Getting ready for our next semester’s class, I asked my Teaching Assistant why I hadn’t seen the posters for our new class around campus. Hearing the litany of excuses that followed –“It was raining.” (The posters go inside the building.) “We still have time.” (We had agreed they were to go up a week ago) — I had a strong sense of déjà vu. When I took the job of VP of Marketing in a company emerging from bankruptcy, excuses seemed to be our main product. So we created The No Excuses Culture.
Key Takeaways:
- In addition to customer discovery, creating end user demand, and product strategy, Marketing also serves as a service organization to sales.
- The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and deadlines, it was to build a culture of no surprises and collective problem solving.
- Over time, accountability, execution, honesty and integrity became the cornerstones of our communication with each other, other departments and vendors.
“If someone inside of marketing wanted to add a new project, we needed to figure out which existing one(s) on the list we were going to defer or kill to accommodate it.”
