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Before accelerating a marketing change, make sure the team understands the problem and can carry out the solution. Anne Morriss’s work offers a starting point for examining delays, involving affected colleagues, and explaining the change in terms people can use.
The launch is late again, and the proposed fix is another deadline. Everyone agrees to move faster, which is an impressively efficient way to end a meeting without discovering what went wrong.
Anne Morriss, co-author of Move Fast and Fix Things, asks leaders to investigate root causes, include unfamiliar perspectives, and invest in the story behind change. Her conversation with Drew Neisser gives CMOs a useful lens for the work that comes before a rollout.
Consider a practical application: redesigning how marketing briefs, reviews, and releases a campaign. The following exercises use an illustrative scenario rather than a case from the interview.
Choose a recent campaign asset and reconstruct its path. Record when the brief arrived, when work began, which decisions came back for revision, and where the asset waited. Keep the discussion anchored to that example.
Suppose design completed its work on time but had to restart after two reviewers supplied incompatible instructions. A shorter production deadline won't resolve that conflict. You may need one person to settle the brief before design begins, plus a clear route for handling later changes.
Try the revised handoff on the next comparable asset. Watch whether the number of revision rounds changes and ask the designer what remained unclear. That gives you evidence for a process decision without turning the exercise into a referendum on anyone’s work ethic.
Morriss warns that familiar networks can leave important perspectives out. Inviting someone is only the beginning; they also need room to contribute.
For the campaign review, include a person who prepares the brief, someone who produces the asset, and someone who uses it. Send the proposed process in advance with a request to identify one point where it could fail in practice.
Let those colleagues describe their concerns before senior leaders explain the solution. Ask for an example and make a visible note of what you’ll change or investigate. A contribution that disappears into the minutes isn't much of an invitation to speak again.
Morriss puts a useful distinction on the table: “In my experience, people aren't afraid of change; they're afraid of things getting worse.” That makes the conversation about a new process more specific than whether people are enthusiastic enough.
In the campaign scenario, a regional marketer may worry that a central review will make local work slower. Address that concern with actual operating details: which materials need review, who can approve exceptions, and what happens when a request is urgent.
Test the explanation against a real assignment due next week. If the marketer still can’t tell how to get it done, the change story needs more than a better opening slide.
After the first rollout meeting, maintain a short list of open questions with a named owner and a promised response date. When an answer changes the process, update the instructions where the team actually finds them.
At the next check-in, review one completed assignment and one that got stuck. Keep the discussion concrete enough to produce a decision. A team can work with an imperfect process that gets corrected; a perfect diagram that nobody can use is a less promising investment.
Reconstruct the sequence for one deliverable, including waiting time and revisions. Ask what information or decision was missing at each stage, then test a specific change to the handoff.
Include people who provide inputs, perform the work, and use the output. Ask each to test the proposed process against an actual assignment, especially where responsibility changes hands.
Show what a person will do differently, where they can get help, and how exceptions will be handled. Use a familiar task to check that the instructions make sense.
Name the uncertainty and assign someone to resolve it by a stated date. Share the answer in the same place as the working instructions so the team can act on it.
Anne Morriss advises leaders on organizational transformation and co-authored Move Fast and Fix Things with Frances Frei.
Want to hear more? Listen to the full conversation on Renegade Marketers Unite.