Why we in MOPs "do stupid."

Did I get your attention with this title?  Did it hit a nerve, or perhaps cause you to think of something in your process or your stack that you wish you could rebuild?  

Let me let you in on a secret:  If you haven't found yourself "doing stupid" you haven't worked in Marketing Ops long enough.  

We are all smart people.  We got into this business because we are curious, smart, innovative, and critical thinkers.  We really do know the right thing to do in our tech stacks and our processes.  

However, each of us can look at things that are in our stack today, or things we have built in the past, and we shake our head because our current self would align/build/negotiate what we see in front of us much differently than the version of us that built what is in place.

Oftentimes when we knew the best approach to take, so instead compromises are developed and the resulting processes create "job security" that may seem "secure" but isn't very fulfilling... or adding value to the business.  

Therefore, this begs the question as to why we as smart people find ourselves "doing stupid."  From my experience (both past me and consultant me that is advising clients on their journey to operational excellence), here are some of the reasons. 

Experience (or lack of):   Marketing Ops is a career of continuous learning.  If you are growing in your Marketing Ops skill, you will look at work you did in the past and find a better (faster, more modular/consistent, aligned, etc.) way to execute.  I have personally redesigned the way I execute lead lifecycle multiple times during my career, and this is considered one of my key areas of expertise.  I have presented at Adobe/Marketo Summit multiple times on this topic.  Learning means you find better ways to do things, and the experience you have 10 years into Marketing Ops will be different than the experience of owning your first org and learning the vendor best practices (which drive adoption, not necessarily excellence). 

Urgency:  Many of our stakeholders are revenue professionals who want things NOW, and oftentimes we have to work with constrained timelines that do not allow for the time we would ideally devote to architectural design.  As a result, projects that are high visibility/tight deadline receive a "good enough" level of effort for design, and combined with the next item leave the finished product with some either known or unknown gaps. 

Poor Data:  The data in your systems (both Marketing automation and exacerbated by poor CRM data practices) is deficient.  Duplicates, poor data hygiene, a lack of clear data definitions, field/property proliferation all create a situation where Marketing Ops spends a lot of time making up for these poor data practices with band-aids, imports, highly complex smart lists, and other workarounds.  These workarounds often rob mental energy from better operationalization.  

Lack of visibility (or access):  Marketing Ops can have a visibility deficiency, especially when positioned with marketing/demand/campaign responsibilities.  Depending on your org structure, visibility into the revenue/sales org and CRM processes may be limited.  Given that MOps and CRM are highly dependent upon one another, this lack of visibility and the urgency placed on Marketing Ops oftentimes puts projects into positions where issues get created, of no fault of MOPs at all.  

The troubleshooting death spiral:  When a marketing tech stack has, over time, been put together by a series of one-off workflows, band-aids, divergent and loosely defined data practices, and "we'll build it right someday" high-urgency projects, Marketing Ops teams over time consume more-and-more time in troubleshooting processes built on these shaky foundations.  

I am putting out a series of LinkedIn posts soon titled "Things #MOPs should never do."  Follow this account if you want to see them.  Spoiler alert:  these are all items that exist in most marketing tech stacks, for the reasons above (and others which you can very likely name).  I have helped clients correct many of these issues.  MOPs teams, as a result of having these issues in their stacks, spend an inordinate amount of time troubleshooting errant processes.  

We know the right thing to do.  Sometimes the "right" thing for your context is going to look more expedient than scalable.  That is the nature of working in this space in a real world and not in a Harvard case study.  News flash, those Harvard case studies look like your influencer's Instagram page... only highlights that they want you to see.  Business, and real life, is more complex.  

As a professional who has been in the trenches, and in leadership roles, I want to help you.  As you can see, the one thing that enables us to move away from "stupid" is oftentimes this one thing.

Bandwidth.

We just don't have time, or people, or money.  

I likely can't talk your CFO into giving you unlimited money.  However, in these posts I will share I hope that they give you tools you need to recapture the smart processes we all know need to be developed, and as a result gain bandwidth to deliver that superior value that we know how to deliver.  I hope you find them very valuable.