How to create a rocketship team for your next brand project
Improve alignment, engagement and impact.
In this article we’ll be covering:
The pitfalls of brand development in a complex ecosystem like a university
What a rocketship team is
How you can create a rocketship team for your next project
Why a rocketship team is so effective
When we first landed in the Higher Education universe, one of our overwhelming first impressions was just how complex a university ecosystem is for higher education marketers to navigate to get a project through successfully.
A bit like real life solar system, with the university brand as the sun around which everyone orbits, but with the planets and moons of that system operating with their own gravitational pulls, environments, pathways and unique characteristics. And with the light and heat of that sun felt to varying degrees.
Truth be told, our first few brand missions encountered a couple of glitches. Everyone within the immediate project team was on the same page, but it soon became clear that wider stakeholders - including the academics the project was often there to serve - weren't always. It wasn't quite mission abort. But it was enough to significantly slow down progress and limit potential impact.
Since then we've largely fixed that by putting a Rocketship team in place at the outset of projects.
So what is it, why is it so effective and how can you create one?
What is it?
The Rocketship team was inspired by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book 'Built to last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies'. They asked people to imagine who they would assemble on a rocketship if they were to take the very best of an organisation and recreate it on Mars.
Made up of 5-7 individuals (though we've managed to make it work with slightly more) the Rocketship should represent a cross-section of disciplines and perspectives - a representative slice of an entity's 'genetic code', with a gut level understanding of its values and goals. Seniority is not the primary criteria, so it's important not to default to thinking it's the leadership team. It is however helpful to consider whether participants have a good level of credibility and likeability among the wider team - more on that later.
The Rocketship should include the person with primary accountability for the project who is able to communicate with and actively manage senior stakeholders - the Mission Commander. This person is most likely to be the Dean, Research Centre director or enterprise team head. It's worth sitting down with that person and undertaking a bit of a stakeholder mapping exercise and discussion to get to the best combination of people.
What you've hopefully gleaned from this is that the Rocketship team is therefore very deliberately not a team of marketers or project delivery experts. Clearly those people are also critical to your project's success, but it's better to think of these people (and you are probably among them) as Mission Control - whose expertise lies in guiding and landing that rocketship successfully. If the project is not being led by the university’s central marketing team and you are not part of that team yourself, then you may want to consider the role of someone within that team as a sponsor/endorser. Again, they wouldn’t necessarily belong on the Rocketship, but they have a vital role to play as problem solver and university brand guardian and so may have a guest role within certain meetings.
How does it work?
The Rocketship's job is to provide ongoing insight, checks, balances and decision making as the project progresses, ensuring you course correct as you go, but without the issues that trying to involve a whole department at each step would bring.
In the first instance, they provide an important picture of the level of alignment and understanding of the project's aims and purpose, and the landscape and context in which it is taking place, helping you to anticipate, plan and mitigate potential blockers or considerations before they arise. We have a set of questions we ask the team to consider separately from each other and submit back to us before we convene them for the first time, to help paint this picture for us.
In terms of meeting frequency, we've found the most useful points to be at critical gateways of decision making: At the conclusion of any discovery phase you're conducting so that any insights and conclusions can be shared and discussed; at the point at which a proposition or approach is proposed for discussion and approval; at an early stage of creative development when feedback can be gathered on a shortlist of potential territories; at the final summation of the creative concept ahead of moving into execution. These are typically a few weeks apart so that people don't feel it's encroaching too much on their time, but sufficiently close to create a sense of team dynamic, project familiarity and momentum.
Don't overlook the onboarding of the team at the very outset of the process. Individual invites via email and in person (coming from the Mission Commander if possible) are best - people like to feel flattered they have been specially selected to take part. And those invitations / conversations should set out the purpose of the project, why their involvement is so important, and the vision for what you're hoping to be able to achieve (that will help them in their own day to day roles). You should also set clear expectations around what level of time and input is being asked of them to create a low barrier to participation.
Why is it so effective?
In the sense that the Rocketship team is operating as an ongoing focus group, the first and immediate benefit is in the potential of the ultimate creative output to resonate and engage as strongly as possible.
But the effectiveness of convening this group of people goes far beyond that. The validation they provide has proven enormously useful in substantiating the chosen approach with wider stakeholders - avoiding or certainly enabling us to address questions and challenges that might subsequently arise.
More than that, their engagement in the process creates a group of early adopters and influencers who feel they have a stake in the positive outcome and can be critical communicators and advocators for the direction you've determined - and this is where credibility with their peers really pays dividends. Fewer false starts. Better alignment. Greater impact.
If you have any questions or would like to understand more about convening your own Rocketship team, feel free to drop us a line.