Back in September I wrote the 5 roles for success in 2021 to help business plan their hiring and prepare their Q4 and Q1 2021 for success.
The roles were
- Culture Community Manager
- Retention Marketer
- Project Manager
- Growth Specialist
- Innovation Specialist
The reason why I wrote this was to drive a different thought process than just hiring what your team managers are thinking about looking around their teams but instead look at the gaps in most businesses and drive cohesion and delivery.
The Case For A Culture Community Manager
Within your business you have someone who knows:
The pulse of the company, the temperature of how it is operating and how people are feeling, importantly they understand your people.
They understand the business, how it operates, they want to know the numbers, and what makes the business tick (or in some cases, what used to make it tick)
They have trust amongst colleagues and the most important aspect, the respect of the business (ideally they have the support of the leadership team)
They most likely don’t work in HR and likely are not part of the senior leaders, they understand why these things matter but haven’t been given the right company-wide role to formally influence the business.
This is who should be your Culture Community Manager.
If you cannot identify them quickly, go and find them ASAP.
For the last two years, I have been a big advocate for this role.
Why?
Speaking to numerous businesses and understanding their ongoing issues, the next most important role the most important upcoming business issues are likely within culture, staff retention and happiness. It is essential to keep in mind, this is a political role, this is a role that takes time to formally bed in but a lot less time to influence change, it requires good IQ and high levels of EQ. It also needs a lot of self-confidence and backing from leadership and HR to build out the highest level of trust to drive change within your business.
Having worked with companies and helped to roll this role out, it is important this person is already in your business and likely one the secret weapon.
As I suggested in no rules rules, company culture is something Netflix was very deliberate with and they had senior management (the top 10% of the company) were always focusing on culture and the inner workings.
Another role I believe that will be essential is the Project Manager.
In many organisations the Project Manager fell out of fashion, it was not about delivering to a set date, it was when the product was as close to perfect as possible. Or rolling out a MVP that isn’t something that a Project Manager typically owned.
As I have stated before, in business we have lost our focus and it is time we bring back focus and direction and an owner who drive projects to delivery and keep everyone up to date with the right information. If you have ever worked with a brilliant PM you will truly know their influence and the importance of well communicate, good delivery on time.
Upon reflection, I noticed these roles are actually intertwined:
- Culture Community Manager to look across the company and connect people with teams, connect cross-functional projects, build connections and layers of support, all connecting with the strategy and goals of the company.
- Retention Marketer role to connect with customers and existing customers, helping the customer to come back and stay engaged, this will help the company to stay connect and aligned with their users.
- The Growth Specialist job is to help persuade, encourage and tip those users in your product to actually use it and get the most benefit, Growth and Retention go hand in hand.
These roles should connect with the Culture Community Manager to help them talk confidently about the customers and help these to connect to the strategy and the mission you are on. - The Project Manager helps to deliver vital updates and programmes while keeping everyone to date
- The Innovation Specialist is then to be the future seer and drives development in and out of the company. These roles build trust, executes on delivery, builds direction and build trust throughout the organisation and with the customers.
These links build out on some of Focus’s foundations for success:
Communication ➡ Culture ➡ Trust ➡ Delivery ➡ Strategy
I highly recommend you and your business have a think about the roles you need within your organisation or agency, understand there are likely people within the org you can shuffle into some of these roles and identify which roles you are short on and help decide how you shuffle your company around or how you re-shift your 2021.