Can you run two back-to-back events in a month with only a one-week lead time in between? My team surprisingly did. We thought we couldn’t. We didn’t want to. But we had to.
As a walking Monday.com, my work principle is better planning leads to good execution. Good execution reaps great results. That is why I prefer to plan things with months to prepare. But situations will call for last-minute requests, and sometimes you just have to…pivot, or should I say…adjust.
I lead a team of 8 marketing professionals, mostly Gen Z. We juggle different programs to cater to B2B and B2C markets, as most companies do. Our CEO would always tell us to be surgical (now my favorite word) in everything we do. With that in mind, our team strives to make sure there’s ample time to plan and calculate our moves.
This month, my team was given a project to participate in an event with more than 2,000 foot traffic. I was poised to decline because the timeline was tight — full details were cascaded just one week before the big day — and my team was not a big fan of that notion. We were not ready. As we usually tell our clients, you need a longer timeline if you aim for a bigger KPI with such complex tasks. I said the same when this project fell into my lap.
With only a week to prepare, we pressured our suppliers to produce merch for a 2-day event.
A week after that onsite event, there was an urgent need to ramp up our base for a massive campaign and we had to be creative with our approach. So… we had to produce another event — a community partnership with a webinar component. Again, we were not ready. Decks have to be built from scratch.
Post-debriefing on a Sunday with my team after our webinar.
As a woman of candor, I made it apparent that what happened had put me in a tough position. I value the directions of stakeholders as much as I value the insights of my team.
But we did it anyway. We survived a chaotic October. Now onto the topic: how to pivot when you’re not ready and how to strike a good balance between being a good follower (to my stakeholders) and being a good leader (to my team)? Let me share my learnings:
- Assert but do not resort to aggression — Assert your rights by assessing the situation first. Be transparent with your concerns but don’t let your emotions get in the way. Emotions will make your arguments weak. See if there’s a way to mitigate or make it a win-win situation for both parties. Communicate your non-negotiables.
- Do not be afraid to make mistakes — As an overthinker and perfectionist, I am afraid to make mistakes. But I was told by one of our leads that, as a startup company, it’s okay to make mistakes. We are in the season of trial and error and we’ll never know unless we try. If we make mistakes, we try again and do better. Most of the things we learn are from the errors we make. So do not be hard on yourself.
- Look at the bigger picture — Maybe the way it was communicated is not your favorite part. It’s like them asking you to cook but you don’t have enough ingredients, it’s almost midnight, and the catering is tomorrow. That may be the case, but you see, the intention is good. It may be out of whim but it came from a place of need. This is a decade-old insight from a seminar I attended: give yourself 24–48 hours to celebrate a win or grieve the defeat but when it’s time, go back to work. We have to pause and aim to look at the bigger picture: will this effort push our company agenda? In what way? Not everything is about you, some things are even beyond you. Don’t take things personally. The pressure that you feel may not be even half of the pressure the upper management deals with every day. Before you see things as arising conflict, see things as a challenge.
- Adjust the metric to Return on Effort — High-achieving leaders focus on financial impact. But when put in cases like this, negotiate to adjust the KPI and manage expectations: we have to find a common ground. The buzzword when we make a report is the ROI — Return on Investment. But it takes a lot of tries to get an ROI and we have to burn some efforts to convert. Charge it to experience, I say. I remember our CEO in one of our regional marketing meetings and it was echoed by my boss at the height of this situation: “It may work, it may not work, but I also want to see the effort. Did we really push ourselves to do more?”
- Change your mindset — Veer away from toxic positivity or resiliency. Yes, a can-do attitude is good but empathy goes a long way. Acknowledge and validate your team’s thoughts and feelings first, then circle back on the matter with a fresh mindset. Give it a chance. After several chances and discussing layers of unbiased insights, and you still think it doesn’t work, call the shots.
- Always have a Plan C — Overplan as much as possible. Study the leadership styles of the people around you and check if your team is ready when another spontaneous episode happens. You may have your plan A — your marketing calendar a.k.a. your original plan, your plan B — a plan in the pipeline or upcoming from the suggestion box; however, to be safe, push for plan C — your emergency kit when a situation calls for it. I remember one of our leads told me: It’s okay to have reservations, but do we have other plans? This situation gave birth to a breakthrough idea — a segment that will save us in case of marketing emergencies.
- Share the burden — You’re not alone. I say whoever puts you in the situation, share the burden with them to make them understand your apprehensions. This points us back to point number 1.
- A healthy team culture helps — Resistance is normal. After the event, I realized that we do not fear change, we fear failure. We’re afraid this will not work and it will backfire. Go back to numbers 2, 4, and 6. On the other hand, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do this without the support of my team. Again, I am not a perfect manager. But I am happy that our team has a positive work environment where we neither lounge on toxicity and negativity for long nor invalidate our feelings. This is a perfect example of why we hire for character not just skills. My events supervisor may not have tons of event experience, but she has the right attitude when facing this adversity. All of my teammates are like that. And I am proud of it. They pushed the button like a pro. Whenever we have team discussions, they air their opinions not in a place of complaint, but in a place of concern. Building a safe space where we empower people to share their thoughts is nice to have. I, too, appreciate the safe space that my boss provided me where I can be candid with my thoughts.
- Feedback is important — Going back to point number 4, when effort is the new metric, be hard on your post-event debriefing. Do not take feedback lightly. Act on it and make sure it doesn’t happen on your next try. That’s the only way we could determine that the effort is worth it because it prevented us from a bigger mess or enabled us to decide better in the future when the project has high investment, high impact, and high effort.
- It is what it is — You gotta do what you gotta do. This may hurt but in reality, you’re not paid to only do things that are comfortable. You’ve got to swing it and stretch more often than not.
The big win in this process of pivoting is harnessing my ability to adjust when things do not go as planned. This has improved my adaptability and flexibility meters. And I am grateful for it. I still go by my playbook which is to plan better and never make last-minute calls; but when things like this happen again, at least I know what to do now and accept change gracefully so long that it is reasonable and humane.
Our team ended these two events with tired smiles on our faces. We’ll have a lunch out soon to celebrate our learnings. Here, we learn and earn. Onto the next pivot.
Have you been in this kind of situation? What are your learnings?
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