rative unit, one of our first ideas was to quiz every function After weeks and weeks of brainstorming and interviewing all of the stakeholders, our volun- in Corporate Marketing and ask them to define the biggest teer team agreed that the communication and the collaboration between all marketing problems they were dealing with in their day-to-day work. stakeholders and the business owners of projects was disconnected and not fluid enough. One of the main things that we dug up was both simple We were operating in an environment that was, while hard working and well meaning, siloed and common to all parts of the organization. Every function and overtaxed. We needed connectors. Bridge builders. Middle (wo)men, if you will. That’s felt the same way. They were frustrated by the fact that they how the idea of the Engagement Manager came about. We needed them to weave a strong were not being involved from the ground floor up. Everyone web between all the stakeholders in a marketing project. wanted to be involved earlier in the cycle of work. The late entries to projects conflicted with their understanding of Before we go any further, it should be noted that we did have great marketing efforts before the right requirements and deadlines and their agenda. No we went agile. There is no denying the talent of our experts in each of their functional areas. one ever had a clear grasp of just how all the part were And their determination and drive to get things accomplished was second to none. But as we supposed to come together. said in an earlier chapter, we could have adapted faster to certain situations and could have produced content and assets even more effectively and in a shorter period of time. All of our As a by-product of this effort we discovered one of the marketing efforts could have been more focused and more hard-hitting if we’d limited their basics of effective change management: if you want to number to a few ‘Wow!’ moments, instead of simply working to produce as much as we could. change your corporate culture, involve all your stake- And these challenges were only going to become bigger in a world of such an increasingly fast holders at a very early stage, and let them have their say in pace. That is why we decided to tackle all of these issues with an agile marketing approach. what’s next. It is much more difficult to engage employees when they are confronted with a fait accompli. Any change project should be bottom-up driven and collaborative. The approach of one person jumping forward and demanding 27 Let’s all go Our concept of the Engagement Manager is partially “From now on we are going to do agile marketing, no inspired by a Scrum Master13 and a Project Manager, matter what you want or what your challenges are”, will be to the lobby… but the engagement manager is truly its own beast. sure to end up in disaster. We like to describe ourselves as the front door to marketing. Business owners (those needing services), go through that door and together