I'm going to start this week’s newsletter with something that might make me sound like a conspiracy theorist or someone about to commit a white-collar crime and set up their partner to be patsy:

You absolutely need to leave a paper trail.

In Marketing Ops, we control the levers that can make or break a business. We own the tools that generate marketing leads. We manage the inbound flow that keeps the sales team happy. We build the reporting that determines whether executives think the company is crushing it or circling the drain.

We are the people behind the curtain keeping everything running. And even in the healthiest organizations with the most supportive leadership, things can get real contentious real fast when the health of the business is threatened.

Nobody notices Marketing Ops until something breaks. But when the break happens? The floodlights are on you, and suddenly you're justifying your existence while everyone points fingers.

This is exactly why documentation isn't just a nice-to-have, it's your professional lifeline.

Let me tell you two stories that perfectly illustrate why I'm so obsessed with paper trails.

A few years back, one of my consultants made a change to a client's form that accidentally disabled it completely. No submissions were reaching Marketo via the API. That entire section of the lead funnel was dead in the water.

Concerningly, it took the client a few months to notice, but when they did, they were understandably very upset.

Here's where it gets messy - my consultant swore the client had requested and approved the change over multiple calls. The client swore they never approved it. And you know what we had to back up our side of the story?

Nothing.

No Jira ticket, no email, no Slack thread, no meeting agenda, nothing. There were vague references to "making changes" scattered around, but zero documentation that the client had actually green lit anything.

It became a classic he said, she said situation. And ultimately, we ended up losing a chunk of that contract because it's really hard to come back from that kind of knee-capping the client’s lead funnel for a few months disaster.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Different client comes to me: "Hey, our MQL volume dropped off a cliff two weeks ago. Can you investigate?"

We quickly identified two changes we'd made to their tech stack that were causing the drop. But this time? Both changes were thoroughly documented in JIRA tickets. The original stakeholder requests, our findings, our recommendations, the go-live date, everything had a crystal clear paper trail down to the date time stamp.

When we brought this to the client, the conversation was completely different. Instead of getting defensive, we could say: "Here's what happened, here's why we did it, here's the business case we made together, and here are your options moving forward."

The client's response? "These changes make complete sense. Let's roll back one because the impact is too severe, but keep the other because it improved lead quality."

Same type of situation, completely different outcome. All because of documentation.

When Marketing Ops gets the spotlight because something went wrong, our natural instinct is to retreat into a defensive shell. But when you have a paper trail, you're not scrambling to defend yourself.

You're presenting facts. You have proof that you didn't just make random changes without telling anyone. You have evidence that decisions were made collaboratively. You can have productive conversations about what went wrong and how to fix it, instead of fighting about who said what when.

Leave a paper trail. Document your decisions in JIRA, email, Slack, literally anywhere that creates a record.

When someone requests a change, document it. When you make a recommendation, write it down. When stakeholders approve something, get it in writing. When you implement changes, log the what, when, and why.

It might feel tedious in the moment, but I guarantee it will save your professional hide multiple times in your career.

See you next week,

🫶🏽 Alysha