The State Of Work For Marketing Leaders

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Marketing leaders across the globe have a challenging job – to help their marketing teams remain aligned with company goals and contribute to bottom-line results. It’s a tall order and one that is becoming increasingly more complex as technology saturates every area of business. On this episode of Modern Marketing Engine, Bernie speaks with Heidi Melin, Chief Marketing Officer at Workfront. She and the team at Workfront are enabling teams across all industries to do their best work through their platform for enterprise work management.

Listen to hear the findings of the 6th annual Workfront 2020 State of Work Report. Heidi and Bernie dive deep into one particular finding – that work is getting in the way of work – and discuss how to address it.

Work Is Harder And More Complex Than Ever Before

One of the biggest conclusions of this conversation is that the way work gets done has changed significantly, and will continue to change as technology advances. There are more opportunities for optimization and integration than ever before – but with them comes the possibility of confusion, distraction, delay in meeting project deadlines and unfulfillment among staffers.

The 2020 State of Work Report reveals 4 key themes

• Employees are engaged and want to make a strategic impact on the business
• Work is getting in the way of work (a recurring theme over the past 6 years)
• Technology can help – but it has to be the right technology
• Employees feel accountable, but not always aligned

In this conversation, Bernie and Heidi dive into the most concerning of these issues – that work is getting in the way of actual work being done. Listen to hear Bernie and Heidi discuss how you can help your marketing team overcome obstacles to real work so they can accomplish the things that really matter.

How Is Work Getting In The Way Of Actual Work – For Marketers?

The 2020 State of Work Report reiterates a trend that’s been happening for all six years of this report’s availability. Workers report that they are only spending 40% of their time doing the work they were hired to do. That means 60% of the time they are doing tasks that are not directly related to their job description.

How can that be the case? Because workers are becoming consumed by tasks that are not vital to the primary focus of their role. What are the things that are taking up so much of their time?

• Wasteful meetings (driven by poor alignment mechanisms)
• Excessive email
• Excessive oversight

Listen to learn how marketing leaders can address this startling trend.

How Marketing Leaders Can Help Their Teams Do The Things That Matter

Marketing leaders can help their teams improve the quality and effectiveness of their work by directly addressing the 40/60 split explained in the 2020 State Of Work Report. They should begin by asking a simple question:

How is work currently getting done in the organization?

Heidi says that the work team members do needs to be viewed as a “Tier 1” asset and given the attention that goes along with that priority. It’s an approach that will bring many things to light – the need for tier 1 work tools is among them. Listen to hear more!

5 Ways Marketing Leaders Can Improve The Quality Of Their Team’s Work

When you consider that 60% of the work getting done (including by marketers) is not directly related to the role workers were hired for, it begs the question what can marketing leaders do about it? Heidi suggests these 5 ideas…

1 – Improve goal setting strategies and practices

2 – Break your team into smaller, streamlined teams

3 – Increase specialization among team members

4 – Set realistic time limits for projects and prioritize to meet them

5 – Better manage workforce and workflow through better software and integrations

Listen to hear how these suggestions can contribute to greater success with your team’s ability to get work done. You’ll also learn how you can download your own copy of the 2020 State of Work Report from Workfront.

Featured on This Episode

• Workfront – Where Heidi Melin serves as Workfront CMO
• Heidi Melin on LinkedIn
• Heidi Melin on Twitter: @HeidiMelin

Outline of This Episode

• [3:56] Why Workfront produces the annual “State of Work” report
• [5:15] The 4 key takeaways from the 2020 report
• [7:20] What do modern marketers mean when they say work gets in the way of work
• [19:25] How setting time limits can help with the optimization of work time
• [21:50] The virtual workforce creates more complexity within a marketing team

Resources & People Mentioned

• Previous episode featuring Workfront’s CEO – Alex Shootman
• BOOK: Done Right
• Workfront’s 2020 State of Work Report
• ZDNet article mentioned in the podcast
• Slack
• Jira
• Netsuite
• Oracle
• SAP
• Salesforce
• Vengreso’s State of Digital Selling Report
• The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr

Connect With Bernie and Modern Marketing Engine

• https://www.Facebook.com/modernmarketingengine/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/
• https://twitter.com/bernieborges
• https://instagram.com/bernieborges
• https://Twitter.com/MMEnginePodcast

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