Tasks vs Missions 🫡

Have you heard about the strategic corporal? Sir, yes, sir!

Author

Tim Kilroy
22 Oct • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

In Today's Edition

Hey - glad you are here…seriously. Today’s edition is about leadership - and I think it is a really important topic as we are racing into Q4. Before we go any further, let me say that I kinda hate the “violence” in a lot marketing speak - you know, campaigns (as if we are waging a war), conversions (as if we are religious zealots), etc. Is that just me? 🤷

Strategy on the Front Lines

Have you ever heard of the strategic corporal? I first learned about this concept in a Harvard Business Review article from 2010. (Does mentioning HBR make me unbelievably pretentious? I worked with them in 2010 and they are super nice and really smart, so I read as many of their free articles as I can.) In the Marines, a corporal is a new “manager”. They haven’t been around very long (a couple of years) and they generally lead a “squad”, a small team of 3-9 Marines. (BTW, I was in the Navy, and Marines are total badasses…)

When the Marines are doing Marine stuff in battle, it’s a high pressure and dynamic situation. Variables change quickly. A corporal almost never has direct orders that cover every possible scenario they might face. So the corporal has to be EMPOWERED to make decisions. Some of which might have huge impact.

In high pressure, very fluid scenarios, there is no time for the corporal to explain the context to someone higher up to get their take on things. If information has to go up and down the chain of command, by the time it gets back to the corporal, the plan is outdated and irrelevant.

To make the corporal STRATEGIC they have to know exactly WHAT TASKS their team is supposed to accomplish. They also have to know HOW their tasks fit into OTHER TEAMS tasks. Further, they have to understand what OBJECTIVE the combined teams are trying to achieve. And finally, they have to understand THE MISSION. In addition, they have to have a full understanding of how the mission serves THE GOAL. And in order to understand the goal fully, they have to understand WHY THE GOAL MATTERS.

So, that corporal has to understand their part, everyone else’s part, what they are trying to accomplish right now, how that fits into the bigger near term objectives, long term mission, and why that mission matters. Without that complex understanding, they cannot measure how their immediate actions, in a highly fluid situation, might impact the whole freakin’ mission. That is a lot for someone who is the lowest level manager.

For more on this idea of “decentralized decisioning” that is at the heart of the strategic corporal concept, please read Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. There are 4 or 5 chapters that address this explicitly and it will change the way you think about management & delegation.

Task Masters vs Empowering Leadership

In the agency world, we are obsessed with task management. It makes sense - task management, SOPs, checklists, etc. all make sure that we deliver what we promised to our clients. But we are CRAZED about it - Trello, Asana, ClickUp, Monday, Notion and a million other platforms give you granular ways to keep track of how to complete a task, what tasks have been assigned to whom and when the tasks are due. We have an unparalleled ability to see what our teams are doing in near real time.

Agency and team leaders are spending a ton of time, energy and money trying to get their teams to follow the prescribed process EXACTLY.

Is that really what we should be doing?

When I start coaching with many clients, they can’t understand why their team doesn’t “go above and beyond to get the job done”. They are frustrated because the have the SOPs, they have the checklists, they have the process…but somehow, still, there is a disconnect. And when these leaders ask their team WHY clients are unhappy or why results are below expectations, the team members throw up their hands in frustration saying “I did everything on my Trello board!”

The real issue is that because we CAN manage tasks in an exacting way, we often train our teams to “follow the SOP”, just “work the process”, and more pablum. What we should be doing is EMPOWERING our teams to make the strategic decisions to move closer to THE GOAL. Many agency leaders simply don’t talk to their media buyers about client goals or the entirety of the client experience because they don’t want to distract them from their media buying tasks. Many agency leaders don’t share the team hiring plan with their biz dev contributors because they don’t want them to “take their eye off the ball”.

“Distracting” The TEAM With The Overall Goal Is The Whole Freaking POINT!

If your media buyer understood WHAT the client wanted to accomplish and WHY it was important to the client, that might spark some creativity. If your media buyer understood the client experience that the accounts team is trying to provide, that might make it easier for them to get the reporting to the accounts team well in advance of the bi-weekly meeting.

If your biz dev contributors truly understood that more margin is needed to feed the hiring machine so the agency could serve larger clients (and bigger deals), they might not immediately ask you for a discount to close a deal. They might rethink the way deal terms are structures so that margin is preserved.

Understanding how each piece of your process fits together, as well as the outcomes that the process is supposed to create isn’t a distraction to your team. It is the key to turning your team from “task doers” into “strategic assets who help you accomplish a goal”.

What’s New

In the spirit of decentralized decisioning, my team has launched GEN+ - it’s a group programs (with a huge dose of 1 on 1 engagement) that helps small agency teams distribute the difficult work of creating demand gen focused content & leads gen campaigns across your entire team rather than being the sole responsibility of the founder(s).

Yeah - it sounds crazy. But this makes your team strategic. It sparks their creativity. It encourages better teamwork, and it makes everyone on your team a partner in agency growth. 

I probably should mention that it sharpens your messaging, increases the quality of your brand, helps your hone your focus on the perfect client type for you?

And before I forget, it helps you generate more leads from better prospects, which leads to more high quality sales that will help you generate more revenue, more profit & more happy.

We have a beta cohort launching in early November. Only a few spots left. Check GEN+ out now & book a GEN+ strategy brainstorming session.

Thanks to our Sponsor - Belay

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