Marketing Team Coaching: A Six-Phase Handover Method

The short answer: an interim leader coaches a marketing team to self-sufficiency in six phases: assess what each person can do, agree a learning plan, move each recurring task from "I do" to "you do", build the new routine into daily work, write it down as playbooks, and hand over. Each phase produces a document. The engagement is finished when every recurring task has an owner other than the interim, and that owner has done the task at least once without help.

An interim CMO is temporary and the team is not. Whatever only the interim understands leaves on the last day, so making the interim unnecessary is part of the job. This post sets out the method I recommend for that: six phases, the document each one produces, and a test for when to stop.

The six phases at a glance

Phase 1: Triage & Talent Assessment

Start by finding out what the team can do now. Hold a one-to-one with each person, sit in on the meetings where the work is planned, and list every recurring task: reporting, campaign launches, budget updates, agency briefs, lead handoffs. Then build the capability map. Put the tasks down the side and the people across the top, and score each cell: 0 cannot do it, 1 can do it with help, 2 can do it alone, 3 can teach it.

Here is an illustration with made-up names and scores.

A task that only one person scores 2 or 3 on is a dependency: the performance report and the budget reforecast both depend on Ana. A task that nobody scores 2 or above on is a gap: nobody can write the agency brief. The dependencies and the gaps set the order of everything that follows.

Document: the capability map and a dependency list.

Phase 2: Roadmap & Resources

Turn each gap and dependency into a plan with the person who will own it. For each one, write down who will learn it, what they will be able to do and by when, how they will learn it (a project, a mentor, a course) and what it costs. Agree the plan with the person rather than for them. Someone who has not agreed their own plan will not own it. My rule of thumb is no more than two new responsibilities per person at a time.

If the gap is agentic marketing, a roadmap might be a short workshop on the basics followed by a pilot in which the team builds its first agent, with the interim as coach. How to build a first marketing agent covers the pilot.

Document: a one-page learning roadmap per person, and the order in which tasks will be handed over.

Phase 3: Action & Accountability

This is where the coaching happens. The method is the gradual release of responsibility, which Pearson and Gallagher described in 1983 for teaching reading comprehension. In it, responsibility moves in steps from the teacher to the learner (Pearson and Gallagher, 1983; the model's history is traced in Pearson, McVee and Shanahan, 2019). It is sometimes shortened to a three-part routine, shown below (NSW Department of Education). I did not invent it, and I borrow it for recurring marketing tasks.

The "I do, we do, you do" routine

A task counts as handed over when the team member has done it alone, to a standard the interim would have accepted, without a review beforehand. Track every task in a handover tracker: the task, its owner, the current stage, the date of the last move and what blocks the next one. Move a task forward when the output is good enough to ship without the interim, not when the calendar says so.

Document: the task handover tracker.

Phase 4: Normalization & Network

A skill is not learned until it is the default. Make the new way the easiest way: update the templates, the meeting agendas, the dashboard and the calendar, so that the new routine is what is already there on Monday morning. Then name an internal champion for each new skill. The champion is the person colleagues ask before they ask the interim, which spreads the knowledge and reduces dependence on one leader.

Document: updated templates, the meeting cadence (who, when, what gets decided) and the champions list.

Phase 5: Systematization & Sustainability

Write down what the team now does.

• Playbooks. One page per recurring task: purpose, steps, owner, tools, where the files are and what good looks like.
• Process pages. Keep them in the wiki the team already uses, such as Notion, Confluence or a shared drive. The tool matters less than having one place, and one owner for each page.
• A decision log. What was decided, when, by whom and why, for the decisions a successor would otherwise have to reopen.
• A plan for the successor. A 30/60/90 day plan with the current state, the open decisions and the first priorities. The publisher's description of Michael D. Watkins's The First 90 Days says: "Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success." A written starting point is my answer to that risk.

Test every playbook. Ask someone who has not done the task to run it from the page alone, and fix the page where they get stuck.

Document: playbooks, process pages, the decision log and the successor's plan.

Phase 6: Feedback & Farewell

Hold structured feedback sessions with the team and with key stakeholders. Write down what worked, what did not and what is still open. Then hand over: a memo with the open items, the risks and who decides what, and a meeting with the person who inherits the work.

Step back in stages rather than on a single day. For the last weeks, stop attending the meetings the team now runs, and take questions through one agreed channel. If the contract includes advice after the end date, write down how it works and for how long, so that it does not become a way of still making the decisions.

Document: the feedback summary, the handover memo and the open-items list.

How to know it worked: the dependency test

List the 10 to 15 recurring tasks and decisions of the function. For each one, record who does it now and who did it at the start. The engagement is complete when every task has an owner other than the interim, and that owner has done it at least once without the interim.

Here is an illustration. A team has 12 recurring tasks, and the interim does 7 of them at the start. The starting dependency score is 7 of 12, or 58%. The target at exit is 0 of 12. Track the number every month.

When this method is the wrong tool

• The team is about to be restructured. Settle the structure first. People whose roles are in question have little reason to take on new responsibilities.
• There is nobody to hand over to. If there is no permanent leader and no senior team member who can take the role, name the CEO, or the date a successor will start, as the recipient in phase 6. Otherwise the playbooks have no owner.
• The mandate is a few weeks. Pick the two or three tasks that matter most and run only those through phases 3 and 5.
• The team does not want the work. Find out why in phase 1, whether it is workload, fear or disagreement, before you start handing things over.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the primary goal of an interim marketing leader?

To hold the seat and deliver the agreed outcome while leaving a team that can run without them. The test is whether every recurring task has an owner other than the interim, not how well the team performs while the interim is there.

What is the six-phase handover method?

A way to coach a team from dependency to self-sufficiency. The phases are Triage & Talent Assessment, Roadmap & Resources, Action & Accountability, Normalization & Network, Systematization & Sustainability, and Feedback & Farewell. Each phase produces a document: a capability map, learning roadmaps, a task handover tracker, updated templates and a champions list, playbooks and a decision log, and a handover memo.

How do you make sure knowledge is not lost when an interim leaves?

Write it down and test it. Every recurring task gets a one-page playbook, and someone who has not done the task runs it from the page alone. Keep a decision log, hand the successor a written 30/60/90 day plan, and use the dependency test to check that no task still depends on the interim.

What does "I do, we do, you do" mean?

It is a shorthand used in teaching for the gradual release of responsibility, a model that Pearson and Gallagher described in 1983. The interim does a task while the team member watches, then they do it together with the team member leading, then the team member does it alone and the interim reviews afterwards. A handover tracker records which stage each task is at.

References

[1] Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 317-344. https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-476X(83)90019-X

[2] Pearson, P. D., McVee, M. B., & Shanahan, L. E. (2019). In the beginning: The historical and conceptual genesis of the gradual release of responsibility. In McVee, Ortlieb, Reichenberg & Pearson (Eds.), The Gradual Release of Responsibility in Literacy Research and Practice (Literacy Research, Practice and Evaluation, Vol. 10, pp. 1-21). Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2048-045820190000010001

[3] NSW Department of Education. Gradual release of responsibility. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/explicit-teaching/explicit-teaching-strategies/gradual-release-of-responsibility

[4] Watkins, M. D. (2013). The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter. Harvard Business Review Press. https://store.hbr.org/product/the-first-90-days-updated-and-expanded-proven-strategies-for-getting-up-to-speed-faster-and-smarter/11323