When campaigns beat benchmarks by 2–3×, it’s rarely luck. It’s operational excellence. Teams that ship the right work on the right day do a few unglamorous things exceptionally well: single-owner accountability, a non-negotiable daily cadence, one source of truth for decisions, and plans built backwards from launch. That operating system is what we use at Substrate—and it’s why strong creative actually reaches customers instead of dying in the backlog.
Years ago, a senior leader I worked with at a Fortune 100 tech company put it bluntly: “Every project needs a back to pat and a throat to choke.” Put more diplomatically: every deliverable needs one accountable owner you can celebrate when it ships—and escalate to when it slips.
We’ve stress-tested this under pressure. In a single month, our founder led a full 7-figure trade-show push—product-launch video, a large experiential booth, a new website, a press release, and a CEO keynote—and we hit the date because the work was run, not wished.
Below is exactly how we run marketing work for clients—and why the research says it works.
The evidence (why process beats wishful thinking)
- Performance comes from how you run, not where or which method you choose. PMI’s 2024 global survey finds comparable project performance across agile, hybrid, and predictive approaches—and across on-site, hybrid, and remote setups. What moves outcomes is enabling teams with the right practices and skills.
- Enablement moves the needle. Organizations that provide at least three enablement programs (mentoring, communities of practice, etc.) show higher project performance and lower scope creep/budget loss than those that don’t.
- Daily standups work—when short and focused. The Scrum Guide codifies 15 minutes daily; empirical studies show standups improve coordination and surface blockers early.
- Context switching is a silent tax. Knowledge workers toggle between apps about 1,200 times per day, losing ~4 hours/week re-orienting. Consolidating where you communicate and decide pays back quickly.
- Shared ownership kills accountability. Classic research on social loafing shows individual effort drops when responsibility diffuses across a group—exactly why every deliverable needs a single owner.
The Substrate Operating System (methods you can copy)
1) Single-owner accountability (the “DRI” idea)
What we do: Every asset and milestone has one named owner and one date in the tracker (contributors welcome; co-owners discouraged). We review only red/yellow items; green doesn’t take meeting time.
Why it works: It prevents diffusion of responsibility (social loafing) and clarifies who moves what by when. Apple popularized the “Directly Responsible Individual” concept for exactly this reason.
Copy this: Add “Owner (single name)” and “Due date” columns to your campaign tracker. If two names appear, you don’t have an owner—you have a committee.
2) Daily standups (20 minutes, non-negotiable)
What we do: Every weekday, same time. Three prompts per person:
- What did I move yesterday? 2) What will I move today? 3) What’s blocking me—and who can unblock it?
Problem-solving happens after with only the relevant people.
Why it works: Short standups create rhythm and visibility; they surface blockers before they turn into slips. (Scrum: 15 minutes; empirical studies confirm benefits.)
Copy this: Timebox to 20 minutes max. Post a one-line recovery plan for any slipped item.
3) One canonical place for comms and decisions
What we do: One Slack channel per campaign; we pin the brief, timeline, and tracker. All approvals/decisions are logged back to the tracker with links to assets. Integrations are “light touch” (e.g., task updates posted to the channel).
Why it works: Communication visibility—making in-flight work visible—improves “who-knows-what” knowledge and speeds coordination. It also cuts the “toggle tax.”
Copy this: If a decision lives only in a DM or email, it doesn’t exist. Post it in the channel and link it in the tracker.
4) A single source of truth (tracker with a critical path)
What we do: One tracker (Asana, Jira, or a shared sheet) with columns: Deliverable | Owner | Due | Status (R/Y/G) | Dependencies | Link | Notes. We mark a critical path and protect it first.
Why it works: Visibility + dependency mapping reduces late surprises and rework. PMI data links better execution practices to stronger performance and lower scope creep/budget loss.
Copy this: Review only the critical path in leadership check-ins; everything else gets async comments.
5) Work backwards from the launch (PR/FAQ)
What we do: Start with the immovable date (launch, trade show, media flight). We write a one-page “press release/FAQ” that defines audience, promise, success metrics, and “done,” then reverse-engineer milestones with buffers (approvals, legal, build/QA, traffic).
Why it works: The Amazon “Working Backwards” method forces clarity on customer value and timeline feasibility before anyone starts building.
Copy this: No build without a one-pager. If you can’t explain the value and the date, you’re not ready to schedule work.
6) Premortems, risk register, and rehearsals
What we do: Kick off with a premortem (“assume we failed; why?”) and keep a living risk register (top 5 risks, one mitigation each). We rehearse the fail points (site cutover, AV/keynote timing, booth walkthrough) before the week of launch.
Why it works: Premortems reliably surface issues people won’t voice in standard planning—and early detection is cheaper than late heroics.
Copy this: Add a 20-minute Friday risk review to every live campaign.
30-day pilot (to install this in any in-house team)
Week 1 — Make work visible
Set up the tracker and one campaign channel; pin both. Baseline: on-time rate, blocker clearance time, rework cycles, scope change.
Week 2 — Establish cadence
Daily 20-minute standups; Friday 20-minute risk review.
Week 3 — Reduce toggle tax
Agree on your tool stack; retire redundancies; route decisions to the tracker. Expect fewer context switches and faster retrieval. Harvard Business Review
Week 4 — Work backwards
Write the PR/FAQ; publish a realistic critical path with buffers; lock vendor/media dates.
What to measure (and how to react)
- On-time delivery (target ≥ 85%) — If low: trim scope, add buffers on the critical path, and shorten standups (not longer).
- Blocker clearance time (target < 24h on critical items) — Name the un-blocker in standup; escalate same-day.
- Rework cycles (target ≤ 2 per standard asset) — If high: your brief/approval path isn’t clear; fix those first.
- Scope change after kickoff (target < 10%) — Require owner + impact note for any addition; renegotiate dates openly.
- Context switching (self-reported hours/week; tool count) — Consolidate surfaces and pin the “latest.”
Bottom line
Great ideas don’t win alone; great operations make them inevitable. The pattern behind abnormally successful campaigns is consistent: a single accountable owner, a daily 20-minute standup, one place for communication and decisions, and a plan built backwards from launch—with risks rehearsed before they bite. Put that system in place and your marketing won’t just avoid failure; it will out-deliver.
Sources: PMI Pulse of the Profession 2024 (performance/enablers, approach/location neutrality); Scrum Guide 2020 (15-minute Daily Scrum); Stray et al. (empirical stand-up findings); Leonardi (communication visibility); HBR (toggle tax); classic social loafing research.