Alli Blum's 3 tips to get buy-in for the JTBD framework

Ramli John [00:00:00]:
One framework that's had the biggest impact on my career is the jobs to be done theory. It's the idea that people hire products to accomplish a job. For example, you might be hiring marketing products to learn marketing frameworks to help your campaigns stand out. Now understanding what your customers are hiring a product to do can help you educate people better on how your product can help them become better than their competitors. Today, Ali Bloom, growth consultant hypothesis department, shares strategies to help you get org wide buy in for the jobs we've done through at your company. In this episode of Marketing Props, we learned, 1st of all, common objections to adopting the jobs we've done in theory. 2nd, tips to get org wide buy in for the jobs we've done. 3rd, how marketers can start using the jobs to be done.

Ramli John [00:00:44]:
Theory. And finally, 4th, Ally's career power ups. Are you ready? Let's go.

Announcer [00:00:50]:
Marketing power ups. Ready? Go. Here's your host, Ramli John.

Ramli John [00:01:01]:
Thank you so much for jumping on and talking about, something that's near and dear to my heart, the job's a bit on theory. It's like a a framework that's made the biggest impact in my career. But for people who isn't who, you know, for people who don't know what it is, this idea that products and services, people hire products and services to accomplish a job, to be done. And, you know, I know why it's important, but for people who are tuning in who might be skeptical, who might not have heard about it, why should marketers care about it at all? Do do you have anything that you can share as to why it's something that could make a big difference into in terms of marketers who are tuning in in terms of their work and their job?

Alli Blum [00:01:41]:
Yeah. So if you are a marketer, you chances are you are working with some kind of static representation of your customer. You have a user type, a user group, a user persona, an ICP. There's something that you're already using as a way to say, this is who my customer is. We sell supply chain software to supply chain managers. We sell, design software to designers and small business creators. And that's really, really helpful in orienting yourself to the world that you're in and the types of folks you might work with and sell to and have relationships with as a business. But it's really like looking at a photograph.

Alli Blum [00:02:18]:
It's a static moment in time. Whereas I like to say the jobs to be done is much more like watching the home videos or watching the movie, the documentary, getting a much more dynamic understanding of what happens over time. So, user group or user type could tell you the the who in in a single moment with very limited characteristics. And Jobs To Be Done is going to give you the the when, the why, the how, the the what if, the I thought I could, but or I thought I couldn't, but then I could, the objections. It's it's so much more, and it's such such a more holistic and comprehensive way of looking at your customers and the journey that they're going through to make the progress in their own lives and in their relationship with you as a business. So any any initiative that you are going to embark on can benefit from knowing much more about what's going on in your customer's worlds when they're when they're making that decision. So when you conduct a, jobs to be done project, you're going to end up with a set of job stories. That's what we call the the artifacts at the end.

Alli Blum [00:03:22]:
And they're going to have these statements that say, when I am in a set of circumstances, give me a way to make some kind of progress so I can achieve some kind of outcome baked within that there's going to be so much more rich data that you're going to be able to write better copy on your landing pages, on your emails, on your sales page, on your marketing site, come up with so many more ideas that your, that you could be putting on, on your site messages that you tailor to your audience. And you're also and this is really, really important for scale ups in particular or startups, anyone with way too many things on their list. A jobs to be done project is going to give you so much insight onto what you can actually just cross right off your list, things you just do not need to bother with because your customers aren't going to care nearly as much as you will.

Ramli John [00:04:07]:
Ali, thank you so much for sharing that about job stories and, like, why, like, jobs to be done is so so important and how impactful it is. I've seen it myself, but often, like, I hear some challenges. Like, you probably heard this yourself, some some objections around why mark marketing teams don't adopt this. I'm curious. What are some common objections you've heard? Maybe it's like, oh, there's a product thing. The the this doesn't apply to us. But, like, with with your work, like, what are those objections you've heard? And and, like, how do you how would you respond to them?

Alli Blum [00:04:40]:
The most common objections that I hear are regarding jobs to be done on whether it's marketing, product, executive, whoever wherever that resistance is coming from, the most common objection that I observe is inertia and momentum. So the most common ways that that presents is we already hearing something like this. We already have that handled. Like, we already have customer research. We don't we don't we have a way of doing things here. We don't need that. Or we have a long list of projects already. We don't need to pause research because jobs to be done research, it has a a little bit of a you're not familiar with it, it sounds a little bit like, let's slow down and think about things.

Alli Blum [00:05:21]:
But we're a start up, and we're scalable, and we move quickly, and we break things, so that won't work for us. And a lot of times, those that kind of marketing and product crossover, a lot of times there may be sort of different camps within an organization where one team might have, a position on this is how our research is. This is what we know about our customers. And the other part the other department may have a slightly different way. So there may be some, if you're if you're finding that you're having trouble getting by and beyond your department for spreading jobs to be done either out of out of marketing, if that's the department you're in or out of product, then a lot of times that can be that can come down to, like, an old, we're we've got a we've got a social political dilemma that that we've got to resolve here because we're look we're working off of different understandings understanding of who our customer is and a different philosophical basis for how we ought to be making decisions as a company about how we serve those customers.

Ramli John [00:06:19]:
I I love how you put it there, inertia and momentum. It's really about, like, you know, oh, we already know, and I think that's that's a challenge. I guess the follow-up question to that, and you talked about it a little bit around the political. How can a marketer, who's a individual contributor, like, get buy in to do it or start would you just, suggest applying it, like, secretly, like a ninja, and then What? And show the results show the results after and be like, oh, look at look at the results of this. Or, like, I'm curious as what your advice would be for a marketer who's an individual contributor to

Alli Blum [00:06:54]:
to get buy in around this. Yeah. If you are working on getting buy in for jobs to be done at your organization, one of the best recommend there's 2 big paradigm shifts that I I would invite you to make. And the first is to really start thinking about that work that you're doing of getting that buy in through the lens of change management. So done right and and I think you know this. You I heard you call jobs to be done a theory. So jobs to be done is a theory of innovation, and done right, it's something that goes it might start a marketing product, customer success. They might start somewhere, but done right, it's going to affect every aspect of the company.

Alli Blum [00:07:33]:
We're going to figure out what customers what our customers' job stories are, the progress that they want to make. We're going to figure out what does figure out what experiences of use and purchase there we ought to build so that we can help them make that progress. That's on that IC level. That's where we're really going to be making that kind of progress, building those things. But then, after we identify those those types of experiences and and build them, then we're really going to want to integrate our organization, organize ourselves around serving those customers in that progress. So, ideally, it won't just be a marketing campaign or marketing strategy. It's going to be something that we do share with the product. We're gonna march in lockstep, and we're gonna all have a really good basis for who it is that we want to be, who it is that we're serving, what matters to them.

Alli Blum [00:08:18]:
When we're going to have arguments, it's going to be about the best way to to solve the same problem rather than the dispute about which problem it is that we're trying to solve, and that things are gonna work so much better when we get to do that. So that's your starting point is I'm an IC, and I've got enough juice within my company that I know I'm gonna be able to influence my peers around the org. Maybe I'm I'm still I still need buying from my boss. Maybe I need it from a VP or above, but I I I still wanna be thinking about it through the lens of this is going to be really successful when a lot of people are involved. And when, what, what that does is starts to make it really easy for that second paradigm shift to take place, which is we come into this question of, oh, how do I get buy in on research or jobs to be done? How do I get more people to care about what my customers think? How do I get that DOC to be front and center? And the way to do this is to make that initiative less about what your customers care about and the progress that they want to make and more about what your boss, your coworkers, your stakeholders, whoever is going to be the one signing off on those initiatives and mobilizing that with you, more about what they want to think. So your change management initiative is going to be about figuring out what kinds of problems your colleagues have. I like to keep a library anytime, like, researching my my colleague yet who doesn't get understand jobs to be done. Let me let me take a list of everything everything that's bothering them.

Alli Blum [00:09:35]:
Let me get to know them. Let me do some research on them informally. If it's formal, it's a little bit might feel a little bit stiff, but let me get to know them and what's important to them. And then let me go find some VOC. So starting small, you're revealing yet, but you're starting to reveal little bits of VOC, 30 second snippets. I love using Descript audiograms to say, Hey, this is like, remember that problem you were talking about in all hands? Like I found, I found a customer who is dealing with the same thing, and this is how they're solving it. Or remember when we were when we were trying to get buy in on, or remember when we were trying to get more adoption for this feature? I have all of these customers. They didn't even know that we had it.

Alli Blum [00:10:13]:
They're asking if we could build it for them. So this is actually a problem I found, and I think I can solve it. I'm gonna go solve it. So showing that you're starting to make that having that slow startup, showing some of that research little bits at a time, connecting it to what's already really important to the people that you need that buy in from is going to set that foundation up for you to eventually make that ask and say, okay, look, we've got a lot of progress. We, we solved a lot of problems with the VOC that we have, and here's what that looks like. And here's the results we get. There's still these other questions we don't have the answers to. And, and I think if we're really gonna be take that seriously, this is what's going to be involved.

Alli Blum [00:10:50]:
And here's where I might get a little stealth. Maybe you're gonna need to hire somebody, or maybe you're if you really wanna get the buy in, I often recommend to folks, just do it yourself, Figure out a way to, learn how to run your own jobs, interviews, and go out and do that research and a lot and while building that case for buy in so that you can be the one to to go ahead and get it done. Fastest way to get buy in on something is to do it yourself. I like that. And it

Ramli John [00:11:14]:
seems like you're applying the the framework, the the jobs to be done. Like, what is the job that my boss is trying to do? What is the problem that they have? And use use that that, you know, your approach to getting voice customer and things like that to to the situation, which it's kind of it's a little bit of a meta thing where, like, use the job to be done to pitch jobs to pitch

Alli Blum [00:11:36]:
to pitch to pitch

Ramli John [00:11:37]:
to pitch. That's so cool. That's so cool. That makes sense.

Alli Blum [00:11:41]:
When I was working

Ramli John [00:11:42]:
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No. Feel free to share your story. I think that's cool.

Alli Blum [00:11:46]:
When I was working with, EnjoyHQ, I worked with I I wanna say I helped 5th year or so companies get their qualitative research repository stood up. So this is a new, but starting to be relatively established category where you can store all of your transcripts, your interviews. You can have integrations with your customer support tickets. So you can keep all of your data in one place, and it makes it really easy to share and access. So you're making it as mobile as any of the quantitative data that you're already keeping track of at your company. And when I would meet with a lot of these, the folks who were starting to use enjoy HQ to a tee, they all struggled with this. Oh, I don't know how people like, we're really struggle, really struggling to get the buy in on the research, whether it's jobs or whether it's any other kind of VOC program, really getting folks to take that kind of qualitative data seriously is a struggle at, it was a struggle at 100% of the companies, that I had a chance to meet with. And it remains so fascinating to me because we are uniquely, if we are doing research, we are uniquely predisposed to having the skills to understand exactly what we need to do to connect, to figure out what kind of solution to build.

Alli Blum [00:12:53]:
It's what it's what we're doing when we do jobs to be done is figuring out what kind of experience have used or purchase we want to be able to build so that we help a customer make progress. We have those skills. It does start to feel okay. So this is where I'll say it. Part of me is like, ah, how come we're not just doing it? Another part of me is like, well, it is a little bit different when it's your colleague, when you have these relationships. You're seeing them every day when, you know, this isn't the only facet of your relationship. I mean, they're your boss, so they also control how much of a raise you're going to get or whether you're gonna be on the chopping block during the next round of layoffs. So there's a lot more, nervousness, and it's harder to see if we our lens can narrow there a little bit.

Alli Blum [00:13:32]:
But a lot of the same tools and principles can apply. Figure out what progress your boss or your stakeholders want to make and and find a way to show that you can help them make it.

Ramli John [00:13:42]:
I I like that. I think what I heard was I the something you mentioned earlier as well is, like, your you mentioned the word momentum, and it it's like if you can get a few and then almost like a domino effect. Yeah. It's like getting, one person to get bought bought in and eventually, hopefully, you get the the whole team bought into to that thing. So you're, like, slowly building it up. I'm guessing it's like a toll totally different experience from a marketing, marketer who's an individual contributor to, let's say, a director, VP, or C level. Do you have any advice for those people who are, like, higher up, who are, like, executive leaders and, like, yeah, I get it. Like, I I've seen it work in other companies.

Ramli John [00:14:26]:
Well, would you would it be the same pattern where, like, you get a few people bought in? I'm guessing there's a little bit more influence there, so maybe they can skip a step. So, like, what's your advice to those, those executives who who might have want want to, like, get this adopted by their team or other teams in the company?

Alli Blum [00:14:45]:
It's so interesting because there's so many things that are similar and so many things that are a little bit different. So the biggest difference is to look at your power dynamics with the people that you need to be getting that buy in from and how that is going to influence a lot of what you're doing. If you're a mid junior mid level IC, yeah, if you're junior level if you're a principal, or very senior IC, a lot of what I said earlier may or may not be the technique you want to use. You may it may come down more to experience level and power and influence that you already have related to your position. But if you are relatively, in that first group that I was just describing, most of the people that you need to buy in from are going to be higher up on the food chain than you are. And they're going to have less time. They're going to have more priorities that you don't maybe you don't ever know about. You're probably going to have a little bit of a different relationship.

Alli Blum [00:15:32]:
When you are already in an executive position or very, very high, IC, you're going to be getting a lot more lateral buy in from people across the board and a lot more, like, different a lot more education and instruction and training for the people who are either reporting to you or, working alongside you cross functionally or in different departments or, at your level as CIC. Here's what I mean by that. Unless you are the CEO, so you're still going to have a little bit of that element. You're still going to want to take that approach to say to get that CEO bought in. When the CEO is bought in on Jobs To Be Done, that's when it's the most effective because it will it will, answer so many of the questions across the organization, and it will make so many things, make so much more sense, and happen more, effectively. So you're still going to make sure you have that that person at the top really bought in. I actually have spoke with one company that because they wanted their entire board bought in on this approach. So that having that entire, most senior top down approach can be really, really powerful.

Alli Blum [00:16:32]:
But that next level so you're gonna have a little bit of a different technique here with that next level. The next level, it's going to depend a lot on the relationships that you have with your fellow executives on the team. So if you're a marketer and you're trying to bring in jobs to be done to solve one of the problems you have related to your growth targets or how many leads you're bringing in or the pipeline that you're building or whatever the your, targets are. Your counterpart in product or your counterpart in growth, depending on how your team is structured, is going to have similar adjacent priorities, but they're going to be solving them in a different way. And marketing marketing a product getting aligned is the absolute hardest part at that senior level, because these tend to be folks who are both really, really seasoned. They have gotten to their positions. If you were either of these folks, you had a lot of experience. You've seen a lot of things work.

Alli Blum [00:17:19]:
You've seen a lot of things not work. You've probably seen people try to get jobs to be done up and running and not succeed. Maybe you have even been in that position yourself. So it's really, really challenging because by that point, that are many, many folks have a really crisp perspective on what they believe works. So you want to make sure if you can try to get that alignment before you even started the company. But if you can't, or if you've been promoted into the role or someone gets hired into it, of course, you can't always do that. That's where you're going to want to really build out that relationship and really be, sharing a lot of information and and making sure that they're they're bought in. Any initiative that you push forward, you're probably going to want to make sure you have members from both teams in included.

Alli Blum [00:17:59]:
Product is is very unlikely to want to implement marketing's research. Marketing is I have seen marketers get swayed into products research, but I have seen it they're still not gonna wanna implement products research. We we want this to be done together. Yeah. Now the big the big thing that happens here okay. So you're gonna wanna start with that top level. So getting that top down approach is gonna be really, really important because if you don't have that, anything your team, your direct reports, or colleagues is going to do is going to take a lot. You're not gonna have that buy in.

Alli Blum [00:18:30]:
They're gonna be there's gonna be a lot of infighting that you're not gonna hear about it. You're just gonna hear some grumpies, and and it's gonna be a little bit it's gonna be tough on morale. So you wanna get that really, that top level really locked in, and that's gonna make it so much easier for your team and for everyone. Okay. Once you have that, and you say, okay. We're going to execute this drops to be done study either with our internal team, with an external partner. We this is why you're gonna want to do something similar where you're sharing why you're doing it. You're repeating that message often.

Alli Blum [00:19:00]:
I like to say leadership is repetition. You're going to want to say that over and over, why this matters, why this matters now, how you weigh the trade offs in the right you know, in different audiences depending on how your team your leadership So that executive level, maybe maybe you have the kind of company where everyone on your team is just as thoughtful as you are and just as dedicated to getting that deep level of understanding of the customers because they believe that it will transform everything about how they grow and will set them up for long term success.

Ramli John [00:19:39]:
That is so good.

Alli Blum [00:19:40]:
Not, though.

Ramli John [00:19:41]:
I see that.

Alli Blum [00:19:41]:
For decades. I'm still gonna recommend elements of that strategy where you're going to want to present different insights, and it's gonna depend on your team, but you may want to say, like, you know, we're during our dedicated leadership time for the next month, I'm going to share one highlights of what we learned about each one of our 4 job stories, for example. You're going to share little clips of the VOC 32nd. I love using, Descript. I think Canva has a feature of this now where you can upload you can upload a 32nd clip of a customer talking, and it will it will give subtitles. I have seen people who I've seen people eat these up. Like, they they're they they're so phenomenal.

Ramli John [00:20:19]:
Yeah.

Alli Blum [00:20:19]:
I don't care how much, I would say let me start that sentence over. Even if you have somebody who believes completely in jobs to be done, who's totally on board with everything you were saying, it is very unlikely that they are going to voluntarily take 10 hours out of their time to listen to all 10 interviews, unless there is some kind of push. I count myself in this. I was recently, oh my gosh, this is kind of embarrassing, but I was working on a project recently. One of my colleagues had done a round of jobs interviews. I knew exactly where they were. They'd been there a while. I knew all about them, and I was working on a different user group, so I knew they were there.

Alli Blum [00:20:56]:
I knew I was gonna have to read them. I was gonna listen to them. I'll get to it. I'll get to it. I'll get to it. And then I found a problem that I needed to solve. And I was like, oh my gosh. Okay.

Alli Blum [00:21:06]:
I'm listening to the interviews now. And I listened to them straight through in one sitting. Well, 2 sittings. It was 10 of course. But the, even for somebody who's a real believer, sitting down to listen to 10 hours is not likely that's not a fun request. Taking a snippet of that and putting into a 32nd clip and sharing that out, that's fun. Like, getting a description with a 32nd customer like, Cliff, oh, this is fun. It's new.

Alli Blum [00:21:28]:
It's novelty. I haven't seen it before. Maybe it helps me do my job and it only took 30 seconds. And there's also something really, like, deeply connecting and empathy building about hearing that, hearing that voice and that connection of that customer. So you're gonna oh, wow. That was a long handshake. You're gonna wanna do a lot of that, up at the executive level. Okay.

Alli Blum [00:21:48]:
Here's the really important part. Your ICs can also mutiny. Your ICs on your direct reports can also resist this, and they will have not only the same forces of inertia and momentum. I already know what I'm doing. They will have the force of, inexperience and Dunning Kruger. They will have the force of, my boss does not know what they are talking about. They will have the force of now my boss wants to me to do this. I thought they wanted me to do that, especially if there's any element of VUCA, which is, we were chatting about this earlier.

Alli Blum [00:22:19]:
If there's any element of VUCA volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, which are very it's a very common scenario for scale ups to be in this in this environment. That's a a term that comes from the US military. Nobody really knows what's going on. Things are changing. It's hard. It's it's hard to navigate if you're not used to it. So if you have that kind of environment and you introduce jobs and you're not really that, careful about teaching folks about it, it's gonna be really hard. But here's the cool thing.

Alli Blum [00:22:45]:
Yeah. There is a really great way for you to get your cuss your, your teammates, your direct reports who may who are your customers in this situation really, really bought in on what you're doing. And the way that I do that after I so my consulting work with customers will or with clients will do jobs to be done study. And then after that study, after everyone's, you know, at the executive level agrees, yes, we are pursuing this strategy. We check that, go through that checkpoint. Then we take that research and we turn it into a training, custom training based on those job stories for that customer, for that company. And it's a 3 day workshop where everybody all of the ICs will listen to that audio. We'll go through each of the interviews.

Alli Blum [00:23:27]:
We'll go over the 4 forces of jobs to be done. We'll build the Pixar story. We'll have some conversations about the social, functional, emotional fact forces at play. And then at the end, we'll have each of the folks participating who've never heard our customers before. Maybe they're hearing about jobs to be done for the first time. They're going to cluster, and they're going to find the same jobs that we would have found as very experienced researchers because it's going to jump right off the page. We're doing the same exercise. And then at the end, we're working with each individual department to say, okay.

Alli Blum [00:24:02]:
This is how we apply it to our copy programs. This is how we apply it to our landing pages or or our, funnels. This is how we apply it to our content strategy. And we're going to have those conversations where we're, like we the voice of customer data that's in those 10 transcripts is an essential building block for ICs to figure out what they're going to do to help design those experiences of purchase and use for those customers. And by giving them that immersive experience and helping them, find those connections and see those patterns, they're going to walk out of that with a much, much deeper understanding and belief and trust in that framework, lower likelihood of mutiny because they found the same thing that you found. Everybody goes through and everyone comes to the same conclusion, so everybody's bought in at the end. And then you're able to move forward with with that same, with that knowledge that you've all gone through that process. I also recommend this for executives to go through a 3 day workshop listening to the jobs.

Alli Blum [00:25:01]:
I I it is a much, much harder sell. It is a much, much harder sell to get that to get that. Not impossible, but much harder.

Ramli John [00:25:10]:
I love that. You're, like, really went deep there. Like, I really love how you're you're introduced in the 30 second clips of voice, of the customer. So that you mentioned the word empathy there. You're really building that empathy and getting that next step was like, how do you apply this to your copy? How do you apply this to, you can apply this to so many things. That's why I love it. In your sales pitches, in in how you do customer success, to to upgrade, like, there it just overall, such a great framework. Thank you for showing how to get by in here.

Ramli John [00:25:41]:
I wanna share gear.

Alli Blum [00:25:42]:
Oh, I wanna share so fun. I could talk about it all day. It's so fun. Thank you so much.

Ramli John [00:25:47]:
No problem. No problem at all. Thank you for sharing that. I wanna share with Garrison talk about career power ups. You've been in SaaS now for over a decade. You worked at different product and marketing and growth roles at Atlassian, Mural, and different other SaaS companies. I'm curious, what is the power up that's helped accelerate your career? And it could be anything soft, like soft skill, like community and making friends with other marketers and product leaders or something more of a a hard skill,

Alli Blum [00:26:16]:
you

Ramli John [00:26:17]:
know, around user research or or something else.

Alli Blum [00:26:19]:
Okay. I want to share 2, and we're probably running long. You can pick which one for 1.

Announcer [00:26:24]:
You can watch.

Alli Blum [00:26:26]:
Okay. So, so there's 2. And the first one that I'll I'll share is we're chatting about this earlier. The first one is learning how to play my infinite game.

Ramli John [00:26:36]:
Mhmm.

Alli Blum [00:26:36]:
So I learned about this concept. There's a finite game, which you play to win. You play a game of chess. You play soccer. You play you play a game. There's a clear winner, a clear loser, a clear timeline. You play it to win it. An infinite game is different.

Alli Blum [00:26:52]:
An infinite game is something that you play to play. There's actually, there's a there's a great quote. I think it's Walt Disney. Is it Walt Disney? I I'm probably gonna get this wrong. He says, we don't make money. We don't make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies. Mhmm.

Alli Blum [00:27:07]:
So I I love the way that he puts that because we're, like, we're doing this because we wanna keep doing this. And what I the one of the biggest power ups for me has been discovering what my infinite game is. Mhmm. And this took a long, long time. So 10 years in SaaS, 15 years working, I started in marketing, did a lot of PR, did research, did UX. And the whole time I'm like, am I is there something wrong with me? Like, I seem to get bored easily. I'm trying a new skill. I'm working in a new department, like, every 18 months.

Alli Blum [00:27:40]:
How it this doesn't seem like that common of a thing. And I started to come to a realization once I made my way through to, product and now engineering and hopefully hopefully next up finance, that this is part of my infinite game. I love finding these problems where I can use some of the things I already know how to do and find a new skill that I don't know how to do and find a problem that hat is gonna generate really great outcomes. If we know how to solve it, I'm gonna get to learn something really new and challenging that I'll be able to use on the next problem. Next time I see something else I don't know how to do. And then at the end, we're gonna get the outcomes. We're going to have the really great results. We're all gonna be really excited.

Alli Blum [00:28:24]:
I'm gonna have made some new colleagues, all new friends, and great results. So learning that and coming to accept that that is what brings me the most joy, and that's kind of what's been driving me all along has made it a lot easier for me to be able to say to reframe the conversation, which once was, oh, yeah. I do a lot of different things. I wanna change my mind. But now it's one of, I understand how SaaS businesses work because I want to work because I've made a a point of going across the teams and across the departments and across the functions and skills to say, what does a business look like when you're sitting in a marketer's chair? What does it look like when you're sitting in a researcher's chair? What does it look like when you're sitting in a VP's chair? What does it look like when you're sitting in a principal's chair? What does it look like when you're looking at a spreadsheet of finance data? What does it look like when you're staring at the user research? And you get a different perspective in each of those chairs that helps inform a lot of those, makes it, it makes me better at solving a lot of those problems because I can pull from all of the different disciplines as we go. All the frameworks all the time is, like, that movie, everything everywhere, all at once is is kind of, like, my I love a movie. Yeah. So that's the first one, finding my infinite game.

Alli Blum [00:29:41]:
And the second one is something that I call leading by coalition. So this is something I've learned about from a great book that I recommend. It's on change management. It's a hard for business review collection of essays. And kind of like you're you're talking about this a little bit earlier where, you're going to want to when you when you want to make something happen, when you want your company to adopt jobs to be done, that's change management. And I think step 1 of change management, there's, there's a great, like, this is a rubric. There are ways to do this. It's a well practiced plan, which was very exciting for me to learn new framework for all the time.

Alli Blum [00:30:15]:
And there are ways to you first, you need to find that reason for why you need to make a shift, to make a change, and it's gonna be different for everyone. And then you're going to start to build that coalition. That might actually be step 3. I think I may have missed a step. And I love this concept. And I started realizing that this is another one of my infinite games.

Ramli John [00:30:34]:
I'd

Alli Blum [00:30:34]:
love to find, find the thing that I know is most important based on the chair I'm sitting at, sitting in the data that I have access to, the the opportunities that are on the table, I might say, okay. This is what we need to do. Very often, it's getting jobs to be done off the table. Sometimes it's, you know, a product initiative. Sometimes it's a marketing initiative. There's some initiative that's going to operate cross functionally with lots of people involved, and it's probably gonna be a little bit uncomfortable to get going. So I love finding that thing and saying, okay. We're not leading by consensus here.

Alli Blum [00:31:10]:
We're not coming into a room trying to get everybody to agree on something. I know what I want to happen. And what I want to do is go find other people who are seeing a problem, but the way that I'm seeing it. So people who are also like, yeah. That is I have noticed that too, and I think I can solve it, or I've wanted to solve that problem, and, you know, this is what I've tried so far. I haven't been able to. We all kind of agree. And maybe we all have different skill sets.

Alli Blum [00:31:33]:
Maybe I have someone with greater technical, maybe greater engineering skills, maybe somebody has a greater, program management. And and then we're gonna come together, and we're gonna say, this is this is what we wanna do. And I love being able to to show up with a with a a plan that is just concrete enough or a prototype that is just enough of an example of what it is that I think a solution might look like to say, okay. I think this is the direction that I wanna head in, but I wanna get your take. Tell show me what needs to be better. Tell me how tell me what I'm missing about this for this to be really successful. What makes this fail that may not be on my, on my radar screen right now? And then over time, getting those positions, building it up. So it's not just something that Allie made.

Alli Blum [00:32:14]:
It's something that Allie and Romley made. It's something that Allie and Romley and Asia made. And it's something that a lot more people are invested in, and we're going to build it into something that's much bigger and much more significant, has more staying power. So learning to do that as opposed to what I did early on in my career, which was sit in my chair and grumble about how nobody wanted to listen to the customers, this has been something that has not only helped me advance my initiatives, but it's also brought me so much more joy at work to get to to work with my colleagues in in that way and and get to share feedback in a way that, helps me continue to apprentice under my colleagues and and learn from them and still get really great results.

Ramli John [00:32:54]:
If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Power Ups newsletter. I share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers. Go to marketing powerups.com to subscribe, and you'll instantly unlock the 3 best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues. I wanna say thank you to you for listening, and please like and follow Marketing Power Ups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you feel extra generous, had to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Leave a comment on YouTube. It goes a long way in others finding out about marketing problems. Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design, and thank you to Faisal, Kaiko, for editing the intro video.

Alli Blum [00:33:35]:
And, of

Ramli John [00:33:36]:
course, thank you for listening. That's all for now. Have a powered update.

Announcer [00:33:40]:
Marketing power ups. Until the next episode.