Mops teams become respected strategic partners when they stop passively accepting requests and start asking "why." By questioning the goal behind a task and suggesting better approaches, they demonstrate expertise and train stakeholders to treat them as advisors, not a fast-food drive-thru.
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Adopt engineering methodologies like sprints, story points, and capacity dashboards for marketing operations. This provides the data needed to manage stakeholder expectations, prioritize requests transparently, and move the team from reactive order-takers to strategic partners with a defensible roadmap.
Instead of passively waiting for experience teams to request an API, platform teams should proactively identify business opportunities. Go to other teams with proposals for new services that can unlock use cases they haven't even considered, positioning your team as a strategic partner, not a cost center.
When meeting with senior leaders, shift the focus from your status updates to their priorities. Ask what's top of mind for them, what challenges they face, and how you can help. This reframes you from a direct report into a strategic ally, building trust and social capital.
To find the true influencer, ask how a low-level problem affects high-level business goals (e.g., company growth). The person who can connect these dots, regardless of their title, holds the real power in the decision-making process. They are the one paid to connect daily actions to strategic objectives.
Marketers often treat Mops as order-takers for quick tasks. Instead, view them as strategic partners managing complex systems. This reframes the relationship from transactional to collaborative, acknowledging the intricate "plumbing" behind a simple request like an email send.