Welcome to the art of marketing operations, a tailor podcast. Here you can
grow your knowledge about marketing operations, listen to ideas and strategies to help you
scale, grow and optimize your efficiency, drive your speed to market and enrich
your work life. Let's get to it. Welcome to the art of marketing
operations, a tailor podcast. I'm Glenn bottomly and today my guest is Jason
Knaggs, marketing operations manager at B E C U, the Boeing Employees Credit
Union, one of the top five largest credit unions in the United States.
Thanks for joining me today, Jason. Yeah, thanks for having me,
Glenn. Well, listen. I was fascinated to learn just how large and
successful B E C U is, and you had mentioned to me earlier that
B C u formed in and that while it originated as a financial institution for
Boeing employees, today it's a wholly separate entity from Boeing and, as now,
as I mentioned, one of the top five credit unions in the company
in the country. Assets Sizes of thirty billion and I believe you have one
point three million members. That's amazing. So can can you just share a
little bit more about your early career experiences and how those prepared you for your
current leadership role in marketing operations at the East yeah, absolutely, Glen Um.
Yeah, it. It is crazy. M B C U originally Boeing
employees. Credit Union did have to be a Boeing employee at the beginning,
but that's not the case now we're open to any Washington state and some surrounding
areas for members to join. So, Um, my early career I was
key to be able to work a wide number of jobs kind of from started
at about working at the age of fifteen. Had A number of varied positions.
I mean I worked as a Whitewater raft and guide, Ski School,
Uh Museum, uh docent, so actually given tours. So I say all
of that because I found that I really liked working with people. I knew
that from the beginning that I really like those kind of jobs that interacted heavily
with people. And what I found in my college, uh kind of ending
college days is I really liked operational stuff, things that blended both working with
people and operations. So I was director of a ski school and really enjoyed
we had big programs. I really liked looking at how can you know we
faced some organizational issues when it came to these big program rams and finding ways
to to work through that streamline. At working with people. I worked at
a food cooperative. That introduced me to the cooperative model that credit unions operate
under. So I had an understanding, you know, of of kind of
that business model. But again there I focused on inventory management and operations of
UH herbs and spices actually, of all things. And after that I worked
in the nonprofit sector at big brothers big sisters. Held a few different positions
they're one of the last ones was coordinating a donation center where we actually had
bins that we collected clothing and house household items as a fundraising entity and again
did the operations of that. So I got very lucky in a in a
lot of ways with my position at BCU. When I came on about eight
years ago, they were really looking for someone to fill a position that kind
of covered abroad number of supporting different different aspects. Um. I initially started
in more of the event financial education, supporting our PR team and again slowly
found that I really liked the operational stuff and we had some processes and systems
that we wanted to improve in the marketing area. So I just kind of
Uh uh, luckily, gravitated towards that as being one of the areas that
I focused on that. That's fantastic. What a great background in even as
you shared that history, you know, there were elements that I could see
in every one of those experiences where, you know, you sort of picked
up along the way those uh, you know, rich experiences that would prepare
you for what you're doing now in marketing operations. So thanks so much for
sharing that that background. Um. And one of the things that I thought
was interesting when you and I first connected was, you know, it was
something actually on your on your linkedin profile, and it was sort of a
buzzword of sorts, but but you were really focused on change management and you
had a quote there and it said if you want to change something, you
really have to get involved in the system, and that that really struck,
you know, struck struck me. Um. So how how do you get
involved in the system and implement change and how do you how have you found
the best way to get others to sort of jump on board with with those
changes? Yeah, in general, if I'm looking to try and lead some
kind of change initiative, I will typically really want to be to get in
to the system. By that I mean, uh, live, live what's
currently happening in that right. So for our creative operations, for example,
when I was really doing a lot of work on significantly changing that, I
was before doing that. I was actually going through the process real you know,
doing real campaigns and feeling okay, this is this is what is going
on. Now I'm going through the process. Um. So it's you know,
I think it can be difficult. While you can bring in outside or,
you know, just to ask questions, I just really believe that any
way that you can find for yourself to actually kind of go through that process
is really beneficial. So, Um, that's what I did there, also,
you know, involving other other people as, as I think you said,
with that too, I definitely didn't approach wanting to change that process of
like, okay, I'm going to go in there and figure it out myself
and, you know, come up with my my plans of what it should
be. You know, we did a lot of working sessions where kind of
incorporating some of that change management of stakeholders, identifying some key people that were
both really excited about seeing the process change. Maybe some that were neutral,
maybe some that were opposed to it, and we actually went through a number
of working sessions where we captured, even before doing anything, what's working well,
what do we want to make sure that we keep, what are our
pain point, what are kind of must haves as as we look to change
this, and what are optional things? And, yeah, really involving,
involving key group of people and, as much as possible, bringing in others
along the way so that it doesn't just feel like a, you know,
a change that's being inflicted on people. You're going through the change together and
people have voices in and so your comments about going through the experience that a
customer goes through really resonate with me because you know, whether it is whether
you're a a technology company or creating software or a product Um, actually experiencing
it and going through that, uh, that journey that a customer would experience.
What's Uh the application process? What is the onboarding process? You know,
determining what those key relevant journeys are for your for your buyer, for
your customer, and then putting yourself in that exact uh seat and to experience
exactly what do they see? What is the customer touch points that they are
going through? Uh. Those are some of the best ways, I think
that to your point, to really dig in, uh, to understand what
is what is that journey like? And and I have just found for myself
in my own career that it's when you do that you undoubtedly find that was
a little jarring or there's some friction there or that's not maybe the most optimal
way to to to phrase that. Um. So yes, everything from whether
it's, you know, the marketing, the creative or the operational side of
the journey. I think there's a lot of truth to to to the to
the value of seeing how a customer is actually experiencing your your brand. Yeah,
absolutely interesting. Now we talk a little bit about marketing, we talked
a little bit about creative and I know that one of the things that you
are super passionate about is both on the marketing and creative side, but specifically,
uh is Um that you have been incorporating agile, uh in specifically the
agile software development principles, into some of your marketing and creative processes, and
so that's really unique. So what what would you say is where did that
passion for sort of continuous improvement and this this this passion for Agile. where,
where did that originate from? That's a great question. Um, I
think to start the kind of as we've we've talked about previous jobs and just
liking operations and processes in general. Finding that interest is one specifically at BCU.
I remember it was probably back in abouten we had had a colleague there
that's in the I t space or or supports more of that that was really
wanting to you know, it's back when agile and a lot of those principles
were I don't want to say they were new but Um, we are organization.
They were somewhat newer to the organization and kind of limited to the I
t tech space. And I remember she organized a trip actually to a furniture
UH company here in the puget sound area that is really focused on kind of
the Lean Kaisen, I think it is, principles. We actually did a
field trip there and they talked about how they you know, they're actually assembling
furniture items, but they showed how they are always striving to continuous improvement and
making stuff visible and that just resonated with me and kind of got I think
we were talking about it, but specific to a lot of the work that
I do on the marketing front, does have to do within BC with our
creative operations, Um, and also a lot of event planning. Got US
thinking, how can we incorporate these principles, these ideas, into what we
do? Even though we're not I T um I, we thought there was
value in what they were doing. So there were kind of two things that
happened. We did for our event planning. We really did do kind of
a I forget the exact names of stuff, but kind of a lean,
you know, swim lanes, upcoming work, doing, done, and then
what we call done done, where it was actually like really closed out,
not going to pop back up. Um. So we started doing some just
kind of playing around with different, different systems and making it work for us.
I incorporated some stuff from previous roles that had worked well with how we
actually set it up on physics coal boards with sticky notes and kept it simple
to start with, like a combine like sort of yeah, Yep, exactly,
on on the and sorry, that's more the event side, but yeah,
that was a true conbin. On the marketing side, I thought there
because our normal creative process kind of follows a waterfall approach where, you know,
it starts, you go into copy, you go into compliance and then
it goes into design and then design compliance and there's kind of a path.
But the issue, so to say, is it doesn't always work that clean
right of you could have one project that just moves through every step in the
way if it's small and is is Um relatively easier, but if you're doing
a huge campaign, you know it might take a lot of iterations of copy
and feedback and design. So basically, along the way I've been introduced to
the concept of Agile scrum and we just kind of started playing around with how,
you know, starting with our swim lanes. Here's kind of the key
stuff we want to capture. Here's outlined a way that it might kind of
flow through and work and Um, yeah, just kind of went from there.
I I hope that's answering what you're looking for on that one. Yeah,
no, it's great and I think that, uh, you know,
I think that there is, Um, there's a great deal of interest in
agile marketing to today. And how do you actually incorporated? Have you found
that, you know, on the creative side. Have you found any pushback,
uh, in terms of the trying to incorporate agile into the creative process,
or is there a broad embrace of that? That's a real any question.
Yea, yes, and yes, there there was initially some amount of
light, not push back, but you know you're you're changing something and it
was uncomfortable for some people and it's kind of funny. One of the stories
that I like around that is I remember at the beginning I had set up
what I thought the process might look like and I had called the meeting together
where we were going to go through and just try to walk the path right
of what it was going to look like. And I remember that I was
using actual product line example, so I had let's say auto example, in
a mortgage and a checking and I just remember that day did not go this
meeting didn't quite go how I wanted to because instead of focusing on the process,
we were getting really caught up on the kind of ultimate stakeholders where I
would hear somebody say, Oh, this is never going to work for the
auto team, Oh the mortgage team isn't gonna like this, and I we
weren't trying to focus on on that. So I remember just this day it
was not going well. We all went home and I'm like, okay,
I need to really get at walk in this path and not getting so caught
up in in these examples. So I decided to do star wars themed things
for the next day. So I actually took out all of our real examples
and our stakeholders were now star wars characters. We were working on totally fake
star wars themed projects. And so the next day we came in and it
was like walk the path and we're not going to get caught up on you
know, if you're concerned about Yoda not liking something, we'll give you c
three P oh, he's a robot, like it's fine and uh, it
was actually kind of fun. That's one of the things I try to do
too, when when doing this thing, is have some fun with it right
when possible, and I found that that, in a way, I think,
really did help people take out the you know, really focus in on
the process, and I think that doing that example and and seeing it and
and walking through what we were thinking about kind of got people on board even
more so and then the first few weeks especially, we really intentionally. You
know, we set up front this is a change it was going to we
went from having weekly meeting stuff really wasn't visible. We set up essentially daily
meetings to start and we said, you know, this is gonna, Short
term, feel probably a little bit rough. It's going to take up a
little bit more time than normal. and Um, we would, we would
do that every day. And it did. It took it took longer and
at the end of the week, every Thursday we decided we wouldn't do it
on Fridays. Every Thursday, intentionally, after that day's stand up meeting,
we would take the time to check in with everybody what's working well with this,
what's what are people struggling with, what isn't going well, what recommendations
are out there, and again, continuing to evolve what we were doing based
on that feedback and showing people, Hey, you know, it's totally fine
speak up. If this is painful for you, you're probably not the only
one and even if you are, speak up about it and also let's highlight
what is really going well with this. And I think from that it was
really exciting because it did feel like we were probably one of the first teams
outside of I t that we're really using these approaches. You would walk around
the office before that and not see white boards or see processes at all,
and then within the next year after US doing that, you saw a lot
more boards and a lot more swim lanes and a lot more of the methodology
to show, Hey, this is not limited to I T and and tech.
Yeah, that's excellent. Well, in back to the to the Star
Wars. Of course, Star Wars my favorite movie and and and franchise.
Absolutely love Star Wars. But but I think that there's a tremendous brilliance in
what you did there, because I would imagine, particularly when trying to introduce
a fundamental change in how you're doing marketing or or any sort of UH process
shift, that if you bring an actual product or a Sur nervious offering to
to the forefront, and if that's what you're actually talking through, every single
person is going to now be encumbered with the understanding of what that product or
process is or what that services. Well, we can't do that, I've
got this constraint. No, no, no, we can't do that,
etcetera. But by changing it to your point to this is just Yoda or,
you know, c three Po Etcetera. It it sort of removes all
of those incumbrances where you're just saying, if we had this type of process
or if we had this type of product or this type of offering, Um,
what would be the right way to to to do that from from a
process perspective? So uh, so that that's a that's just, I think,
a really great approach that you that you introduced there. So well done.
Thank you for that. It was a lot of fun and it's not
to say you know, definitely there are valid concerns and construct ants and all
of that on on product and service lines, but when you're just focusing on
the heart of the process, I did find that in this particular case and
approach like that helped, helped um not get bogged down in all the what
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savings at Taylor dot com. And how long ago did you implement agile to
your marketing and creative yeah, I think in a dedicated way. I'm trying
to remember now. We were very lucky in it was pre pandemic, I
want to say. The kind of big shift happened maybe in lateen where at
that time the first process created was for quite a while actually all using like
I was saying with the event side. We were using a physical whiteboard,
sticky notes we had. It was all very manual and luckily we had found
that the process was working on the whole. People liked it, but obviously
there were new new challenges with actually one of the biggest challenges was sticky notes
falling off of the board right uh, silly things that come up. So
we had a push in to actually digitize the process to see if we could.
Now we've got it on the board, can we set it up so
that we can access it digitally, because you know, even then sometimes people
would join remotely or not be able to make it. Just so we could
access it all the time. So we had kind of the first push.
was was the digitizing it, which was unique. It wasn't quite it was
a change, but it wasn't as fun. Fundamental we were keeping a lot
of the same processes and that actually let us open up Um incorporating automations and
doing some things to speed it up or to not yeah, just digitizing it.
We were ready at that point to use a tool to two improve it
and make it digital. so that happened so luckily, on the by and
large, as far as our creative team goes, when the pandemic hit and
our brand, Star Energy and the teams that are involved in this process,
it was a pretty easy change to be fully virtual and remote. So in
those roughly five years or so that you've been using agile, I think,
uh, when people think of Agile Um, they'll think of, you know,
lean or scrum or scrumbon or certifications and all of the sort of the
processes that go along with it. You mentioned the swim lanes, iterations,
daily stand ups, poker planning, Sprint, Sprint reviews, retrospectives, etcetera.
So what advice would you give to to make sure that you know other
marketing operations executives who are wanting to incorporate agile how do you make it so
that the process doesn't get too heavy, so that it starts to impact project
velocity or adoption of strategies and so forth within the organization? That is a
great question. I would say, from my perspective, Um one. It's
it's not not necessarily getting too bogged down in following an exact path. Right.
So we do call our process the marketing scrum, digital scrum process,
but I would not make a claim to you know, if I if there's
somebody listening that's a, you know, certified scrum master and all that,
there's probably a number of things that we don't do right. Uh scrum,
I think, is generally two week iterations and all of that. So I
guess what I would say is definitely learn about all the those different methodologies.
I think that there's value in UH and depending on the project, obviously,
but there's value in all of them and really, instead of getting bogged down
on following a specific one to the t, incorporate the breast best practices of
them. I tend to blend them up a little bit without going too too
crazy, but Um, I would say that just start, start somewhere,
start small when possible. I think I saw one of your other podcast talking
about simplicity. I do like that of just start with kind of the core
needs, with the basic, basic principle, whether it be the swim lanes,
were kind of ours in the again, that waterfall methodology and incorporate what
makes sense from practices to what you're trying to do. And I would also
say, although it feels like it's been a while with the especially our creative
operations where I personally have been involved, um of of changing it in a
fundamental way, being open, you know, making it clear we're trying to
build something, but it right now if somebody had a great idea or a
recommendation and that we can tweak it. So you're not just trying to build
something. You know, it's not a house where it's going to stay that
way forever. You're open to incorporating based on practices and checking in with teams.
So I would say it's that just don't be afraid to start, don't
get too bogged down in a single methodology necessarily, and and see what works
exactly and modify, you know, feedback loops, you know, loop back,
uh, you know, and if and if it's working, great,
keep going, keep going down that path. If you've got to make some
changes, make those changes. So so I love that. Now in in
in your current role at the easy you Um, I know that you're actually
leading even more than just marketing operations. So I I know you you're involved
in PR things like internal communications, financial education. You mentioned event marketing,
you know, et Cetera. So how do you find that the breadth of
your responsibilities? How how is that impacting sort of your day to day marketing
operations activities? Yeah, my role at BCU is, I would say,
kind of unique. I generally wouldn't say that I necessarily lead any of those
particular things. I'm kind of a support across our division, which includes marketing,
Um, and that's a whole, a whole bucket of group and,
you know, executives and leaders focused on different things. And then so I
support different aspects there. I support our events, financial education, the actual
team I'm on is actually social impact financial education. Um. So I am
really kind of a broad support across the division and that can definitely be challenging
in in ways and it tends to I would say the way I navigate it
is trying a plan and get in front of stuff as much as possible,
right the marketing operations, um, the creative process. I actually am feel
very happy that, uh, a day to day I wouldn't say that that's
actually something I'm overly involved with. We have a whole team that runs that.
I remember being so happy two years ago. I I there was something
that I thought I had this great idea and was going to come in and
actually not do what I was talking about. You know, I wanted to
make a change myself and I actually had a colleague, Um, who I
really respect there, who said pretty bluntly, but out, we know this
better we can, we're on it, we're doing it, you don't uh,
and that actually made me really happy to see that other teams you know
it. It resonated with them and they had the skills to improve processes.
Um. But sorry, I'm digressing a little bit. Um. Yeah,
I think that it's just for me trying to plan ahead. Um, have
teams, you know, are big events or other stuff that I'm supporting.
If I know about it ahead of time, that just kind of helps me
with time management. Um, of course stuff will come up at the last
second and, kind of like with our our scrum, uh combined processes,
you just have to fit it in and decide is this going to actually bump
something else or, you know, can this be another team that takes it
on? Um. Yeah, excellent, excellent stories there. Uh. Now
let's shift a little bit from the process and let's shift to two characteristics.
Uh. So, one of the things that you've talked about in the past
is about resolve, uh, in the context of business. So, uh,
and I know you've you've talked a bit about this on Linkedin. But
so, can you expand on that a little bit more and and what are
some things that you have found, uh, that helps to build resolve?
And do you have any sort of story? Is You know about that in
business? Yeah, and I think I remember the posts you're talking about.
When when it comes to resolve, I think it kind of gets back to
what I was saying earlier of Um, you know, we need to be
able to take calculated risks on things and, Um, as much as we
can plan things out, and I think that we have the best uh,
yeah, the best plans and strategy. Things will come up, but I
feel that if you create a culture where you within boundaries, right, like
there's obviously risks that are too risky, that you don't want to take,
but if you can call out I remember we had one time where uh,
an event, just had a major miss mishap with a lunch of all things,
and it was essentially a failure, right and I remember talking to the
executive I report up to and had said we need to call this out as
a failure, but we need to show that that is okay. I mean
it's you know, at the end of the day, it maybe wasn't pleasant
for some people, but we worked through it and ultimately got to a good
spot and we can now bring those learnings forward, and I think that that's
what I think of with resolve of you know, try things out, plan
them out to the best of your ability. Know that issues will come up,
but in general you know that that's okay and you can work through through
those issues. And by doing that, by actually having instances where you have
failures and can accept and and call it out, show that it's okay and
learn from it and improve, creating that culture is just going to help in
the long run on a lot of things. So I really I found it
brought a lot of I have a lot of respect for my leadership at Buc
but this executive in in particular that helps uh even more respect. Like already
had a lot of respect for him, but just showing like hey, this
we knew we were taking a chance on this. It burned us a little
bit, but that's okay. and Um, there was another, the other
example. There was an event, I think on that Linkedin Post that I
was talking about. We had an event with some thousand high school students and
it was in a convention center and I just remember there were so many moving
parts with that event and things that could go wrong and little things that did
pop up. But again, we were able to in the moment quickly HIVOT.
We knew that we had that supportive leadership. We knew in the end
it would work out and I remember another former coworker just at a certain point
in the middle of the day when we didn't know if it was going to
work out at all, she was literally jumping up and down saying it's working,
it's working, and it just bill. We all shared that excitement and
it was a great team team bonding moment to see, Um, that you
know, we we kind of stuck, stuck with it, worked through stuff
and helped create a real high functioning team. Oh what's some great stories there
about building resolve in the the focus, the dedication, the willingness to fail.
Um, you know, all of all of that. I mean I
think those are those are wonderful. Thank you for sharing those. Um.
So, Jason, before we wrap up today's episode, what is the main
takeaway that you want to leave our audience with in understanding the challenges facing marketing
operations executives today? Oh Um, that one's a little tricky because, like
I said, I'm not an executive myself, so I don't want to speak
on behalf. But Um, what I would say from what I see and
here talking about is, you know, again getting back to just being willing
to to try out new things, like we were just talking about, start
simple, build out those processes. Another thing that does come up a lot
is actually balancing bureaucracy versus the other, the other end of the spectrum.
and Um, we didn't really get into that here, but that's a big
thing that comes up for me and that I think by you know, creating
these type of systems, keeping them simple, working with people, being able
to focus on kind of the larger impact that you can incorporate agile practices into
marketing, and I think ultimately they do help with those type of challenges.
And Yeah, I guess just have the courage to try it out and great
things can happen with it. We'll leave it right there. Well, this
wraps up this episode of the art of marketing operations. Thank you so much
for joining us today, Jason. Yeah, absolutely, thank you again for
having me. It was great, great sharing likewise. Well, until next
time, stay safe, take care and thank you for listening. Thank you
for listening to the art of marketing operations, brought to you by Taylor.
Don't forget to hit subscribe in your favorite podcast player. If you enjoyed this
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