As a manager, you’ll be responsible for helping and coordinating teams that have expertise beyond what you know. This is especially true in areas of tech. But it’s not enough to outsource those responsibilities to a specialized product dev firm, even though that’s still an option. You could actually be a tech lead, translating the business needs to the tech and development teams.
In fact, more and more companies are bringing at least some of their technology capabilities in-house for more seamless and cost-effective integration with marketing.
The US Department of Labor projects that by 2020 the number of tech positions will increase by 22 percent. It’s becoming inevitable that you will be interacting with technology staff during your career.
As a non-technical manager, you cannot escape working with digital channels. Often times, you’ve to manage a tech team to get the work done.
“But wait a second,” you may say…
You’re trained in marketing or business or entrepreneurship, not tech!
How are you supposed to lead a tech team when your head starts spinning and you wonder if those guys are actually speaking English just 2 minutes into a “tech” meeting?
How are you going to not only survive but also thrive when leading a project with a substantial technology component?
It’s not always easy to lead a tech team if you’ve no tech background, but there’re a few things you can do to make the process go much more efficiently – without burning the midnight oil to learn to code…
1. Be Honest
Digital marketing is becoming more specialized. To run a successful campaign, you need a team of experts each specializing in a different area – e.g. user experience (UX), design, copy, and technology.
You as a marketing manager is not expected to be the expert in every single topic – and that’s okay. You don’t have to puff up your chest and pretend that you know everything.
Be honest about what you do and don’t know, and ask for help when you don’t understand a technical term or process.
In fact, use this as an opportunity to ask the right questions to not only advance the project, but that also build relationships and help your team learn and develop their skills.
It’s especially important to make sure you’re on the same page and have the same understanding of technical terms when you’re working with a tech team.
Tech folks have very specific interpretations of technical terms, and it’s not uncommon that they’d just take whatever you say and run with it without pausing long enough to wonder if you’re using the term the way they understand it.
Often times, they don’t have visibility of the larger context from a marketing perspective to interpret your communications.
A small misunderstanding can drive a tech team down the rabbit hole of developing something that’s completely different from what you have in mind. This could happen if you sacrifice clarity to make yourself look knowledgeable by making decisions on assumptions.
Exposing what you don’t know to a team you’re leading can make you feel vulnerable.
If you have the preconception that vulnerability is a bad thing, you may need to rethink your leadership style and embrace vulnerability as a desirable quality – this will help you forge a collaborative relationship with your team while improving results and cost-effectiveness of your projects.
2. Learn the Basics
Okay, so you’re not expected to know everything. But it doesn’t mean you can hide under a rock either.
To effectively lead a team, you need the ability to communicate with them by learning the basics of how they do their job.
You don’t have to roll up your sleeves and code (phew!) but you do need to have a high-level understanding of the process so you can properly manage workflow and resources.
Every company has different needs. Each tech team, therefore, has a slightly different skill set, focus or process.
Instead of blindly stumbling around Google-land reading up on general information that may or may not apply to your company, shorten your learning curve by finding an ally or interpreter to translate tech talk into “plain English” so you can make informed decisions specific to your marketing objectives.
Your ally would most likely be the tech lead of your team. S/he would have a high-level view of the tech process and how all the projects fit together. S/he would also have the ability to work with other departments, such as UX, design and content, to make sure that the technology supports the objective of a project.
Your tech lead should have the capability to speak the language of the business and help you and the rest of your marketing team understand technical concepts and limitations that affect business and marketing decisions.
By showing real interest and making the effort to understand their work, you’ll win your tech team’s trust and respect (which goes a long way if you need to bump your project to the top of the queue for that once-in-a-while fire drill ;))
3. Keep Your Eyes On the Prize
Your partnership with the tech lead means there’s a division of labor. You’ve got to trust that s/he will handle the nuts-and-bolts of the development process, leaving you to focus on your strength and your expertise as a marketing manager.
By focusing your communication on business objectives and the desired user experience based on your buyer personas, instead of dictating how the final product is built, you’re giving your team specific instruction without stifling their ability to innovate for a better solution.
For such leadership style to be effective, you need to build in reporting, as well as checks and balances, to ensure the project is on track. This can easily be accomplished without much fuss if you use a project management platform that gives you complete and real-time visibility into the process.
On a day-to-day basis, you need to develop a certain level of trust that your tech team can “make it work.” Your trust in their capability will be reciprocated by their trust in you to help them meet the project’s objectives.
4. Foster Open Communications And Collaboration
In order to lead with the big picture, you need to have an understanding of the entire life cycle of a project so you can coordinate and ensure collaboration of all team members involved.
It’s important that you get everyone’s buy-in by involving team members in the process and give them visibility into the big picture. This will help boost motivation and foster collaboration by giving context to their immediate task.
When your team members understand how their work fits into the entire workflow, it’s much easier for them to be proactive by making suggestions that can improve the process or the results.
Often times, tech teams may feel they’re stuck at the end of a development cycle and have little influence on the final product. As a result, they’re not as invested in the project.
Instead, get your tech team involved early on in the planning process. For example, they can inform how user experience (UX) can be improved by incorporating the latest technology that your information architect may not be aware of; or they may be able to suggest some widget a designer may not know about to help add interactivity to a page or simplify the layout for better user experience.
On the flip side, get folks from UX and creative departments involved during development to make sure the final product adheres to the intention of the project and catch any deviation early so you can avoid a lot of finger-pointing down the road.
Your job as a manager and leader is to ensure frequent and adequate communications that will not only make everyone more involved in a project but also help avoid any blame game that happens as a result of miscommunication.
Leading a tech team with little or no tech background can be intimidating. However, it’s also a great opportunity to learn something new, add a valuable skill set to your resume and hone your leadership skills.
Dig in – you may be surprised to learn that your code-monkey speaks English too ;p
Your turn – what can you do today as a marketing manager to improve your relationship and communications with your tech team?
