Rebuilt ownership, accountability, and delivery consistency across a five-person Marketing Operations team at Direct Wines.
→ Five direct reports developed. Flagship campaigns delivered on time, consistently.
Problem
The five-person Marketing Operations team was underdelivering against its timelines, with unclear processes and inconsistent ownership of campaign tasks from one project to the next.
Context
I was promoted into this role with the team already in place, inheriting the delivery pattern rather than building the team from scratch.
Business objective
Build a team capable of delivering complex, multichannel campaigns reliably, with clear ownership at every stage.
Customer/user objective
Internal stakeholders relying on campaign delivery needed consistent timelines and a clear point of accountability when something needed escalating.
Constraints
The team had to keep delivering live campaigns while the restructuring happened, so changes to process and ownership had to land without stalling ongoing work.
Stakeholders
The five direct reports on the team, and internal stakeholders across the business who relied on campaign delivery hitting its timelines.
Research and discovery
I reviewed where campaign tasks were falling into grey areas between people, and where the team’s existing escalation pattern, ad hoc rather than structured, was masking process gaps.
Options considered
I considered lighter-touch process tweaks versus a full restructure of ownership and accountability. I chose the full restructure, since ad hoc escalations were a symptom of unclear ownership, not a process detail that could be tweaked around it.
Prioritisation
Clear ownership and accountability at each stage of delivery came first, since a new briefing process or review cadence wouldn’t hold without knowing who was responsible for what.
Delivery
I restructured how the team worked so there was clear ownership and accountability at every stage of campaign delivery, introduced a formal campaign briefing process and weekly delivery reviews to replace ad-hoc escalations, and invested in the individuals directly through structured feedback, personal objectives and stretch assignments.
Decisions made
Investing in individual development alongside the process changes, rather than treating this as a pure process fix, was the decision that mattered most, it built capability that outlasted any one campaign cycle.
Trade-offs
Introducing a formal briefing process and weekly reviews added structure the team hadn’t worked with before, which took adjustment. I judged that worthwhile against the inconsistency it replaced.
Business outcome
The team went on to deliver flagship campaigns consistently on time, with last-minute escalations dropping significantly, and several people moved into more senior roles during this period.
Customer outcome
Internal stakeholders could rely on campaign timelines holding, with a clear point of ownership if something needed attention.
Lessons learned
Ad hoc escalations are usually a sign of unclear ownership rather than a process gap on their own, fixing ownership resolved the escalation pattern as a side effect rather than the direct target.
What I'd improve today
I would build a deliberate stretch-assignment rotation into the team structure from the start, rather than assigning them ad hoc once the core process fixes were already bedded in. Several people moved into more senior roles off the back of those assignments, so making that a formal, repeatable part of how the team develops would spread that benefit more consistently.
