3 Tips to Master Agile Marketing

While speed and agility are the very foundations of strength upon which athletic prowess depends, knowing when to decelerate is just as vital. Executives investing their energies towards agile marketing do so with the very best of intentions. But there are, of late, many instances where it has backfired.

Here's the fix.

Application, not tools

Ice skates are great. For ice skating, not for the football field. So when looking at a tool, consider its internal and external application as well as its resonance and value for stakeholders. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development describes Tech Agile as a producer of 100% gains when applied correctly, when the conditions are perfect, which is not always easy to replicate across industries.

Knowledge Hierarchy

The approach rarely works in hierarchal structures with a managerial top-down approach. Only flat organizations that truly engage in the knowledge sharing that is the foundation of agile marketing. It is only with superiors that are capable of absorbing new knowledge and discarding the old does this approach work. Without this, the ability fades into a stalemate.

Workflow Mindset

Project managers are as good at predicting delivery dates as search optimizers are at achieving a page one ranking in a day. Agile marketing exists at the opposite end of traditional top-down management style and it is a workflow method intended to help teams self-manage. A complete non-existence of supervisor oversight is critical to thriving. In the software world, agile was birthed to reject project management. Managers that can learn and apply an evolved management style around empowering their teams will succeed. In doing so, teams can do their jobs instead of being on the edge all the time. Teams that self-lead are autonomous, thriving because superiors have "let go" and gone against the interruptive standard that makes up large organizations.

The first rule of agile marketing, stay away from the agile marketers. If you can let go of your need to micromanage and nitpick, you're on the path to maturity.