Why do we exist?
<aside> đł We exist to guide teams on their growth journey.
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Great teams continuously seek to improve. This is a collective process, where every individual participates. They reflect on the past, review available data, and make their best guess for an uncertain future. Always limited by time, people, knowledge, and energy, they need help. Our purpose is to meet this need.
What is our direction?
<aside> đ We help marketing teams find sustainable ways to make money.
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We believe that the purpose of marketing is to drive revenue for the business. While the marketing team is not closing deals, the only reason companies have marketing teams is because marketing generates sales.
Marketing teams have to do more than just make money. They are expected to do it efficiently, with a high ROI, and sustainably, with tactics that drive long-term growth. Our mission is to help them succeed.
We believe that companies spend a vast sum of money on ineffective Marketing tactics because they lack the means to measure, learn, and experiment. The degree of waste is staggering. Weâre inspired by the opportunity to chase this problem.
How do we make choices?
<aside> đ We are transparent with each other and our customers.
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We challenge ourselves to be as straightforward and open as possible. This means that even when it would be easier to hide something, we share it if we can â and that is almost all the time. It also means that we provide and seek feedback openly and frequently.
When we make decisions in private, we do so as if they were public. We ask ourselves, âhow would we feel if everyone knew this?â
We expect each other to handle setbacks calmly. Transparency means weâll share news â good or bad â as itâs breaking. Sometimes, our teams will be asked to consume bad news or incomplete information. This will work only if we make a conscious effort to assume the best intent and to react positively to challenges. It wonât be easy.
How weâre different
Most companies say they are transparent, but their leaders hide things from employees when they worry theyâll react negatively, and they donât share things with their customers that would make them look bad. Being transparent leads to difficult conversations. It is harder for everyone than being opaque. We believe that without transparency, you canât have trust.
<aside> đ˛ We bias towards simplicity, and we invest in reducing complexity.
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We all want to live in a simpler world, but choosing simple is hard. The simple option seems less powerful, and it feels like it doesnât solve the problem as well as the alternative. Even so, we know that in the long run, simple wins.
When we tell each other to simplify, we push for manageability and adaptability in the face of an uncertain future.
Communicating simply makes it easier for others to understand us. Simplifying our motivations and aligning them to the needs of the customer creates harmony.
How weâre different
Most companies lose the fight for simplicity because they lack the discipline it requires, or they are unwilling to do the work to find the simpler path. Simplifying requires choosing to do one thing rather than three and accepting the implications. This requires a serious commitment from all of us.
<aside> â ď¸ We prioritize solving present problems, even when we might be creating future ones.
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Whether youâre an engineer, a customer support representative, or the CEO, your job is to solve problems for the customer. If you find yourself deep in the weeds of something youâre working on, losing touch with its connection to the company or the customer, itâs time to step back and ask, âWhat problem am I solving?â
We prioritize solving validated present needs over preventing potential future ones. Real problems cause real pain in the present, and we look for that pain to keep ourselves honest. We are all equally qualified to see pain.
Even when we focus on valid present problems, we will have too much to do. The problems that impact our ability to accomplish our mission come first.
How weâre different
Most companies say they are customer-focused. However, if you look at what they spend their resources on, you find all sorts of things unrelated to the customerâs pain. Theyâre working on nice to haves, checking boxes that a customer asked for (but didnât need), or creating the future (that might never come).
Itâs hard to do better. Itâs painful to admit that the thing weâre working on might not matter, and we love to believe that weâre smart enough to predict the future. Prioritizing problems requires us to accept that we canât, and all we can do is understand what the customerâs pain looks like now. Even that is hard! It requires us to find new reserves of patience, to keep asking the customer âtell me more about that,â and to ask the questions that could prove us wrong. It forces us to validate a problem before we hire someone to solve it. It takes discipline.
<aside> đđť We notice when we should stop what weâre doing and listen.
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Our relationships with each other and our customers provide the basis for everything we do. Unless they are healthy, we wonât achieve anything. Creating strong relationships requires truly listening to each other. It means being genuinely open to a new perspective, no matter what it is. It requires all of our attention. When we really listen we show that we respect and value each other.
Listening implies action. It means paying attention to how our teammates are doing and noticing when they need help â and following up. We look for opportunities to boost and support each other, and we celebrate people who spark success in others more than those who go solo.
We judge ideas and suggestions on their merits and not based on whom they come from. Whether youâve worked here for a day or a year, we want to hear what you think, and we want you to act on it.
Listening to our customers means asking questions that make us vulnerable. It means answering theirs directly. It means spending our time and resources on what they need, and it means our opinion of the product doesnât matter.
How weâre different
Truly listening is a lot harder than it sounds, so itâs rarer than weâd hope. As human beings, we interpret everything that happens in the context of everything that has happened before. The past biases the present. When we listen, we let go of the past and focus on the present. We accept each otherâs stated motivations. We discard our assumptions. We empathize, we pause, and then we look for solutions.
<aside> ⥠We donât let uncertainty or risk prevent us from taking action.
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We are successful only when weâre getting stuff done. We must be thoughtful, but thoughtfulness is valuable only in the service of action. Only action gets us feedback from the customer. When we spend too much time talking, we choose the status quo. And most of the time, if an action becomes a mistake, we can correct it with another action.
Choosing Action doesnât mean we stop thinking, and it doesnât mean we ignore risk. If we do that, we will crash the car. We must always do both, but we must also keep moving forward, with clarity around required decision inputs and acceptable timelines.
When you see something is broken, fix it. Donât wait for permission, even on day one. We would rather you make a mistake than wait months to have an impact.
How weâre different
Bias to action is a popular catchphrase. However, most companies are still slow to make hard decisions because they worry more about the cost of a suboptimal action over the cost of inaction. Choosing action requires accepting imperfection and lack of polish. It means that we wonât always be able to prove weâre doing the right thing, because we donât know everything â so we canât expect that from each other. It forces us to reconcile our high expectations for each other with the need to move quickly.