If you're looking to transition from a technical MOPS expert to a leader - or if you're an existing MOPS leader who wants to up their game - Jessica Kao is the person to learn from.

She built a career as an expert MOPS consultant before becoming an enterprise marketing ops leader.

Listen to this conversation and you'll quickly see: she's ridiculously good at the business side of marketing operations. She knows how to plan, how to communicate, and how to lead.

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About Today's Guest

Jessica Kao is Senior Director, Marketing Operations and Martech at Cloudflare. She has 10+ years of experience inspiring a nation of marketers through authenticity.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesskao/

Key Topics

[00:00] - Introduction
[01:40] - How Jessica defines the mandate of marketing ops. It is the accelerant to marketing. Everything flows through the pipes of marketing operations.
[03:02] - How to determine if marketing ops is doing a good job. “Winning” means the CMO views you as a strategic partner and when you’re a bullet point in the board slide deck. But all projects should be aligned to the CMO’s initiatives and marketing KPIs. Marketing ops succeeds when the marketing team reaches its goals.
[06:03] - Marketing ops shouldn’t just view themselves as the executor of another team’s strategy. Marketing ops can bring clarity, due to their position of visibility, the data we have, to spot trends, to provide feedback, etc. How do we make use of the data that we have to provide clarity to marketing leadership?
[08:47] - Learning to be an internal advocate for the marketing ops team and navigating reluctance to be “self-promotional. ” The acceleration leap is the ability to translate what we do into something that provides business impact. Promoting the work we do is a by-product of bringing that clarity to the marketing team and focusing on the right things. Winning is not completing your tickets - it’s prioritization, doing the right things, providing clarity.
[10:43] - The roadmapping process. Using an agile cadence, thinking of marketing technology like a product. Think about how you launch a project and create it. Quarterly planning and monthly sprints. Monthly sprints is the right fit. They have an “above the line / below the line” backlog. In a new company, shifting the balance from ad-hoc to roadmap. Being a consultant is helpful as it gives valuable skills in scoping.
[13:54] - Learning to communicate incremental value instead of thinking of a project as needing to be 100% done and complete before delivering value. People get discouraged. Think of crawl/walk/run - crawling is still winning. This way people view MOPS as problem-solvers rather than blockers. Continuous delivery of incremental value.
[15:46] - How to determine what should be prioritized. Jessica knows where they need to go in one, two, and three years, and that is her North Star. If you don’t have a roadmap, others will make one for you. Get buy-in from your boss and their peers.
[17:23] - Translating features to stakeholder speak - what capabilities are you going to unlock. Quick-wins deliverables roadmap vs. plumbing/architecture/non-sexy roadmap. Jess has an external-facing roadmap of quick wins - these are “shiny objects,” which may seem like table stakes to MOPS. But if you position them in terms of the capabilities they unlock, then they can be positioned as wins. MOPS should communicate multiple wins every quarter. For the non-sexy plumbing, keep this on the internal roadmap - e.g., compliance. These things take a long time. Don’t keep communicating that you’re still working on complex projects quarter after quarter. When the capabilities are released, move them from the internal roadmap to the external roadmap.
[20:12] - You can’t get money to fix what’s broken. But you CAN get budget to support new capabilities that deliver business value.
[21:56] - Translating technical priorities into business objectives vs. translating business priorities into technical projects. This process happens bi-directionally all day long. Your job as a marketing operations leader is to translate up to leadership and down to your team - to provide clarity both ways.
[24:25] - The multi-faceted skillset that a marketing ops leader needs to have. Not every leader has all those skillsets. Those that are missing, you need to hire.
[26:09] - How to capture the long-term vision. Jess uses a project manager to capture it. She creates a library of “walking decks” for each company - a three-year roadmap, a yearly vision, a quarterly plan, wins. This holds true at every level. You don’t need a director title to be strategic.
[27:44] - Developing communication skills as a leader. Jess learned and taught public speaking in grad school. Also learning through experience, trial and error, and mistakes. The marketing ops community helps each other out. Having mentorship, advice, and outside perspective is vital. Building a “board of directors” for your career. Find mentors who will challenge who you are and who will give you what you need.
[33:15] - Overcoming imposter syndrome. Things get easier with repetition. But there’s always a next level and there’s always a new thing. The “freak out” period gets shorter. Emotional regulation is a top skill as a leader. You know how to figure it out.

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