Sean Ellis shares the #1 reason growth teams fail, plus 5 tips to overcome it.
Sean Ellis founded the "growth hacking" movement, and I loved his recent interview with Lenny Rachitsky – but it’s not until 92 minutes in that he says the thing we all need to hear.
The #1 reason growth teams fail
Okay, so here’s the nugget Sean shared with Lenny:
“I actually think the cross-functional challenge to growth, a thing that holds a lot of companies back… Most product teams don't want to get direction from marketing teams. And marketing teams don't want to get direction from product teams.”
Sound familiar?
We all want to move from incremental tweaks big levers. But the biggest ideas don’t slot into a single job function – they require teams to work together.
Can your growth people get engineering or product resources? Can your product teams get support from marketing? Or do they have different goals and roadmaps?
How can you get your teams to work together to discover and execute the high-impact work?
Good news - this is the #1 issue companies bring to Sean these days, so I asked him what advice he gives.
Sean’s 5 recommendations:
After working with hundreds of teams, he’s narrowed it down to these 5 ideas:
Start with a single North Star Metric that everyone can connect their work to. "When both teams are working toward the same North Star Metric, they’ll start collaborating naturally, as they share accountability for the result."
Establish joint accountability for key growth metrics – Establish a single set of growth KPIs across the company. If product and marketing are accountable for the same goals, they’re more likely to work together.
Praise group wins, not heroics – If your leaders celebrate individual heroics, everybody will try to be a hero. Instead, call out the achievements first, and the teams who made them happen.
Create cross-functional growth teams – Embed marketing, product, data, and engineering team members into a growth-focused team – put them in the same room and give them a top-priority growth goal to own.
Foster a culture of experimentation – Start a high tempo testing program where both marketing and product teams work together to deliver results. "When you embrace experimentation, teams stop protecting their turf and start collaborating to find what really drives growth.”
The biggest growth levers aren’t necessarily harder, more expensive or risky. But they do require teams to work together. I hope Sean’s ideas help you enable that to happen.
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