From Doers to Drivers: Moving Beyond the Request Queue to Driving the Strategy

How to keep your marketing strategic when the urgent is always louder than the important.

In most high-growth companies, marketing gets a lot of love for being scrappy and fast.

You become known as the team that just gets it done - quick campaigns, clever assets, flashy decks. The sales team needs more campaigns. Leadership starts dropping requests into Slack. Other departments say “marketing can probably help with this.”

And honestly? It feels good. As marketers, we want to be helpful. We want to be the engine that drives momentum across the org.

But it’s a slippery slope.

Pretty soon, your team isn’t building strategy - they’re running a ticketing system.

Campaigns are reactive. Requests override roadmaps. The volume picks up, but the impact doesn’t. And when growth slows? Marketing gets blamed.

It’s what I call - reactive execution. And I’ve seen plenty of good marketing teams fall into this trap time and time again.

How to Avoid Reactive Execution

This isn’t a new problem. But in a world where agility is praised, “focus” often gets lost.

So how do you stay strategic when the urgent is always louder than the important?

Here’s what’s helped me and my team:

📋 Revisit priorities weekly
We don’t just set priorities once a quarter. We come back to them every week - what’s in motion, what shifted, and why. If something new or unexpected does pop up, what can we deprioritize in order to make room for it? And most importantly - is it worth it?

This helps us re-anchor when chaos starts creeping in.

🎯 Pressure test new ideas
When someone brings us a “quick win,” we ask:

• Does this solve a real problem?

• Will our audience care?

• Can it scale or is it a one-off?

Not every answer is “no.” But forcing clarity up front keeps us honest about what we take on.

🔁 Don’t just add on: replace
When something new or unexpected does pop up, instead of just adding it onto your growing list, instead ask: “What can we deprioritize in order to make room for it?”

And more importantly - is it worth replacing that item?

This exercise can keep your team’s workload manageable, but also is a great way to help decide and communicate if the new request is worth it compared to what is already planned.

👥 Empower your team to say no
This is cultural. If you say “focus matters” but reward the people who always say yes, you’re not building a focused team - you’re building a burnt-out one. We celebrate ruthless prioritization the same way we celebrate shipping.

📌 Tie projects to outcomes, not just outputs
It’s easy to confuse activity with progress. We’ve learned to track impact (pipeline, influence, velocity) alongside execution. If it’s not laddering up to a clear business goal, it’s just noise.

How to Get Others On Board

Here’s where it gets harder: you can be crystal clear on your priorities, but if the rest of the org isn’t, you’ll keep getting pulled into the spin.

Sales still sends fire drills. Leadership still expects volume. Cross-functional teams still default to “more = better.”

That’s why shifting from reactive to strategic can’t just be a personal choice. It has to become a shared mindset.

And that starts with how you communicate.

Instead of saying “no,” I’ve learned to say:

“Here’s what we’re focused on and why. If this new request is urgent, let’s talk about what we can trade off.”

Framing prioritization as impact, not resistance, changes everything. It shows you’re not being difficult - you’re being deliberate.

It also helps to make the work visible. I’ve created presentations outlining our core strategies. Calendars that show upcoming campaign launches. Messaging docs tied to funnel stages. When people can see the plan, they’re more likely to respect it.

And when I feel that familiar chaos creeping back in, I return to internal storytelling. I repeat the “why.” I anchor back to our narrative. And eventually, I hear that narrative repeated back to me.

That’s when you know it’s sticking.

What It Feels Like When It Starts to Work

Strategic prioritization isn’t loud. It won’t always feel exciting. But you’ll know it’s working when:

✅ Sales asks how to accelerate your core campaign, instead of requesting their own.

✅ Leadership uses your language when talking about GTM in all-hands.

✅ Your team stops firefighting and starts shipping with intention.

It’s not that the work disappears. It just gets clearer. More connected. More compounding.

Final Thought

The best growth leaders I’ve worked with aren’t the busiest ones. They’re the ones who set the agenda.

They know what to say no to. They create alignment, not just action. They don’t just respond to momentum, they build it.

So if Q3 is already starting to look like a wall of competing asks and “nice-to-haves”...

Pause.

Reframe. Reprioritize.

Because doing more is easy.
Doing what matters? That’s strategy.