How to Sustain Positive Changes In Your Marketing Team - CoSchedule

How to Sustain Positive Changes In Your Marketing Team Leading a marketing team to win feels amazing. Smashing goals is gratifying. But sustaining change in organizations thats the hard part. We marketers face a tall order. Not only do we have to make hyper growth happen, we have to do it every day. Every time we reach the summit of one goal, a taller one is just around the bend. Your boss: Did your team get 100 new leads last week? You: Yes! ðŸ˜Æ' Your boss: Nice work! But are you on track for 125 this week? You: Well, that escalated quickly 😠³ In short, our job is to start from zero and soar past last week. So, in this post Im going to share with you how to to sustain those positive changes (and results) in your marketing team. Youll learn: The key to putting your teams success on cruise control. How to develop a built-in mechanism for sustained results. Exactly why (and how) to keep your team hungry to win. PLUS, because youre awesome, Ive got something extra special for you If you wanna learn why over 8,000 marketing teams across the world choose to organize and execute their entire marketing strategy in one place Schedule a 30 minute marketing demo of right now. Youll see exactly how teams like Convince Convert, Smart Passive Income, and Campaign Monitor get amazing results with . Now, pick a time for your 1-on-1 marketing demo and lets get to it. How To Sustain Positive Changes In Your Marketing Team by @jordan_loftis via @Develop Smart Marketing Habits As A Team Riffing on Aristotle, former Patriots offensive linemen, Matt Light, said in his retirement remarks: â€Å"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.† We hear it here five thousand times a week. Just worry about yourself, not others, make it part of your routine. Keep striving to do it better and better. The excellence we all shared as an organization, teammates, friends, everyone else. It’s not just as an act, it’s a habit, it’s how we live our lives, what we try to do day-in and day-out. These words are wonderfully portable for anyone who cares about sustaining change in organizations. Whether youre a manager or team member, your teams success is your success. And thats where positive, team-based habits come in. How Habits Work (And Why It Matters) According to a study in the British Journal of General Practice, the wild world of healthcare shows us this, as well. Furthermore, even when patients successfully initiate the recommended changes, the gains are often transient because few of the traditional behaviour change strategies have built-in mechanisms for maintenance. Unless positive changes become engrained habits, achieving goals will become the exception rather than the rule. Unless positive changes become engrained habits, achieving goals will become the exception ratherThat same psychological study defines habits this way: actions that are triggered automatically in response to contextual cues that have been associated with their performance. For a marketer, this habit loop might look like this #1. Your Contextual Cue Your team is planning a new campaign. And you need to get everything organized 📠Ã‚  creative brief, 📄  landing pages, âÅ"‰ï ¸ Ã‚  email copy, âÅ" Ã¯ ¸ Ã‚  blog posts, 🙋†Ã¢â„¢â‚¬Ã¯ ¸  social media messages, 🎉  press releases, ðŸÅ' Ã‚  design assets, 🎠¯Ã‚  target metrics, 📈  analytics reports, 😠«Ã‚  and more Thats a lot of stuff. (And Im probably missing plenty of other things you do.) #2. Your Engrained Action So, be honest. Whats your go-to action given the contextual cue of planning a new marketing campaign? For tons of marketers, its pulling out ye olde spreadsheet! Everything gets a tab. Everyone gets access on your internal drive or Dropbox account. And in short order, chaos ensues. ^^^These are actual screenshots of spreadsheets, calendars, and systems customers have transitioned from over the years! Here at , we call this a symptom of makeshift marketing. Simply defined, makeshift marketing happens when disconnected tools and apps are mashed into one martech stack. In our experience, this is one of the most difficult traps (and series of habits) to break for marketers. But theres good news ahead! This step is complete when your automatic action (read habit) is completed. Then, one more thing happens. #3. Your Reward In his best-selling book,  The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg outlines a third piece to the habit puzzle: reward. The reward reinforces the habit loop. With every completion, the habit gets more powerful. In this case, the spreadsheet gives a sense of control, organization, and peace of mind. The problem is that it quickly becomes messy. Often, youll end up with spreadsheets to manage your spreadsheets! Your Habits Become Your Teams Habits The linchpin to sustaining changes in your organization, then, is leading the right habits so you get the right results consistently. Just imagine if your team smashed your marketing goals with the same frequency as brushing your teeth? ^^^ Thats habit 101. Lets talk about how to move from marketing mess To marketing mastery. According to research at UCL Epidemiology and Public Health, it takes an average of 21 – 66 days to lock a habit in place. To help your team, I suggest this 3-step approach. Begin with your teams goal and reverse engineer actions to achieve it. Establish a rhythm of accountability. Build out *at least* a 21-day habit roadmap for your team. #1. Begin With Your Teams Goal First things first, pull a Stephen Covey Begin with the end in mind. Start with your teams goal (or goals). Then reverse engineer the consistent actions your team must habitually take to get there. For example, lets imagine your team needs to grow social media engagement by 25% month-over-month across all channels. If I pull our Social Engagement Report in , I can get a quick overview of where we stand. Both for an aggregate average  and individual networks. From this baseline, you can reverse engineer your ideas, tests, and tactics to grow your engagement. But just as important, you can learn what your team must be doing  every week to keep engagement going up and to the right. Intense sprints will give your key metrics a lift in the near term. But its turning your highest-value actions into habits that help you win in the long term. For instance, if you learn that social images get a higher engagement on your social channels, the new habit should be that everything your team does has 3 – 5 promo images. (You can use visual storytelling frameworks like microcontent to do this with great results, by the way.) Or perhaps video does really well with your tribe. The new behavior to automate might become a Facebook live video promoting every new post you publish. Heres the anatomy: Contextual cue: Your team publishes new content. Action: The creator of the piece streams a Facebook live video sharing a short TL;DR version and a CTA. Reward: More social media engagement + referral traffic. Next Step For Sustaining Change In Your Organization: You might be wondering, How is this different than simply adding an item to your teams workflow? Its distinct because of its emphasis on engraining a behavior versus checking a box. For you, as the team leader, leveraging the power of habits  means automating behaviors. When you put the  right  things on autopilot, they move themselves ahead with little (or no) friction. #2. Build Accountability Into Your Teams Weekly Rhythm To do this means using the A word accountability. Accountability gets a bad rap. And thats because inherent is the threat of punishment. If youre accountable for your actions, youre responsible for their outcomes. If youre accountable for your actions, youre responsible for their outcomes.A multi-year study involving over 40,000 participants found: Accountability is incorrectly perceived as strictly consequential and almost entirely after-the-fact- 80% of those surveyed say feedback is something that happens to them only when things go wrong or not at all. Ouch. But what if accountability could be more positive than negative? It can. And it starts with ditching the word while leveraging the essence. Accountability is about: clarity, alignment of actions with goals, and enablement of the right behaviors. Sustaining Change In Your Organization With Clarity Another alarming stat from the accountability study is: 85% of survey participants indicated they werent even sure what their organizations are trying to achieve The quickest path to a homerun here is simple: be ultra clear with what results your team is after. Is there one overarching goal youre hell bent on achieving? Then talk about that. Every. Dang. Day. Is there a long-term goal supported by smaller, short-term goals? ^^^ This is the case for nearly every team Ive ever worked on. If this is true, then keep your short-term goals in perspective. Help your team see how they accomplish your overall mission. One of the best ways to do this is through twice-per-week numbers check in. Automating Clarity With Strategic Reporting If we stick with our social engagement example, heres what it could look like. With , you can automate key reports. So lets automate the social engagement report. (If you dont use , totally okay. You can still do this.) Navigate to your analytics tab, then choose  Social Engagement Report. Next, simply click on  the  Schedule Report button. Then add any team members or stakeholders who should see this report. Your progress will be automatically reported to everyone involved without you having to pull numbers yourself 🠤“ The key here is to keep your team focused on the goal even amidst the deluge of modern marketing. Keep your team focused on the goal even amidst the deluge of modern marketing.Sustaining Change In Your Organization With Alignment Of Actions And Goals Now comes the supercharging power of habits. By consistently performing the right actions, your team will move the needle in the right direction. As you keep the mission in front of your team, help them understand the best actions to take them there. One of the best places to do this is in your team meetings. And you can begin by having everyone answer this simple question: If you could only do one thing every day to achieve [team goal], what would it be? Have everyone answer the question. Then, ask them to explain why that action is so powerful. If you could only do one thing every day to achieve your goal, what would it be?Sustaining Change In Your Organization By Enabling The Right Behaviors And now, enable those positive behaviors with a third question: What roadblocks are there between you and consistently [taking desired action]? This is where you come in. As a team leader, you should be an obstacle bulldozer. Its tough enough to form new, positive habits. (And break negative ones while youre at it.) So clear the debris and get the crap out of the way. Clear the clutter between your team and their most critical actions. Then keep doing this. If your team is supposed to increase social engagement, and creating short promo videos to promote a piece is their desired activity, youd better make sure they arent stacked with a bunch of stuff that makes it impossible to get it done. Once your team is assigned a goal, make sure they arent stacked with a bunch of stuff that makes#3. Build Your 21-Day Habits Roadmap For Your Team To bring this all together, the best way forward is for you to get clear on what the next 21 working days should look like. Scientifically, it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days to establish a new habit, with the average being 66 days. So, you can go for the hail mary and push your team for 66 days Or 100 Or 254 if youd like. However, I suggest a quicker win: build a 21-day habits roadmap for your team. In one of my favorite startup books,  Lean Analytics,  authors Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz  explain the rationale for setting goal metrics, saying: [I]f you want to change behavior, your metric must be tied to the behavioral change you want. So focus the roadmap on the singular, most important behavior youd like to download into each team member. This can be super simple. They key here is to show your team that youre committed to helping them build this habit just as much as they should be. Create a Projects Checklist. Assign it to the right team member and set its completion date 21 days from now. Then, assign the appropriate actions. A clever way to start is by having each team member outline their own habit loop. How will they engrain this new high-value activity? They should define a cue, routine, and reward. Then, they should run through the habit loop  every day for the next 21 working days. This might look like: A 21-day video promotion campaign, Logging into, and using, a new software tool every day (HUGE win for onboarding your team to new tools), Or even writing a fresh social post every single day. Whatever it is, make sure you empower your team to make time each day.

General Omar Bradley in World War II

General Omar Bradley in World War II General of the Army Omar N. Bradley was a key American commander during World War II and later served as the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Graduating from West Point in 1915, he served stateside during World War I before advancing through the ranks during the interwar years. With the beginning of World War II, Bradley trained two divisions before serving under Lieutenant General George S. Patton in North Africa and Sicily. Known for his understated nature, he earned the nickname the G.I. General and later commanded the First U.S. Army and 12th Army Group in Northwest Europe. Bradley played a central role during the Battle of the Bulge and directed American forces as they drove into Germany. Early Life Born at Clark, MO on February 12, 1893, Omar Nelson Bradley was the son of schoolteacher John Smith Bradley and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Bradley. Though from a poor family, Bradley received a quality education at Higbee Elementary School and Moberly High School. After graduation, he began working for the Wabash Railroad to earn money to attend the University of Missouri. During this time, he was advised by his Sunday school teacher to apply to West Point. Sitting the entry exams at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Bradley placed second but secured the appointment when the first place finisher was unable to accept it. West Point Entering the academy in 1911, he quickly took to the academys disciplined lifestyle and soon proved gifted at athletics, baseball in particular. This love of sports interfered with his academics, however he still managed to graduate 44th in a class of 164. A member of the Class of 1915, Bradley was classmates with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dubbed the class the stars fell on, 59 of the class members ultimately became generals. World War I Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was posted to the 14th Infantry and saw service along the US-Mexico border. Here his unit supported Brigadier General John J. Pershings Punitive Expedition which entered Mexico to subdue Pancho Villa. Promoted to first lieutenant in October 1916, he married Mary Elizabeth Quayle two months later. With the US entry into World War I in April 1917, the 14th Infantry, then at Yuma, AZ, was moved to the Pacific Northwest. Now a captain, Bradley was tasked with policing copper mines in Montana. Desperate to be assigned to a combat unit heading to France, Bradley requested a transfer several times but to no avail. Made a major in August 1918, Bradley was excited to learn that the 14th Infantry was being deployed to Europe. Organizing at Des Moines, IA, as part of the 19th Infantry Division, the regiment remained in the United States as a result of the armistice and influenza epidemic. With the U.S. Armys postwar demobilization, the 19th Infantry Division was stood down at Camp Dodge, IA in February 1919. Following this, Bradley was detailed to South Dakota State University to teach military science and reverted to the peacetime rank of captain. Fast Facts: General Omar N. Bradley Rank: General of the ArmyService: U.S. ArmyBorn: February, 12, 1893 in Clark, MODied: April 8, 1981 in New York, NYParents: John Smith Bradley and Sarah Elizabeth BradleySpouse: Mary Elizabeth Quayle, Esther BuhlerConflicts: World War II, Korean WarKnown For: D-Day (Operation Overlord), Operation Cobra, Battle of the Bulge Interwar Years In 1920, Bradley was posted to West Point for a four-year tour as a mathematics instructor. Serving under then-Superintendent Douglas MacArthur, Bradley devoted his free time to studying military history, with a special interest in the campaigns of William T. Sherman. Impressed with Shermans campaigns of movement, Bradley concluded that many of the officers who had fought in France had been misled by the experience of static warfare. As a result, Bradley believed that Shermans Civil War campaigns were more relevant to future warfare than those of World War I. Promoted to major while at West Point, Bradley was sent to the Infantry School at Fort Benning in 1924. As the curriculum stressed open warfare, he was able to apply his theories and developed a mastery of tactics, terrain, and fire and movement. Utilizing his prior research, he graduated second in his class and in front of many officers who had served in France. After a brief tour with the 27th Infantry in Hawaii, where he befriended George S. Patton, Bradley was selected to attend the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, KS in 1928. Graduating the following year, he believed the course to be dated and uninspired. Departing Leavenworth, Bradley was assigned to the Infantry School as an instructor and served under future-General George C. Marshall. While there, Bradley was impressed by Marshall who favored giving his men an assignment and letting them accomplish it with minimal interference. In describing Bradley, Marshall commented that he was quiet, unassuming, capable, with sound common sense. Absolute dependability. Give him a job and forget it. Deeply influenced by Marshalls methods, Bradley adopted them for his own use in the field. After attending the Army War College, Bradley returned to West Point as an instructor in the Tactical Department. Among his pupils were the future leaders of the US Army such as William C. Westmoreland and Creighton W. Abrams World War II Begins Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1936, Bradley was brought to Washington two years later for duty with the War Department. Working for Marshall, who was made Army Chief of Staff in 1939, Bradley served as  assistant secretary of the General Staff. In this role, he worked to identify problems and developed solutions for Marshalls approval. In February 1941, he was promoted directly to the temporary rank of brigadier general.  This was done to allow him to assume command of the Infantry School. While there he promoted the formation of armored and airborne forces as well as developed the prototype Officer Candidate School. With the US entry into World War II on December 7, 1941, Marshall asked Bradley to prepare for other duty. Given command of the reactivated 82nd Division, he oversaw its training before fulfilling a similar role for the 28th Division. In both cases, he utilized Marshalls approach of simplifying military doctrine to make it easier for newly recruited citizen-soldiers. In addition, Bradley utilized a variety of techniques to ease draftees transition to military life and boost morale while also implementing a rigorous program of physical training. As a result, Bradleys efforts in 1942, produced two fully trained and prepared combat divisions. In February 1943, Bradley was assigned command of X Corps, but before taking the position was ordered to North Africa by Eisenhower to troubleshoot problems with American troops in the wake of the defeat at Kasserine Pass. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley on the navigation bridge of USS Ancon (AGC-4), en route to the invasion of Sicily, 7 July 1943. With him is Captain Timothy Wellings, USN. US Naval History and Heritage Command North Africa Sicily Arriving, Bradley recommended that Patton be given command of the U.S. II Corps. This was done and the authoritarian commander soon restored the units discipline. Becoming Pattons deputy, Bradley worked to improve the fighting qualities of the corps as the campaign progressed.  As a result of his efforts, he ascended to command of II Corps in April 1943, when Patton departed to aid in planning the invasion of Sicily. For the remainder of the North African Campaign, Bradley ably led the corps and restored its confidence. Serving as part of Pattons Seventh Army, II Corps spearheaded the attack on Sicily in July 1943. During the campaign in Sicily, Bradley was discovered by journalist Ernie Pyle and promoted as the G.I. General for his unprepossessing nature and affinity for wearing a common soldiers uniform in the field. D-Day In the wake of the success in the Mediterranean, Bradley was selected by Eisenhower to lead the first American army to land in France and to be prepared to subsequently take over a full army group. Returning to the United States, he established his headquarters at Governors Island, NY and began assembling staff to assist him in his new role as commander of the First U.S. Army.  Returning to Britain in October 1943, Bradley took part in the planning for D-Day (Operation Overlord). Senior U.S. officers watching operations from the bridge of USS Augusta (CA-31), off Normandy, 8 June 1944. They are (from left to right): Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, USN, Commander Western Naval Task Force; Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, U.S. Army, Commanding General, U.S. First Army; Rear Admiral Arthur D. Struble, USN, (with binoculars) Chief of Staff for RAdm. Kirk; and Major General Ralph Royce, U.S. Army. National Archives and Records Administration A believer in employing airborne forces to limit German access to the coast, he lobbied for the use of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions in the operation. As commander of the U.S. First Army, Bradley oversaw the American landings on Omaha and Utah Beaches from the cruiser USS Augusta on June 6, 1944. Troubled by the stiff resistance at Omaha, he briefly considered evacuating troops from the beach and sending the follow-on waves to Utah. This proved unnecessary and three days later he shifted his headquarters ashore. Northwest Europe As Allied forces built up in Normandy, Bradley was elevated to lead the 12th Army Group. As early attempts to push deeper inland failed, he planned Operation Cobra with the goal of breaking out of the beachhead near St. Lo. Commencing in late July, the operation saw a liberal use of air power before ground forces smashed through the German lines and began a dash across France. As his two armies, the Third under Patton and the First under Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, advanced towards the German border, Bradley advocated for a thrust into the Saarland. Lieutenant General Sir Miles C. Dempsey (right) with the 21st Army Group commander, General Sir Bernard Montgomery (center), and U.S. First Army commander, Lieutenant General Omar Bradley (left), 10 June 1944. Public Domain This was denied in favor of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomerys Operation Market-Garden. While Market-Garden bogged down in September 1944, Bradleys troops, spread thin and short on supplies, fought brutal battles in the Hà ¼rtgen Forest, Aachen, and Metz. In December, Bradleys front absorbed the brunt of the German offensive during the Battle of the Bulge. After stopping the German assault, his men played a key role in pushing the enemy back, with Pattons Third Army making an unprecedented turn north to relieve the 101st Airborne at Bastogne. During the fighting, he was angered when Eisenhower temporarily assigned First Army to Montgomery for logistical reasons. Promoted to general in March 1945, Bradley led 12th Army Group, now four armies strong, through the final offensives of the war and successfully captured a bridge over the Rhine at Remagen. In a final push, his troops formed the southern arm of a massive pincer movement which captured 300,000 German troops in the Ruhr, before meeting up with Soviet forces at the Elbe River. Postwar With the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Bradley was eager for a command in the Pacific. This was not forthcoming as General Douglas MacArthur was not in need of another army group commander. On August 15, President Harry S. Truman appointed Bradley to the head of the Veterans Administration. While not thrilled with the assignment, Bradley worked diligently to modernize the organization to meet the challenges it would face in the postwar years. Basing his decisions on the needs of veterans rather than political considerations, he built a nationwide system of offices and hospitals as well as revised and updated the G.I. Bill and arranged for job training. In February 1948, Bradley was appointed Army Chief of Staff to replace the departing Eisenhower. He remained in this post only eighteen months as he was named the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on August 11, 1949. With this came a promotion to General of the Army (5-star) the following September. Remaining in this position for four years, he oversaw U.S. operations during the Korean War and was forced to rebuke General Douglas MacArthur for wishing to expand the conflict into Communist China. Later Life Retiring from the military in 1953, Bradley moved into the private sector and served as chairman of the board of the Bulova Watch Company from 1958 until 1973. Following the death of his wife Mary of leukemia in 1965, Bradley married Esther Buhler on September 12, 1966. During the 1960s, he served as a member of President Lyndon Johnsons Wise Men think tank and later acted as a technical advisor on the film Patton. Bradley died on April 8, 1981, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.