Succession planning isn’t just a technique for managers to think through a graceful exit from a company, it can also be a useful, reflective, once-a-year exercise for specialists, analysts, and other individual contributors to identify what to get off their plates, so they’re ready to take on more. Are you looking to move up into management? It’s your high attention-to-detail and indispensability that make you an attractive prospect for a promotion; but once you move up and take on additional responsibility, how will your current duties get covered?
There are plenty of guides out there for succession planning generally (with tips like categorizing and analyzing your meetings and communications, or looking at your relationships with other teams in the company). In addition to those, here are a few things to think through specifically in your personal marketing operations succession plan:
Document Institutional Knowledge
What knowledge only exists in your head, or in the collective conscience of the team? With the pace at which most MOPs teams move and evolve, even the most diligent documentarians have inaccurate, months-old slides describing system architecture, lead flows, or qualifying logic at best.
If you’re going to move up (or move out), it’s critical to capture the knowledge that’s bottled up inside and disseminate it to the rest of the team.
Share Effective Habits
What are the unwritten processes that you follow or the checklists you’ve made for yourself that enable you to do high quality, high-output work? Whether it’s the kanban board you use on the side, a spreadsheet for tracking requirements, or the test checklists you write when QA’ing your programs, there’s a reason you’re a high-performer.
Identifying your habits and sharing it with your colleagues one-on-one or in team meetings will ensure everyone is able to keep pace.
Automate Repetitive Tasks
What are those repetitive, time-consuming tasks you do that are critical to your effectiveness? If you’re well-known for flawless list uploads because you spend hours combing through CSVs for dirty data, maybe Excel formulae or other data tools your team uses can help. If you’re known for perfect campaign launches because you spend hours testing all of the branches of program logic, look to test automation tools to ease the burden and empower other team members to have the same power at their fingertips.
Managers may have the luxury of delegating some of this stuff, but you can use technology to work smarter, not harder.
Wrapping It Up
The common theme across all these succession planning tips is that equipping your teammates with your knowledge, skills, and technology will ensure their continued success. A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say. And what better way to show you’re ready for the next challenge than, through your leadership, preparing your team to weather the storm.
What’s Next?
Curious about Stack Moxie’s QA automation platform for marketing ops? Imagine a tool that helped you…
- Monitor and alert on critical lead flow logic,
- Automate tedious campaign launch testing,
- And maintain living documentation about your MarTech stack.
Sign up for a free trial or request a demo to learn more about how Stack Moxie can help.
