Most Important Skills for a Senior Manager of Fleet Marketing at Amazon
David, a Senior Manager of Fleet Marketing at Amazon, emphasizes the importance of "grit," the ability to learn from failures and creatively solve ambiguous problems, a necessity given the innovative nature of their work – "no company has" done this type of marketing before. Strong leadership skills are also crucial, as they manage a large team, including hundreds of contractors across the US and Europe.
Problem-Solving, Leadership, Resilience, Creativity, Ambiguity Management
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
David Marshall
Senior Manager - Fleet Marketing
Amazon
Baylor University
Arizona State University (ASU) - W. P. Carey - Masters Business Administration (MBA)
International Relations & Affairs
Manufacturing, Operations & Supply Chain, Advertising, Communications & Marketing
Business Strategy
Disabled, Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School, Veteran, First Generation College Student
Video Highlights
1. Develop grit and resilience to handle ambiguity and setbacks, learning from failures and adapting to new challenges.
2. Cultivate resourcefulness, creativity, and innovation to solve ambiguous problems and develop effective plans. This includes asking questions and learning from subject matter experts.
3. Embrace leadership skills to understand, empathize with, and develop team members, fostering collaboration across diverse teams and networks of contractors and subcontractors.
Transcript
What skills are most important for a job like yours?
Here's the cleaned transcript:
A couple of things come to mind. First, you have to be able to deal with ambiguity and, proverbially, get punched in the face every once in a while.
At Amazon, we have a culture that's open to failure, at least to a certain degree. This is great because some companies aren't like that. Honestly, we learn the most when we do fail. As long as you're not failing at the same thing over and over, Amazon's okay with it.
So, being able to take those failures, learn from them, adapt, and improve yourself is key to moving forward. From a grit standpoint, this means accepting failure and learning from it to improve.
Grit also comes into play when you're thrown a very ambiguous problem. You need enough ingenuity, creativity, and resourcefulness to find the answers and develop a plan. This often involves working backward from your goals or what needs to happen with a particular project, then developing milestones to execute that plan. Resourcefulness goes into grit.
I also mentioned innovation, or being innovative. In my role, we had never done marketing in this manner before; no company had. When I was first asked to create a team to support this type of marketing, I had to ask a lot of questions.
I had to learn new things about marketing and how to build an operational team around it. I also needed to figure out what types of people I needed to fulfill different roles. So, being able to think creatively and ask questions to subject matter experts who know more than you do is important. I think those are two big things.
From a leadership standpoint, I lead a team of eight people. I also have a network of contractors and subcontractors numbering in the hundreds around the US and now Europe. From a leadership standpoint, it's important to understand different people and be empathetic to how they operate. As you learn people, you understand how they best operate and what key skills they have.
Working with them to develop a plan for building their skills is also crucial. So, general leadership skills and principles around that piece are essential.