By building in opportunities for innovation, marketing leaders can position their organizations to be productive and agile as work styles continue to transition. By emphasizing collaboration ability, planning, and teamwork, companies can build an agile workflow that leads to top-notch output and focus.

During the Adobe Workfront-sponsored thought leadership event, Flexibility Over Stability: Creating an Agile Workflow for Marketing Alignment in 2022 on November 17th, the expert, cross-industry panel shared their thoughts and experiences on the biggest opportunities for organizations to add flexibility to their strategy, how employees can effectively collaborate, and the evolution of hybrid style work.

Check out five key takeaways from our discussion below:

1. Empower employees to build their skill base

Giovanna Genard of Old Dominion University spoke about using LinkedIn Learning to train employees in new areas during the pandemic. “It really allowed us to update everyone’s skills… and also switch resources to where they were most needed.”

By requiring employees to do training on subjects including remote project work, everyone was working off of the same foundation. This unity and transparency allowed for flexibility and an ability to respond quickly to shifting demand.

2. Be open to change

“Our division is very open and willing to change and optimize,” observed Jacki Brown of Amadeus. However, that is not always the case with their partners and other teams. While it can be a challenge to get everyone on the same page, an agile workflow with clear expectations and guidelines is of the utmost importance.

By having common terminology and defined ownership, bringing teams and projects into alignment on common goals has been much smoother.

3. Vary project management processes to respond to shifting demand

Tiffany Osias of Equinix noted the shift from in-person work and events actually drove explosive growth for her organization, but not without challenges. “It’s looking at what is the body of work that needs to be done to capture that demand, and then how do you change the people so they’re doing the right body of work”.

While workflow is ever evolving, Tiffany has found that standardizing the processes and sequences within a project has helped to get teams on the same page and set up for success.

4. Reserve budget to increase flexibility

Flexibility is key, particularly in the current environment. Planning for the unpredictable allows organizations to shift budget to new ideas and opportunities and encourages innovation when unforeseen circumstances arise.

“Keeping a mindset of reserving those dollars, knowing that you [might] have to flex and create new campaigns,” said Giovanna, means that organizations can “optimize in real time and remain flexible.”

5. Collaboration is key

“We’ve optimized our planning processes to spend more time planning together versus everyone coming to the table with their baked plans and pushing them forward,” relayed Jacki.

As companies quickly shifted to a remote work environment due to the pandemic, collaboration between teams had been an element that was compromised. By shifting priorities, Jacki noted that areas within her team are now collaborating better than ever. At the same time, they are looking forward to getting back to quarterly in-person planning sessions.

Interested in hearing more? Check out the full panel discussion and more topic-based video clips from the event by filling out the form at the top of this page.