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Live Demo: Organizational Structure – How to Build Effective Teams within an Organization: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Oct 01, 2024

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode, we’re talking about building effective teams. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Strategic Counsel Summary
  • Transcript

Live Demo: Organizational Structure – How to Build Effective Teams within an Organization

In this episode of Strategic Counsel (or Strat Counsel for short), we do a Live Demo on organizational structure – where we replicate what we often do with clients. This scenario involves a marketing team within an organization who asked for our help finding the best organizational structure for their future. Hear the pros and cons of the existing team, where they can find help in terms of marketing strategy, how to decide what roles are most valuable to the team and what roles can be eliminated or outsourced, how to find team members with a willingness to learn, and “Third Wall” insights and takeaways throughout. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • Practical tools for thinking through organizational structure
  • When to outsource vs. when to grow internally?
  • How to assess your current team structure?
  • Team member profiles and how they complement each other
  • When to invest in a marketing agency?
  • How to shift a leaders mindset?
  • Overcoming a lack of subject matter expertise

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

  • Live Demo: Organizational Structure – How to Build Effective Teams within an Organization
    • [0:36] We’re testing and learning!
    • [0:48] We’re doing a live Strategic Counsel exercise around organizational structure
    • [2:26] Assignment: Assist a marketing team with finding the best organizational structure for the future
    • [2:42] Evaluate whether those were the right team members in the right positions
    • [3:09] Person 1 profile: Coordinator
    • [3:38] Person 2 profile: Go-getter
    • [4:22] Person 3 profile: Utility Player
    • [4:49] The Leader: Servant Leader, but newer to the task
    • [5:42] Initial assessment: not a lot of expertise at the moment
    • [5:50] What do they hope to accomplish?
    • [6:32] How to become a true marketing organization inside the company?
    • [7:06] How are they currently getting their marketing strategy?
    • [7:45] Let’s assume they’re able to hire someone externally
    • [8:49] What is needed more, oversight or more people to do the work?
    • [9:46] Regardless, they need more people
    • [10:47] You probably won’t be able to staff everything internally
    • [11:44] Grow the Utility Player
    • [12:12] What to do about having so many asks and wearing all the hats?
    • [13:35] Invest in high quality executables
    • [14:30] What to do with the other 2 team members?
    • [16:26] Build capability internally
    • [17:22] Sometimes that people you have might not have the skill, but they have the aptitude.
    • [18:19] Building the team based on what they have and what they’re asking for
    • [18:49] What do we need in the organization if we have a role becoming available?
    • [20:45] What does the leader need to effectively manage this organization?
    • [22:07] Will the marketing agency provide the necessary guidance?
    • [24:01] What did you think of that whole exercise?
    • [25:50] Take 1 insight and put it into practice!
    • [26:05] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
    • [26:15] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts

What is Strategic Counsel?

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

_

00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team, and your business. Now let’s get to it.

00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to do something a little different, which we may continue on in the future. We may not. We’ll see how it goes and how you guys like it. We’re testing and learning, folks. We’re testing and learning. We’re testing and learning on our own behalf. So we’re doing this as more of like a live strategic council exercise. And it’s all around the topic of organizational structure.

00:57
and how we build effective teams within organizations. And Anne and I are brought in frequently to assist our clients and consult in this area. And so we thought it might be interesting to almost like replicate what we do behind the scenes and talk through it as though we’re doing the work so that you can see the types of things we consider and how we assist our clients in building the right organizational structure for their business.

01:23
Yeah, and obviously, I mean, this is a 30 to 45 minute podcast, we’re not going to be hitting all the details, we’re not going to be able to flesh out every single little piece of this. But we thought that in hearing kind of the questions we asked each other, the things that we kind of check each other on, and some of the basic things about which we start to really translate the need of the organization into what the organization needs to look like in order to really satisfy that need.

01:52
you might be able to translate some of that thinking and then process it for your organization when you’re in need of that kind of an exercise. Yeah, exactly. So we’re going to see how it goes. We’re going to see how it goes. And you get to hear all the banter back and forth about how this really goes. And this is actually, we’re not holding anything back. This is not just for the podcast. You’re going to hear how we really talk to each other about this kind of thing. Yeah, it might scare some of you off, but we’ll see how it goes.

02:18
They’re going to bring popcorn and they’re going to ask to participate, which will be extra in our scope. The assignment here was to assist a marketing team within an organization in finding the best organizational structure for them for the future. We were starting with some existing team members.

02:42
Part of the exercise was to evaluate whether those were the right team members or they were in the right positions now within the team. And then also to set up the organizational structure of the future, which we knew was going to mean we were going to need to hire some folks. All right, that’s a really good setup. Okay, so April, tell me a little bit more about the people that are currently in place. Okay, so we currently have three people left.

03:09
on the team. We’ve had some folks leave just for background of all of you listening. So we have one that has about two years of experience as a marketing coordinator, has a lot of good insight into technology, having grown up with it, has good instincts overall, but really needs a lot of oversight and just has a lot of things that she needs to learn within the team.

03:38
That’s number one. Okay. Then we have someone who is new to marketing at this point in her career. She is a real go-getter, really good attitude, loves to learn, so is definitely someone that is good from a cultural perspective of what we are looking for.

04:06
but needs to learn more of the brand and marketing fundamentals in order to be effective on this team. That’s number two. And then number three is more of what I would call a practitioner of the things. So this person has historically been in the role to produce videos and do photo shoots and design out some of the templates. So more someone that

04:35
serves as what I call like a utility player to get the things done within the team through the lens of some of that more creative execution work. All right. So it’s a really, really junior team. Yes. How’s the leader? So the leader is also in this instance, a little bit newer to the marketing side of things, more traditionally coming from new business. And now the teams are being put together with

05:04
this person being more at the helm. From a leadership capacity, very much a servant leader wants to really make sure that her team has the things that they need, looks out for them at all costs, but is newer to the assignment of building and then running a team at this size, as well as what fits under the umbrella of true marketing efforts.

05:31
So I guess like my first impression of this, when I’m looking at it is that we don’t really have a lot of experience or expertise in marketing in this organization right now. That’s exactly right. So what do they hope to accomplish? What are they hoping to do or be able to facilitate in this organization? So…

05:57
I think right now, unfortunately, what is happening is the group is becoming a catch-all for all of the executables and even in a lot of cases, administrative tasks within the organization. You’re right, there isn’t necessarily the experience or historically, it hasn’t been thought of as a function that is truly valuable in the way that it can be to the organization.

06:25
So at this point in time, the ask is to figure out how to become a true marketing organization inside and be much more, everything from proactive to offer thought leadership, to be able to create the marketing plan and what needs to happen there, and really start operating at more of that true marketing level to serve and support the sales function of the organization.

06:55
I mean, obviously that the people they have in place are not going to be able. I mean, there’s no strategy. Right. So how are they currently getting their marketing strategy? Well, there hasn’t been any. It hasn’t been any. Okay. That’s a problem. Yes. And from the third wall standpoint, if you don’t have a marketing strategy, you really don’t have anything. Third wall.

07:22
Is that fair to do? Yes. It’s certain little points of wisdom as we go through. That was a test to learn. I’m breaking the third wall. I’m saying if you don’t have a marketing strategy that fundamentally is not going to benefit your marketing organization because you don’t know what to go do and you don’t know who to go hire. Let’s assume for the point of this podcast episode that maybe they are able to hire somebody externally for them.

07:51
time being maybe an agency or something like that. That’s one way of being able to solve for that. Yes. Because you’re probably this organization, I think, if they only have three people, they’re probably on the smaller side, I’m guessing. They’re probably not going to hire a strategist. Not probably at this point in time. My thought on the whole thing was, yes, you need to get an external source in to help give you that shot in the arm to really set things up appropriately moving forward because there’s nobody there right now that would.

08:20
be able to truly understand the function and what it’s supposed to go and do. And then in my mind, ideally, you would either grow the person that has more tenure into the role who’s done other jobs in the past, but not necessarily marketing from an aptitude perspective training that, or you would need to hire more of a director level person that would be able to come in and run the plan that is put out by this other.

08:49
What do you think we need more? Do you think we need more oversight, especially since the leader is not strong in marketing, seems like a strong leader per se, but not maybe strong in marketing? Do you feel like we need another senior level marketing leader in here to help direct, or do you feel like a strong marketing agency can come in and help to guide and then help to build and develop? Or like…

09:17
What do you thinking is the best strategy for this? I mean, I guess it comes down to, you said they have capability to hire new people, but do we need to hire new people at that level or hire new people to do the work? Well, I mean, I think that given the culture that we know of the organization, they are more of a grow people through the organization and up. Okay. So I think the inclination is gonna be to do it that way.

09:46
I think regardless, they’re going to need more people because although it’s a small organization, I don’t envision this group being able to serve needs based on what we know about what a marketing plan entails. I think kind of everybody has to be doers within this organization. There isn’t a lot of hiring just to oversee the work at this point in time and the maturity of the team. I think you have the leader and that’s probably…

10:16
it from that standpoint. And even in that case, a lot of times there’s like pulling that person in, which is something else to be sorted and shouldn’t really be happening. But my gut tells me that training that person is more likely going to be a better long-term strategy versus trying to bring someone new in that hasn’t been part of this team that now has a senior leadership role because it kind of caps what can happen to the people below.

10:47
Well, and also, I just don’t think they’ll be able to afford a strategist. That’s going to be impactful. So and this is another third wall break here, guys, is that if you cannot, especially if you’re a small or medium sized business, the chances of you being able to internally staff everything you need at the level of expertise and be able to pay those people accordingly is actually very, very low. Yes. So don’t even waste your time trying to

11:17
hire, in this case, a senior strategist who has 10 years of experience, who’s going to be able to provide very valuable feedback to your business if you’re not willing to pay them extensively in order to go do that. A marketing agency is a really good substitution for that because you build that wealth of knowledge based on a lot of experience that somebody else is bringing in. That’s not necessarily a pitch.

11:44
just for forthright people, but we happen to be really good at what we do. Yes. I think from that approach, it’s more trying to grow that person to the… We close with the two years of experience. No, no, no. The other person that has, I don’t even know if I said that she has probably call it 12 to 15 years of experience in the industry, just not directly in marketing. Okay. So more mature. Yeah.

12:12
and work experience. Yes. She’s led people before and had teams in other instances where I feel fairly confident about that piece. So she’ll become like a brand manager, just like that. Yes. Yep. And work with the agency in order to facilitate. And learn what she needs to learn and all that kind of stuff. Yep. Now, the other thing, though, is what I was saying before about having so many asks and wearing a lot of hats. I’m not sure that that’s necessarily going to go away.

12:42
It’s just going to elevate into the things that they should be doing. So the other worry that I have about this team is when you have a practitioner of the things, like you just said, I’m not sure that that is a value to the team itself to be on staff. I would also farm that work out. Okay. Interesting. Because

13:10
I think that that role isn’t necessarily going to be able to flex into true marketing efforts that need to happen. It’s always going to be more of an order taking situation of like, go create this thing, make this video, whatever. But that limits what is possible for that person. And so to your point about in a smaller organization, everybody has to be able to

13:35
take on and learn new things. And I’m not sure that that position has anywhere to go within the organization with that expectation. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense too, because I feel like they’ll be overpaying for the staff. Yeah. Overpaying on staff, where they could just invest that in getting high quality executables. Yes. Well, and I don’t think, I think right now there’s work being created instead of the actual work that needs to be done. So once there’s an actual plan.

14:02
Like we don’t need to document every single project that is done with 150 pictures. Right. Or it’s just a one-off, like somebody wants a video for a thing. That behavior over time will stop. So now it’s like, OK, well then truly what are we doing there? No, you actually need someone that can help do marketing and then offload it out.

14:30
to someone to say, okay, now we need a 30 second video to promote this and we need an internal talk from our CEO video and we need a montage of these five projects, here you go. Okay, studies. Yes, yeah. Okay, so if you have the one person that we think we can develop into a brand manager to kind of lead the marketing agency, doing the strategy, all those sorts of things, what are the other two people gonna do?

14:59
Who else do we need and are those the right people? If we’re gonna farm out all the doing and those people, like the one was definitely a doer, right? Yeah, well, I think though she’s doing, like working with that brand manager person to make sure the stuff that is gonna be in-house happens. So for example, I could envision the agency setting a social strategy, but then someone has to manage the social channels, right? I feel like that- Your agency wouldn’t do that?

15:30
You’d have her do it? I don’t know that they’re gonna have the budget for all the posting and all the content creation and all of that. I mean, this is where it’s gonna get very interesting because a full-time junior marketing person, what is gonna be $35,000 to $45,000 a year? Yeah. And you’re gonna pay a social media agency, call it $3,000 a month. So I mean, it’s kinda getting close. It depends, I guess, if you’re…

15:58
wanting to take on? Well, I think the goal of the organization is more to build a true team internally. I feel like the offloading stuff is not necessarily short term, but it’s like a coming in and out as things are needed. Like if we get to we need a new campaign, that would be something that you would farm out to the agency versus.

16:26
teaching the people inside to be able to do this type of work. So building capability internally. So this person will be like the brand manager’s right hand. A P&G would call the assistant brand manager to some extent. And then that person would be kind of help facilitating some of the marketing executional work. Yes. Is that person that you’re thinking, is that person sufficient fit for that role? It seems like it so far. I mean, I think.

16:54
I think it depends as the group inside the organization matures, what else is needed. But at this point in time, again, I think because the propensity is to grow people from the inside and this person seems to be pretty capable so far. I see no reason to let that person go and try to find someone else right now. Right now it’s been a good fit and there’s been growth and goals met already within.

17:22
like the ass of the organization from a pro activity, go learn the skill, learn more about this channel, that kind of stuff. Okay, and that’s another great third wall moment. It’s sometimes that people you have might not have the skill, but they have the aptitude. And that’s a really important thing to analyze if you’re trying to see what the right fit for the role in the person is, is that even if that person doesn’t know exactly how to do it, do they have the willingness to learn? Do they have the potential to learn? Are they gonna have the…

17:51
the due diligence and then the diligence to actually do it right. Mm hmm. Right. So there’s definitely ways of being able to to make that work and not having to feel like if I’m going to do social media, I just have to hire a social media manager. Yes. Not necessarily. No. And please don’t ever feel like that that’s the case. So you heard that conversation kind of go back and forth with me in April. A lot of these skills, especially in the marketing realm, could be learned. Although as long as somebody has the expertise to guide. Right. Right. So.

18:19
either that person has to want to learn and be in it and understand how these things work, or they have to have somebody guide them on them. Yes, yes. I think those are all good points. And where I think we’re landing with this one, right, and what you’re hearing us say is we’re building the team for right now based on what they have and what they’re asking for and what they need. We’re also building or eliminating a position to find a better way because we’re

18:49
So this person who was the, is that the other person then that was there? Is that the role that you were looking to eliminate? Yeah, the video and yeah. Cause that would be outsourced. Yeah. So then what is missing? What do we need in the organization if we have a role becoming available? So, I mean, I think that that is gonna remain to be seen. I think this team needs a little bit more time to gel together. I can envision things like

19:18
internal brand management type of work, which probably overlaps or will potentially with HR and other departments. But- Like culture. Culture. Okay. Yep. Because I think, again, to get them out of kind of the administrative, I think there is a, we support externally this way. And right now the ask is specific to sales and all of that, which is traditionally how a lot of these organizations work. But I think quickly it can also become-

19:47
a need to have more of that internal piece. And as the organization learns and understands these things, that in my mind would be the next sort of position. Yeah, and it’s gonna be really important for them to understand kind of what the rest of the organization needs as well, because there is an opportunity to integrate marketing and sales more closely. And that’s one thing that probably we need to have an episode on because I think a lot of people see those as two separate and distinct groups, but when they are…

20:16
operating together and they’re informing each other and there’s that continuous cycle of feedback and inquisitiveness and information and you start to create a cycle that really starts to work very, very well organically but as well as it impacts the business. That streamlines, they lockstep, they work together far more, their brains think differently but they can complement each other, all of those things. Yeah, 1000%.

20:45
All right, one final point on this one to wrap up this little exercise, although, as we told you guys that this is kind of very top level is what does the leader need here you think April in order to be able to effectively manage this organization if that leader is still kind of junior in marketing knowledge themselves? I think that the leader needs to stay at a high strategic level really.

21:15
focus on being trained and getting ingrained in that part of the business in total and truly understanding marketing, not at a this is what we go do tactical level, but as more of growing into a thought leadership where there is a position and a point of view.

21:38
and is able to help educate not only the team for the importance, but the broader organization in enabling all of them to help reposition it in the way it needs to. So working with the organization to understand what marketing truly is, what value it brings, what it does, and then also helping the team be able to prioritize through the lens of like the high level strategy of the organization and the business goals, what then needs to happen.

22:07
So do you think the marketing agency is going to be able to provide that guidance or are he going to need something else? I think they’ll need a coach. Someone that can truly be objective as far as the organization goes with no agenda of their own. So different from a mentor, someone that’s actually paid to do that, that can help both educate, help teach some of this stuff and then also hold the…

22:36
person accountable to producing results in order to, and I think it’s an and, right? I think there is a relationship with the agency as well, but not to the point of the brand manager where we’re not teaching the leader to, you know, run competitive audits or, you know, do the execution of the things, but they have to have enough understanding. And I think in working with the coach, it’s like, what things do I need to know? What do I need to go and ask? What do I stay out of?

23:05
What do I really get into? How do I rise up and into this role at the same time? Well, it also sounds like this leader needs to be more in marketing the whole environment, just understanding the environment, not getting down in the weeds, but just understanding the way that it operates. So whether that’s in some level of exposure at…

23:32
conferences or something to that effect in order just to get them in that world a little bit too. And switch the mindset. Switch the mindset, yeah. Because I think having been new business focused, like I said, and we said, they’re complementary things, right? Departments really should act as one, I agree with you. But they fundamentally are built and come up in a different way than a marketer does. So there’s going to have to be some mindset shift as well, I think. Yeah, makes sense. Okay, guys. There you go.

24:01
I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks about that whole exercise. It’s kind of fun. Yeah. I have my notes here too. I was drawing it out as we were going, because that’s the way I was doing. And I was doing what she actually does as we go through the work. But the point of this, right, is like we said at the beginning, we get asked for this kind of counsel often. And sometimes the work itself shows how it actually comes to life in work. So we’re showing you a little bit of how the sausage is made.

24:30
But hopefully through this exercise, you are listening to us and thinking, ah, this is for my organization. Oh, I could see how I could put this into play, right? We’re always trying to give practical tools and tricks and tips. But to summarize what we just talked about, right? So the first thing is to understand at a high level why the changes are happening, take a look at all the people that are already in the organization and do an assessment of those folks, both from a…

24:58
cultural and aptitude, like could they learn, are they a good fit, as well as skills and those kinds of things. Assess whether they’re in the right position within the lens of that, while also keeping an eye on what is needed overall for the team. So not just keeping people just to keep them, which you heard us eliminate one and take that more to an outsourced approach. And then also thinking high level for what.

25:25
the team could become in the future so that there is growth opportunity for the people that we think are valuable and we are keeping. We’re being intentional about what those people are going to go and do, but then there’s also room for growth within the team to add more people, et cetera, as this thing really gets humming, or as the business itself changes and there’s additional needs, new needs, etc, for marketing overall.

25:50
Okay, and with that, we encourage all of you to take at least one of the insights you heard today and put it into practice immediately, because if we only teach you one thing, we want you to remember that Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you wanna talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, fort We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business, and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform.