How to Get Sh*t Done, Gracefully
Welcome to the eighth episode of #peekintoprocess. Erin meets with the President of Look Listen, Donna Montgomery to discuss alignment. An important discussion, because without it, you can’t move your brand forward. Donna gives a look into how she successfully moves her work and life forward, everyday.
or simply read the highlights below.
Erin
Welcome to our eighth episode of process. For those that don't know, the #peekintoprocess is our behind the scenes look at branding. And today we're very honored to have you on, Donna - because you're one of our favorite people. Today we're gonna focus on alignment, which I know is a buzzword around town these days. I want to break it down on what alignment means to marketing and sales. The overall theme for today was ‘How to Get Sh*t Done Gracefully.’ How do we apply tact? How do we get things done, and make people align without ruining and leaving things in the wake? To get started Donna, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Donna
I grew up in the Midwest. I lived in New York after college. I worked in Fashion PR back before social media and long before we had all these things like Instagram Live. I have worked with Erin and Jones+Co quite a bit in all of my past agency lives and certainly now at Look Listen. I have two beautiful children, and two beautiful stepchildren. My husband and I both run companies and have a lot going on, so volume is sort of the name of the game. I can't promise that I have anything answered or that I can always do it gracefully. Working parents...we're all trying to do the same thing!
Erin
Tell me a little bit about your role at Look Listen.
Donna
We are a digital marketing agency. We have offices in Denver and Atlanta. I report to our CEO and founder which is based in our Atlanta Office. We have about 30 people total in the company. COVID, of course has rocked everyone's life personally and professionally. Our agency was no different, we survived and don't have too much to complain about. It was an opportunity for us to pivot our business, and narrow our focus. I was promoted in January to be the President and I have an amazing team of collaborators...it's a lot of fun.
Erin
Talk to me now about the type of clients that are approaching you, and some of the problems and/or challenges that they're bringing to the table, especially when it comes to marketing.
Donna
Our clients are primarily large enterprise companies, so we work with Comcast, Wells Fargo etc. I would say in terms of where they're coming from has definitely changed in the last year. We all have a new normal. Many of them are at home businesses and they still need to function and pay bills. We are seeing a lot more pivoting of virtual events and virtual meetings. These companies often have multi-office locations, and multi-country locations. Thank goodness for technology. We're all people and we're doing business with other people and how do we keep those connections and make them feel authentic and make them mimic what we all know.
Erin
Do you see differences between sales and marketing from how they want to tell stories?
Donna
Yes. I'm selling all day every day, myself and our team. They want to skip the fluff. They don't want to do the steps and there's competing agendas...Marketing sometimes gets a bad rap - that it's fluff and all of these flowery things but how do we make them actionable.
The thing that I like about our work of alignment is that I operate the same way as I like to personally. In my personal life I'm trying to align the children, align the pets, align that working on the house. The key isn't that we all have to think alike, the key is that we all get on the same page so we can go faster together. There's a saying; if you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go further go together.
I like efficiency more than productivity, if we're efficient about things we're by default more productive. I probably go a little crazy on the efficiency both personally and professionally. Our job with clients is to say, “Hey, we can all find common areas. We can all go faster and we can all get what we want.” We work really hard on making sure that we understand everyone's agenda and finding those intersections where we all win.
Erin
One of the things I love about Jones+Co is the ability to pause, being able to pause teams, being able to pause everybody to stop and think, because efficiency allows it. Hopefully, that you've carved out that time. The pause, the strategic thinking also really is where we want to pull in just the time to think. When you actually think together, the alignment happens.
Donna
When I hear you talk about the pause, it's so simple of an idea but it's really challenging and I think it's hard in our personal lives to do the same thing. It's a reminder for all of us to literally take a breath. Our team has a daily walk, and it's a time block. It's on every calendar, and we try to make time for it. It is a fantastic reminder to take a pause, whether restz , or to reground us.
Erin
I want to talk about what you believe is the biggest disconnect between sales and marketing,
Donna
It's a scarcity mindset but this idea that if I get what I want that means you must not be able to get what you want. I think that's why we talk a lot about the intersection of things because everything's on a spectrum...even in our lives it’s give and take, it's a trade off, it's a pro and a con, there's always things in the middle, and especially with business. We've got these teams that are in the same boat at the end of the day, they all do have the same end game. It's really fun when we run our workshops, the whole idea is to find those intersections and they're much more obvious and much more consistent than people think they are. Everyone kind of relaxes and they're like, oh okay I can still get what I need and they can get what they need and then guess what? The company is better for it!
Erin
I want to discuss strategic execution. It is a phrase that I've heard you say often.
Donna
I have a to-do list, I write to-do lists every single day. And my goal isn’t to make sure that every single thing on that list gets done. It's not how many I'm doing, it’s making sure I’m doing the right ones, and there's magic in the doing. It's like we're not telling people what they should do, we're in the business of making that real for them. The ideas don't matter within your to-do list.
Erin
This is more on the personal front. Do you have a morning ritual?
Donna
I do, again like everybody else I have probably grander ideals than what I live, but one thing that I feel like changed my life literally in the last five years, I love these quick moving mistakes...making moves. What we do is not who we are, but that it is where I get my energy and it is where I get my satisfaction. Taking care of people and taking care of what I need to do and walking through the world with an awareness. One simple thing that has really been helpful to me is I book my day by emails. I email the things I need in the morning and I like to do it again at night. My hours are not exactly nine to five. But if I can say, hey, I need these things from you. And then I could go into what I need to do for other people, and at the end of the day I can say I know I need these things from you, then I feel like in the middle I get time to do what I need to do for other people or what other people need for me. So it's a really simple way of prioritizing before I dig into all my email to say, what are the things that I need today from others, to be able to keep moving forward. And I do it with my kids too, like, ‘let's do this’ and you know it might feel a little militaristic, but it feels efficient to me. I have 70,000 emails but I don't need to go in and file, that to me is an inefficiency. You have to get a certain amount of things done and I get excited when it's done. Or, in motion.
Erin
People like direction and direction is alignment. It's a way to go. It's a way to get there; without that direction, without me thinking about strategic execution, without the creative brief without, you know that this is the concept of the platform to create from people, people struggle. I mean, we all struggle.
Donna
I think when you're a leader your job, too, is to give kind of those guideposts or those milestones or the actionable insights or directions, whatever you want to call them. People look to you for that and across your team, usually the team will have different roles in that. I think everybody wants to feel helpful and everybody wants to go productive. It isn't balanced, it's never going to be balanced - relationships, work, our time in the day, it's not balanced. It ebbs and flows, and that's the beauty of it...every day is different. That's not for everyone but I love that and it's one easy thing in this crazy world that I can embrace.
Erin
Your environment and your space is always extremely tidy and aesthetically pleasing.
Donna
I do, but I, probably again like a lot of ladies on here, I find comfort in that so that is purely selfish. I don't think it's ever tidy, tidy enough. I'm kind of a magnet of seeing all imperfections and not in a judgy way. I don't have some crazy plan to stay organized, it's part of my routine. And I like to think that like every step I'm taking.
Erin
You have a great team that you can delegate to, and you know how many people it takes to get stuff done. You talked about things getting done...do you feel like that's because you also have people on your team that can help.
Donna
This is where my personal life and my professional life I would say, you know, split a little bit. Yes, I have literally the smartest, kindest, most detail oriented team. It's less about the number of people, and more about having the right people and again I think this is efficiency. I would say my leadership style is not for everyone personally or professionally, and the people that work for me are not for everyone.
Erin
Where do you find inspiration?
Donna
I am surrounded by really amazing girlfriends. Nearly all of whom are professional in some way shape or form. And in lots of different industries. I miss that because of COVID. That time over wine and talking about whatever project we're working on at our house or something that we bought or some store that we were out at...we don't have a lot of stimulation right now. So, I feel a little depleted in that area. I've been trying to be better at reading. I subscribe to a lot of newsletters mainly to see what other companies are doing and how other marketing entities are talking about things in the industry.
My motivation to be more efficient is that I have a lot of things that I think are very important that need to be done. And so I'm motivated to find the best way to do that, I think. Inspiration is, for me at least, is finding those little sparks of enjoyment along the way. Work is not always everything we want to do, so I use a lot of humor. We're all gonna be fine. We should have fun with it.
Professionally for us alignment is important because we think that it finds a middle ground for everyone so people feel more bought in when working with sales and marketing teams or, often with groups in marketing people think that it’s too complicated. But there's a little magic and it comes down to people, if you actually talk to each other and we actually say this is what we're trying to do. We're basically moderators right. Just like a lot of your work. So, it feels like a very simple thing but it is very impactful for companies, and maybe part of it is the pause that you talked about, maybe part of it is just having someone else say what they're feeling. It's probably a lot of those things combined but it isn't rocket science. It is a methodology that works, and buy in, whether it's in your family or business gets everyone on the same page. And it allows you to do more with less, and that allows you to move faster together and allows everyone to feel fulfilled.
Erin
Thank you though for all your insights.