

from a hundred or so years ago, customers today are much more

aware of their needs, much more informed about the various different

ways to fulfill these, much less patient and even less forgiving.

Marketers, therefore, do not have much room for error, or even

experimentation.

Adopting the agile approach means recognizing the role of the

consumer in the marketing process and getting to grips with some

interesting practices for communicating and writing down customer

requirements (Stellman & Greene, 2015). Getting a ‘nod’ from

customers about what they like/dislike/want/do not want will greatly

help marketing teams adapt their marketing strategies to be able to

more effectively meet their customers’ expectations. However, this

then begs the question: why do we need to collect insights and

feedback from customers in an iterative manner? Could we not collect

all customer feedback at once and then structure our marketing tactics

around the feedback received?

The short answer is – yes, we could certainly collect all the data at the

beginning of the marketing process and then structure and execute our

strategies and tactics accordingly within the usual 1-year business

cycle. However, with the ever faster pace of life and the speed and

ease with which majority of consumers can get the information they

need about how to best satisfy their needs (primarily via the internet

and social media), it is important that marketers recognize that, in

order to really impact business results, they must not be locked into a

set of marketing strategies and tactics for long periods of time.

Rather, they should be able to evaluate their performance within short

periods of time, so that they are able to quickly divert funds from the

failing strategies and tactics to ones that will be more effective with

their particular target audiences. This is why agile marketing teams

are typically iterative, planning marketing activities around customer

feedback and requirements on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis.

Welcome the Changing Customer Expectations

The growth mind-set is about welcoming and embracing change. A

culture of blame (fixed mind-set) and fear has been one of the major

reasons why marketing teams have been slow in adopting agile

marketing. Can you think of the last time Google made a major

update to their SEO algorithm? How did you feel? Until that moment

you probably had a forecast for your customer acquisition from

organic channels and expected conversions. How did you explain to

senior management that your forecast was accurate?

Being agile and doing agile from a marketing perspective requires a

mind-set that understands and accepts the fact that customers will

change their purchase patterns and perceptions about your product

and/or overall brand. Understanding this is key to agile marketing

mind-set. This first part towards welcoming changing customer

expectations focuses on trying to visualize things from your target

customers’ perspectives. Does your team have relevant information

about the personas of your customers grouped into different segments,

such as ‘new customer’ or ‘most valuable customer’? Do you

understand how your customer journeys through the flow of decisions

before they make the final purchase?

Agile marketers can learn a lot from changing customer expectations.

However, in order to learn, adapt and (ultimately) grow, they need to

embrace this change as a learning process that requires an immediate

response, before it’s too late. This will be made easier if the whole

marketing team, as well as the rest of the organisation, embrace a

culture that acknowledges that mistakes can be beneficial, as long as

we learn from them and adapt our future course of action

accordingly.

Face-To-Face Communication Within the Team

Have you ever been copied in endless streams of emails between team

members when the topic of discussion could be resolved in a face to

face chat in less than 5 minutes? Points made by individuals in

electronic communication (such as emails between team members)

can sometimes be interpreted out of context by others and this will

often result in endless trails of emails which are only creating

distractions and not helping to resolve the situation or offer any

particularly valuable additional information. This can result in a huge

waste of time for everyone involved. This is interesting, considering

the original goal for introducing emails into business was to make

sure an idea that exists in a team member’s head is clearly and

effectively transmitted to other team members without being taken

out of context. Unfortunately, we could argue this is often not the case

in communication streams between teams.

Nonverbal cues in face-to-face conversations, such as body language

or tone of voice, make it a preferred communication tool within teams

because people are able to more easily understand each other, clarify

any issues that may exist in the workload or between individual team

members and encourage team members to openly offer possible

solutions to these. In order for the face-to-face communication to

really produce tangible results, standup meetings are usually

scheduled on a daily basis, which fosters openness and enables teams

to be quick in addressing any issues or obstacles to getting their work

done.

I was recently part of an agile marketing team of 5 people. During our

daily standup in front of a Kanban board, each member was allocated

exactly 3 minutes to update the team on what they were working on

the previous day, what they plan to work on the current day and the

issues that could potentially affect their task completion rate. We had

a squeeze ball hand exerciser which we used for our standup meetings

and the purpose of the ball was to ensure that each member is actively

listening to what is being discussed during the meeting. Person A

would start the conversation, ball in hand, with the mind-set that

he/she has exactly 3 minutes to talk and then passes the ball randomly

to any other member of the team who then spends 3 minutes doing the

same thing. We made sure each individual’s input did not exceed the

3 minutes allocated to them and any conversation that required more

time to resolve was discussed in a separate meeting with the parties

specifically involved in or impacted by that process.

Fostering Trust and Respect Across the Marketing Team

A mind-set of trust between agile marketing team members is

extremely important. Trust ensures team members do not hoard vital

information or hide them from one another. A culture of trust prevents

clique-forming amongst team members and fosters open

communication which is a vital element for information flow across

the team.

Respect for each other is another important requirement for agile

marketing teams. The military is a good example: respecting your

comrades and (particularly) your superiors is important because it can

mean the difference between life and death. Although much less

dramatic, a lack of respect between members of a marketing team will

destroy the trust within the team, make members less open with each

other and this will ultimately impact negatively on the overall

marketing strategy and business results.

Conclusion

There is no single recipe for creating the agile marketing mind-set but

CMOs, other C-suite executives and human resource departments can

certainly make agile marketing governance part of their job

responsibilities.

Training, mentoring and coaching marketing teams in agile

methodologies and setting up recruitment and on-boarding processes

which will favour candidates with a growth mind-set would be a good

starting point. Contact Femi Olajiga for more information about how

to implement agile marketing within your marketing team. I’d love to

hear what you think about this topic.

About The Author

Femi Olajiga is an independent consultant: Agile Digital Marketing

Consultant (Web Analytics, Customer Experience and User

Experience). You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter or visit

my website CXconversion.com

Share and find out more about Agile Marketing in my previous post

- The Principles of Agile Marketing: Explained

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References:

Dweck, C.S. 2012. Mindset: Changing the way you think to fulfil

your potential. New York: Robinson.

Stellman, A. & Greene, J. 2015. Learning Agile: Understanding

Scrum, XP, Lean and Kanban. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, Inc.