How do you manage the remote team?
When I joined in the thick of COVID, I joined remotely. What was important for me was to create a team of the best people that I could find no matter where they were. That meant that I had to be geographically unbounded regardless of the pandemic. My manager, our chief strategy officer, was very supportive of that, so we’ve got a remote team of folks all over the country.
Being remote means that we had to implement a very structured way of working together. We’ve adapted an Agile methodology using a Trello, Kanban-style board. We meet on Mondays and do our commits; we meet on Fridays and do our completes. For our commit meeting, it’s all about getting aligned and making sure that we each understand what we need from each other to accomplish our projects. In our complete meeting, we celebrate our wins and raise any roadblocks encountered. This process has been a fantastic way to keep everybody on the same page and get to the finished project in manageable chunks.
Do you meet in person?
We do. We’ve been calling these our “marketing residency.” We come together for a week; we have some fun. We also use that time to think way more expansively and really let the creative juices flow. We have a residency two to three times a year. One of my team members said recently: “I think getting together at this rate is enough because if we got together more often, we wouldn’t have enough time to get done the things we actually come up with.”
What’s working from a retention standpoint?
For me, it’s about making sure that everyone has the clarity they need to do their job and to make sure everyone appreciates each other. As a leader, it’s also important for me to have a very open and candid relationship with the folks on my team. Work can get emotional, and we marketers are passionate people. So, I want to have those candid conversations, and I make it known that I do. If you’re feeling that you’re not connected, you’re not getting the growth that you need, or if you’re under-compensated or not being recognized, that will impact your desire to stay on the team. So, I try to give space for these conversations in one-on-ones. Not every one-on-one, but I pick one on a month-ish cadence to just ask.
What’s your No. 1 tip for building stronger marketing teams?
Let each of your team members—especially your directs—drive their own destiny. Help them to create and define what that journey is, but make sure that you’re giving them the support that they need. Let them sometimes make mistakes, but make sure everybody on your team feels that they are running their show. When you have that kind of attitude as a manager, you’ll find that your team always steps up and is grateful for the chance to thrive on their own.