Let's examine some of the ways.
Maybe you’re new to an organization, hired to lead a department in a new direction or to continue its trajectory. Maybe you’ve been promoted from within or are realizing the laundry list of priorities is growing and your team is stretched thin. No matter your path, many leaders face the same issue: a long to-do list but not enough resources (staff, time, know-how) to get it all done. Prioritizing becomes difficult and, sometimes, skewed: It may feel easier to concentrate on something that you do have the skill or time to tackle, even if that task really shouldn’t demand top billing.
Obviously, planning for the future deserves more. As you get comfortable with your new view and start formulating strategies to move forward, consider some of the key areas that we see as being pivotal to hitting the ground running
.
First, most new leadership
will probably find that solving some of their most pressing needs will depend on their understanding of three basic things:
The competitive landscape and your brand’s position in it: Where do you sit in your industry and how is your brand perceived, whether through the lens of positioning, thought leadership, or some other benchmark?
Team partners and aegncies: What are your agency relationships? With whom are you working? Who’s delivering what?
Organizational challenges: Are you set up for success from an organizational standpoint? How would someone with an unbiased “outsider” POV see the set up?
Taking a deeper dive into each bucket, let’s also consider how you move from “too much to do, not enough resources” to “a lot to do, but the systems in place to get ‘er done.”
Who Are We?
There’s perhaps no greater priority than really understanding what your brand stands for and how it’s viewed. Your messaging and ultimate success depend on an audience who understands exactly what you do. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, your target customer has to think of you when they need what you offer. But if your messaging isn’t in place, and your audience doesn’t understand what you do (or, worse, doesn’t even know you exist), they won’t find you.
Finding Goldilocks
Perhaps you’re in a hyper growth phase and need to hire more people, but you’re not sure where to best assign them. Or, you outsource key tasks to agency partners, but no one has sat down with them to go over goals and priorities – or even looked across the team or organization to understand the landscape of relationships – in months or even years. There are many ways to grow output and optimize staff and partnerships, and by making a collaborative team a priority, you can unify all aspects of your company’s plan toward a common goal.
Setting Up for Success
It’s no secret that how a company is organized – whether you’re considering people or departments – makes a difference. Recently, a client with new leadership came to us, wanting to rethink marketing strategies and asking us for our outsider’s view of what was working and what wasn’t. Without naming names, the client had a number of brands that worked in silos. Each brand had their own approach to social media, no one shared messaging across brands, and each responded to and tracked comments and engagements on social separately. By streamlining through a more centralized social media marketing group, we were able to free up talent to focus on other priorities. Was this a major reorganization? No, not at all … but companies often benefit from an unbiased third party to take a look at work flow to see if it makes sense and is as efficient as possible. Work smarter, not harder.
Leading is by definition a challenge, made all the more interesting as our work environment has changed pretty radically over the last two years. People have left jobs, jumped jobs, taken on side hustles, and embraced working from home full time. Some organizations are struggling to get their mojo back; others are losing touch with who does what without having the face-to-face contact they relied on for so long. Yet wherever challenges lie, opportunities exist. Give us a call and let’s chat – maybe we can find some solutions to get you off to a fast start. Oh, and congrats on your new gig!
Comments