Welcome, fellow marketers, to the era of continuous change, where what you mastered yesterday is already slipping toward obsolescence.
A channel you’ve never heard of could be your largest lead source next year.
A technology you barely understand might reshape how you work before next quarter.
Some days this momentum feels energizing. Other days it makes you want to curl up under a blanket and pretend you live in a cave with no Wi-Fi.
Either way, the waves aren’t stopping. The pace isn’t slowing.
Our job isn’t to stop the ocean. Our job is to build a boat sturdy enough – and flexible enough – to ride it.
Recently, I sat on a leadership panel with CEOs from other professional services organizations. We meet monthly to share how we’re using AI, where it's helping, and where it’s creating risk.
This time, we brought in a lawyer who specializes in AI law and copyright. Friends, holy wow.
I expected a conversation about guidelines and compliance. What I got instead was a full-on philosophical earthquake about ownership, authorship, and the future of creative work.
Consider this: if you push a button on a camera, you own the copyright to the photo. But if you spend hours crafting an AI prompt, refining it, iterating on it, and coaxing something truly original from a model – you don’t own that output. Not under current law.
And if you're writing a book with AI’s help, this lawyer recommended documenting every single AI-influenced word. Every word!
Welcome to marketing in 2026: moving at warp speed while simultaneously asking us to slow down and document our existence like medieval scribes.
And in the middle of all this chaos, the business still wants us to hit KPIs. Generate leads. Fill pipeline. Deliver growth.
So no, it’s not getting simpler.
The waves aren’t calming down. They’re getting bigger. Stronger. More unpredictable.
And we can’t outbuild the ocean with walls or dams. Eventually the water wins.
Instead, we build boats. We build buoyancy. We build change readiness into our organizational DNA.
This is where mindset meets process – the “what” and the “how” of Agile marketing. Let’s break down how we strengthen both.
Before we overhaul workflows or stand up new Agile practices, we need to get honest about our mindset.
Mindset is simply the collection of attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions running in the background while we work. It’s our mental operating system, shaping how we interpret disruption, how we make decisions, and how we respond under pressure.
I admit it: I’ve always found the Agile obsession with mindset a little squishy.
It can become a cop-out – “We can’t improve anything until we fix our mindset!”
But mindset does matter.
It influences behavior, and behavior determines culture. You don’t get a change-ready culture without a change-ready mindset.
Three dimensions define that mindset:
Do you see change as a threat or an opportunity?
Do you believe failure is a learning lab or a career risk?
Do you assume new tools will take your job, or help you level up?
These beliefs influence every meeting, every experiment, and every attempt to adopt something new. They’re the difference between:
“This won’t work; we’ve never done it before.”
and
“We’ve never tried this; we could be first.”
That’s fixed mindset vs. growth mindset in a nutshell.
When ambiguity shows up at your doorstep, do you tense up or lean in?
An open, optimistic emotional posture makes us more resilient. It lets us pivot without panic.
In contrast, a defensive posture makes us brittle – and brittleness is a liability in a volatile environment. We need to be able to bob and weave, not freeze.
Beliefs and feelings matter, but behavior is where the rubber meets the road.
Do you resist?
Do you procrastinate and hope change goes away?
Or do you ask questions, stay curious, and co-create the path forward?
Behavior is culture in motion. And culture is the real engine of change readiness.
If you’re unsure where your team stands today, ask this simple question:
What story is your team telling itself about change?
Is it a threat? A disruption? A chance to grow?
If the story isn’t energizing, it’s time to rewrite it.
Once the mindset foundation is set – or at least under construction – we move into process.
Agile processes aren’t there to make us “more Agile.” They’re there to help us adapt rapidly and repeatedly, no matter what new curveball hits the market.
Here are five that matter most.
Annual planning is a relic of a slower world; we simply can’t predict 12 months out with any accuracy. Quarterly is the longest planning horizon that makes sense today. Monthly is better. Bi-weekly sprints are best.
Shorter cycles help us:
And those Agile ceremonies we love – standups, sprint planning, retros, demos – aren’t bureaucracy. They’re rhythm. They’re traction. They keep fast work from becoming chaotic work.
If you're going to move faster, you need guardrails. That means:
When we get feedback every two weeks instead of every two months, we avoid disasters and accelerate wins.
The backlog is a living, breathing organism. It should evolve as you learn. And yes, it means letting go of pet projects. Even your favorites.
Before each sprint:
This isn’t indecision, it’s intelligence.
Silos are one of the biggest killers of speed, quality, and creativity in marketing.
Every handoff introduces delay. Every miscommunication introduces rework.
To break the cycle, we must:
When silos fall, speed rises.
This one seems deceptively small, but it’s a powerhouse.
Getting everyone aligned before work begins on what “done” actually means:
It’s 30 minutes upfront to save 30 hours down the road.
Begin with two simple questions:
Then look for bright spots – the areas already flowing smoothly. Don’t break what’s working.
Instead, shift your team’s rhythm. Speed up planning. Tighten feedback loops. Try cross-functional demos. And above all, get curious together.
If you’re not sure where your biggest gaps are, our free Agile Marketing Assessment will help. It scores you across nine core dimensions of Agile marketing – mindset, process, data, planning, customer centricity, and more – so you know exactly where to focus next.
The waves of change aren’t going anywhere.
But with the right mindset and a strong Agile operating system, you won’t just survive them. You’ll ride them with confidence.