4 common pitfalls in failed agile marketing transformations (and how to avoid them)

Transforming your marketing department from a traditional model to an agile one is not an easy journey. Still, it can be accomplished if you avoid the common pitfalls that cause transformations to come to a sudden halt. Successful agile marketing transformations happen when:

• Change is incremental rather than all at once.
• Employees have a voice in how change is happening.
• Senior leaders are aligned with a common reason why change is needed at this point in time. 

All leaders need to be on board with the change, realizing that they too will need to alter their behaviors and the way they work with their teams.

To evolve, everyone in the organization must embrace change and let go of past ways of operating. The culture needs to be one where people feel psychologically safe enough to try new things without fear.

Here are four common problems — and how to avoid them.

1. Dictating change without a compelling ‘why’

One big reason marketing organizations don’t succeed with agile is that they try to dictate change from the top down without any clear communication to employees on why change is happening and what it means to them.

Instead of this approach, leaders should have a compelling reason why change is necessary and needed at this point in time but leave exactly how that change will happen in the hands of the marketers that it directly impacts.

An example of this may be:

“We’re going to transform our organization to better meet the changing needs of our customers and to be able to adapt our marketing tactics quickly based on real-time events.”

Then, carrying out how this vision is achieved can happen by forming Agile Ways of Working teams that are employee-led and representative of various roles and levels in the department. It’s a grass roots approach to empowering people and making them part of the change rather than forcing them to conform.

Dig deeper: 3 ways to improve team satisfaction and growth with agile marketing

2. Lack of leadership buy-in

For agile marketing to stick, leaders must be on board with it conceptually — and indeed become advocates for change. Too often in companies, some senior leaders want to transform to agile, but they haven’t clearly articulated this vision to middle managers. Without the middle management layer as advocates, they can easily be counterproductive to change by refusing to alter their behavior.

To get leadership buy-in, the leaders implementing the initiative must communicate to their direct employees their vision for change and the expected behaviors of their leaders and teams. The leaders running the change must demonstrate this new way of working to the organization, modeling the behaviors they want everyone else to embrace.

Dig deeper: What agile marketing teams need from their leaders

3. Unwillingness to change

While many leaders want to see change happen, the organization may not be ready or willing. Before leading a large change management effort, understand if the organization is willing to work and behave differently and at what pace you can expect change to happen. 

Although changing old ways of working and the behaviors that accompany it takes time and effort, so as long as there’s some forward momentum you’re on the right track. Change never happens overnight, but what you want to watch out for is marketing teams that aren’t willing to budge an inch.

Dig deeper: How to handle changes in agile marketing

4. A culture that’s not psychologically safe

An agile marketing department needs to trust marketers to work autonomously with an experimentation mindset. This requires leaders to have a high level of trust with employees and to embrace failure.

Without feeling psychologically safe enough to experiment and fail, your company won’t gain many benefits from agile marketing.

Dig deeper: Embrace a value-based approach to agile marketing leadership

Making agile marketing stick

Agile marketing is a great way for organizations to work in an iterative, experimental, customer-centric manner. However, the company must be willing to embrace change, allowing it to happen organically by the people doing the work. They need to feel trusted and supported by leaders to be successful with agile marketing.