Agile marketing - is it a mindset or a methodology?

In our Agile Marketing Fundamentals course, one of the things we focus on very early is the Agile mindset. There is a reason for choosing this particular order. In order to truly get the benefits of Agile, marketers not only have to “do Agile” they have to “be Agile”. That’s all about your mindset.

agile-mindset

Without the right mindset, Agile can become what Jeff Sutherland has called “Scrum-butt” and what others have labeled as “fake Agile.”

It can be easy to jump straight to the “Doing Agile” end of the spectrum, adopting daily standups and throwing sticky notes up on a wall. But if you don’t start by changing your mindset you’re likely to end up face down on the pavement like Neo.

The Agile Onion
If you were thinking Agile marketing is simply a set of different methodologies for getting marketing done, then you’re only very partially right.

That viewpoint fits well into a subset of the “practices” part of the famous Agile Onion metaphor, but Agile marketing is a whole lot more than that.

The larger the onion circle, the more powerful but less obvious it is.

That’s not to say that the smaller circles don’t add value, but they won’t add as much value as you had hoped. Or perhaps they’ll deliver value early, but they won’t stick.

To earn lasting agility and all the benefits that come with it, you must achieve the cultural changes in the organization that come with changing the mindset.

And this means that the entire marketing team must change their mindset.

Visibility and Power in an Agile System
The “Tools” that make up the circle in the bottom are really easy to see.

You can easily see big boards with post-its or Trello boards.

However, when they are applied on their own, the impact of tools is limited.

One level up we find “Practices,” which might include: Scrum, Kanban, story writing, prioritizing etc. These practices might be easy to understand, but they’re really hard to make stick and get any real value out of without a more substantial change supporting them.

Ever see a marketing team that was supposedly Agile doing all the meetings, using Trello, and trying really hard but not getting any value to customers? Chances are the team, and/or the organization, is missing the more important circles of the onion.

“Principles” are harder to see, but they encompass many of the practices and processes. Agile principles include things like, “We complete all the work we start in a sprint." They also might include, “Our highest priority is to produce customer-focused marketing every two weeks.”

Having these values underpinning the more visible parts of the onion allows the team and organization to optimize agility around their principles, rather than just trying to go faster all the time.

"Being Agile" is Different than "Doing Agile"
“Values” are even more important and even more intangible.

We know from “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” that the first starting block for any high performing team is trust. If trust isn’t encouraged through respect and courage to speak out (which are all values) then high performance is going to be an unattainable concept.

Finally, the hardest for all to see, is the “Mindset.” The agile mindset seems to be a mythical abstract quality that is hard to define and often glossed over in Agile discussions.

Yet it’s the most powerful ring in the Agile Onion.

Mindset is where “being Agile” comes from, rather than “doing agile,” which is the domain of the inner rings of the onion.

Some people have the Agile mindset naturally. Most children probably do; just watch them build something and be totally OK when it falls down.

Sometimes, just like the Zen state, the Agile mindset is obtained not by learning, but by unlearning all those layers of command and control, management theory, and project management skills.