2 Ch efforts, there is simply no time for that. But is goes further At the very beginning, our colleagues feared that the EMs would complicate things. They apt er tw than that. We want to avoid a Big Brother feeling. We thought that adding an extra stakeholder to the marketing mix would increase the risk of o simply refused to add an extra layer of hierarchy and start misunderstandings, mistakes or slower processes. This would indeed have been the case EMC checking up on people. That goes against everything that with ‘sequential collaboration’: where one person does something and then gives it to the C orpor agile marketing stands for and is against all the latest next and that one gives it to the next… That was what collaboration used to be: like a relay at e M organizational trends. We ‘just’ make sure that everyone race. But our marketing team, these days, is playing like a football team. We enable ‘simulta- ark works together better and communicates better. We are neous collaboration’: working together in the same place at the same time, keeping an eye on etin there to ‘kill’ miscommunication, mistakes or double work what the other players are doing and helping each other until a goal is indeed reached. If you g g oe and help drive better and faster results. And we will never get everyone in the same room together, with one mediator facilitating things, there is no way s agi tell the marketing specialists how to do their jobs. They are that this complicates matters. On the contrary: it makes things so much simpler. l e: our sthe experts. They know what they are doing. And it is essen- t or tial that they feel that we respect that. y Our agile marketing approach allows everyone to be pro- active and consultative, rather than reactive and passive. As we said, our marketing experts actually used to be fire- fighting all the time, with every request coming at them, of course, being “super-urgent and absolutely essential for business value”. Our collaborative engagements allow them the luxury to filter the priorities together, pick the 30 most valuable projects, work more efficiently and become proactive, rather than fending people off. That is a great way to fuel creativity and innovation. It buys them time to dream up new things and actually do what they do best!