How CMOs Get $h!t Done: Best Practices, Methodologies and More

Talk about wisdom of the crowd! Last week's CMO Coffee Talk focused on "getting stuff done" and was a wide-ranging discussion about personal, professional and team productivity best practices.

We covered time management, meeting discipline, task systems, methodologies, recommended reading and much more.

Some great chat highlights from both sessions are below.

If you are a B2B CMO or head of marketing and want to join a community of 1,900 of your peers, let me know.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Calendar Blocking and Google Calendar Sharing also takes the stress out of managing how our household runs

I ask my team for EACH meeting... 1) is this an updates meeting? 2) is this meeting to make a decision? Pick one

Context switching between meetings is rough without a buffer

I also love the "take meeting notes" feature in Google Calendar. I always require my team to activate the meeting notes and add an agenda to the meeting.

Calendar blocks need to be more than 1 hour to really get productive and focused. 30 minute blocks, even 1 hour you barely get going

Too often browser tabs are just to-do's put it somewhere else

When I do agendas, and I don't all the time, I try to remember to include the personal check in component, which cannot become a casualty of productivity.

For 1:1 meetings, I tried to reduce time spent talking about "updates” by getting team members to write a quick briefing note that I could read before the meeting (I also did this for my CEO). The meeting could then be spent talking about 1) things they specifically want to talk about 2) things I want to specifically talk about 3) relationship building

Defining which meetings we really need to be on is key. Sometimes people invite us because we’re management not because we really need to be in the meeting

Also, big fan of the Entrepreneurial Operating System and it's meeting cadence for keeping teams focused on what matters most

Re: Agendas, has anyone ever worked in a setting that used the Amazon approach to meetings? Where you have an in-depth briefing doc and then you come to the meeting and everyone silently sits there and reads the doc? It's always held up as very innovative but when I experienced it, I couldn't NOT STAND IT. Nothing worse than sitting there silently while a bunch of people read the material.

It's awful IMHO

The "Here's what we agreed to do" in the meeting or in a follow up email - so it is documented is key for action and accountability

That was my issue. The Amazon theory is that everyone is too busy to read in advance so you do it in the meeting. My personal opinion is that if we are all adults, we should be able to read in advance. Plus, I'm a fast reader so it drives me nuts to sit there waiting for the slow people!

https://www.eosworldwide.com/

Lots of discussion around meetings and tasks... anyone find benefit with Asana or other tools?

I've used modified agile in a couple of different companies. Emphasis on "modified”

Most reports should be automated and scheduled to go to relevant people's inboxs - so you can review the report and see the data weekly but have the analysis meeting monthly

Mantra in our team is: Less but better

I would have a lot of anxiety about 1) reading fast enough, and 2) grokking it all in real time to have valuable feedback/contributions to a discussion

Amazon style or not, HUGE fan of pre-reads - hate spending time having people read out slides to people who for the most part are literate… (it does require discipline though)

We've done a lot of work on the team in reducing meeting time to give us more work time. We have no-meeting Thursday on the team and we ask ... can it be done asynchronously???if it's a report-out meeting, we will ask “can you make a quick video?” to share. Can we use a jamboard, Google doc or slack discussion.

As with all things, every fix and approach breaks something else. Esp because we all process differently.

I block out my day on the calendar so it's rare a meeting will get booked

We did no meetings any day between 12-2 which many people really liked

Knowing when you're most productive for certain types of work is important. I save execution focused stuff for the afternoon because I’m fried and strategic stuff in the morning when I'm fresh (morning person)

Folks love Asana— 3 companies now

We used Jira / Atlassian for ticketing (same as the engineering team)

We tried Jira to tack onto IT, but it didn’t work well

I feel like I've used all of them - Trello, Basecamp, Teamwork, Jira, Asana, Clickup. I personally love Clickup for running my team, but its a bit much for individual use. If it's just me, I like Trello’s Kanban boards.

We use simple Microsoft forms for tickets. Drops them into an Excel file for us to track to. And Microsoft Planner to manage our to dos and projects

There are many out there, here's one: https://www.eosworldwide.com/what-is-eos

We have used Salesforce service cloud for marketing requests with good success. The tickets served as a starting point and clearing house before we formalize follow actions in asana, or to training etc etc etc

If you are interested in EOS you should read the book Traction by Gino Wickman

We leveraged that "ticketing system" for all content, marketing, etc. requests and it forces colleagues to build a business case and be more intentional…(e.g. do you really need another solution brief for that product?) We used the system to manage workload balance, resourcing, prioritizing, building budget rationale, etc.

I just started using label tagging on my team's google calendar to show everyone where we are spending a lot of time and it makes us really think about how we can do things better or at least question if the meeting is really important. I don't have too much data on this yet but the visual of time break down really made a few people question how we were using time.

I just accepted I take notes because it’s how I learn and process not so I can go back to. It’s was very freeing…

I still use email folders but primarily as a sorting and prioritization system

“What is the one thing that if you do it, would make everything easier to unnecessary?"

Project= something that isn't going to be done in one "sitting" or by one person.

I have a Rocketbook because I like writing by hand, but haven't mastered uploading it to search.

https://www.amazon.com/Choices-Path-Extraordinary-Productivity/dp/1476711828

James Clear - Atomic Habits - very worth the read

#1 rule of productivity: You ain't gonna get it ALL done. As a high-c, stopping beating myself up when I inevitably fail to do the things I set out to do was (and continues) to be the hardest part.

It’s not about not dropping balls it’s about knowing which ones don’t matter

I'm all in on requiring an agenda. For now, I simply reply to any calendar invite that does not use an agenda with the question “What is the agenda?”

I love that quote - "this is the only meeting that I can actually get a good workout in”

One Tab is a lifesaver too

I was just told to 'stop making asana my notebook’…I guess I add too many things that are notes for future things

I was a long-time Franklin-Covey planner user. I've searched in vain for many years for a digital alternative. I finally found one with Sunsama (https://sunsama.com/). It has the ability to connect to multiple calendars, has connections to Slack and more.

David Allen's two minute rule.?If it can be done in 120 seconds or less, do it now.

I discovered this am you can schedule slack messages - I am a very early riser and my team dreads when I’m working out of have ideas 5-7 am. Now I schedule messages /actions that don’t hit them at all hours

I schedule both slacks and emails - my team is grateful and I usually do it in off hours.

We adopted EOS as our operating system last year and it has been a game changer.

We also use Asana to manage 1:1 and we have one task tagged to multiple projects so there's visibility across the team

Identify Discuss Solve

https://www.amazon.com/ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-Results-ebook/dp/B00C1BHQXK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1662736660&sr=8-1

Someone just sent me the “high performance planner" they swear by it. I just started working with it this week but it's really helped!

https://www.highperformanceplanner.com/

Oldie but goodie podcast (on Spotify): “Lead the Field" by Earl Nightengale. Section on productivity. List Top 5 things today, start with #1 etc.

I do the same - I use evernote and add my thoughts for the day, and then the next day I update the list quickly. It has a lot of stuff, but only the top 3-5 things get action.

H/T - if its important, it will come back to you (in email). I have tens of thousands of unread emails.

I think the challenge with email and slack is some people communicate in one and some in the other, than I have to search through both to find what I need to follow up

Priority, Waiting, Review, Follow Up

No folders, no inbox zero. I scan for what matters and ignore the rest. Proudly sitting at 42,000 unread.

Use filters in Gmail, they act like folders

I honestly dislike slack as I have such a hard time finding messages that require action if I scan them quickly then can’t recall if they were direct or group or channel etc

I use folders to save emails after I've "completed" the action in them, things stay in my inbox as “to dos”

Slack stands for searchable log of all communication and knowledge -- their search function is actually fairly powerful, but helps to know some commands!

I told my team that Slack is a quick question type of communication but anything bigger needs to be in email. If it's an urgent email, ping me in Slack letting me know it's in my inbox and to look right away

I'm totally opposite -- I ask my team to only post in Slack if they want me to review or respond, but in the appropriate channels organized by naming convention, such as proj-ABC or internal-XYZ or team-marketing or team-marketing-operations

Pomodoro Method -- 25 minutes focused on one thing, ……

I schedule “Focus Time" on my calendar to have that time block. When people start to abuse it, I turn off Slack and mark my calendar as OOO and it auto declines meetings during that time frame.

For remote teams, I LOVE Mural.co for brainstorming/collaboration to keep everyone engaged.

Focus Time on GCal works great - auto declines meeting invites so I don't even see them

Agile can be a 2 headed beast- great in theory but if you have multiple business units, products, etc. Managing who gets that % of resource (time/people/money) can get really crazy.

I use a tool called Xembly - it’s an AI assistant named “Xena” - she helps schedule meetings, blocks focus time, and I can slack her thinks like “Find time to finish presentation” and she will schedule the time for me to do it…and keep rescheduling it until I delete it, indicating I’m “done.” She also takes zoom recordings and summarizes them and creates action items (you can edit if the AI isn’t quite right). It’s been pretty game changing.

Right? Or lunch or other stuff. The only one i don't get is OOO - personal time. So sometimes I do use that for other things (like this meeting right now for example) and no one ever intrudes unless its an emergency meeting like board, customer fire, fundraise, website down, etc.

Minimize "redirects” by turning them into “deflections”

https://www.avoma.com/

Telling your team how you work is huge. I've found that if I don't do that, they make all kinds of assumptions. I've also told them I will back them up if they are invited to meetings with unclear purpose or agenda, etc. and they want to decline.

YES! Hire organized people to help execute on your ideas. I do that as well. They tease me.

Just now staffing for a PM.?I have the same weakness and have empowered each team leads to be PMs but even they can't do their dayjob and project management effectively

Hiring the perfect compliment to my weaknesses was my best hack at a previous gig - we were unstoppable!

Having a virtual assistant has helped me a lot - they help me with a lot of things like my personal life task or other things that I need to do that enables my mind to focus

Lukewarm take: being great at search syntax is more efficient than folders. You can use it WITH folders and be ultra-efficient.

TextExpander is a valuable app if you find yourself sending similar messages. You can create a shortcut and it types out an entire message for you.

Knowing when you are most production is key - my best time for focus work is the morning

Energy - one of the leadership principles at Microsoft under Satya is to “manage energy" - yours and the team???

Also working on what’s driving you. Sometimes it’s admin sometimes it’s creative sometimes

Two books related to energy management that are staples for me: “Why We Sleep" and “the Power of Full Engagement“ https://www.amazon.com/Power-Full-Engagement-Managing-Performance/dp/0743226755

BTW, All agendas should also begin with Meeting Objectives as well.

#1 question for all meetings, "What are we TRYING to do?"

One thing that has worked for me is a 1:1 doc for those meetings which is listed by discussion items, action items, and action items from last week (with people's initials on each). it's helped with those meetings AND to also ensure accountability

One thing i've found helpful is to do a "meeting bash" at least 1-2X per year with your leadership team to remove unnecessary standing mtgs and move work to asynchronous methods (Loom for explainer updates; slack bots for TPS reports and OKR check-ins; RFC docs for discovery and consensus gather). Pretty fun exercise and energizing to create hours of new time per week for your team.

I find that in startups the worst and the most prominent problem of personal and team efficiency is disagreement between board members due to their personal differences and accumulated resentment. The best solution is group psychologist

I love asking 'What are we trying to decide?' that gets us to the point quickly

Another big prioritization: make sure you understand the business strategy - this enables you to say no to things that don't align to that

I have one project/task list - divided into three categories.?Today - This week - This Month - Completed.?I move items around as needed.

One thing I say to my team all the time: "Listen to the input and then you decide what to do.” We had an issue with people being "responsive" but doing things that were not important. Just because someone in sales asks for something it doesn't mean we should do it.

Something I've stopped doing for efficiency - I've told my CEO we in marketing are no longer doing is sprint planning. The startup I joined is mostly engineers, and sprint planning made its way into how the leadership team did planning (OKRs quarterly then sprint planning every 3 weeks). I tried it for a while but have recently abandoned - it was inefficient for us in marketing to plan in 3-week intervals.

I always ask "will this help us reach our main goals and objectives?" And if they say "Yes" I ask?"How?" If they can't answer that it gets cut