That's Not a Strategy, It's a To-Do List

One of the things I find myself referring to a lot when talking and writing about marketing is the “marketing hamster wheel”, and you hear others refer to marketers being “short order cooks”; in that we are consumed with serving up short-term deliverables to order and reacting to business requests rather than driving, well… anything.

And aside from not driving anything, the only way to show success on the hamster wheel is the number of things that have been done, not how these activities moved the needle, partly because, without a strategy, there is no needle.

It’s the metrics of the sweatshop.

Zoom out a little on this idea, and you meet folks like Gartner, McKinsey, and Forrester, who refer to the CMO losing their seat at the grown-ups' table, where they discuss strategy and 4D chess, while we are sitting with the kids, with the crayons and coloring books.

OK, these esteemed organizations might not have said that exactly, but we knew what they meant.

Yes, we have to react to the business; someone has to order the branded tchotchkes and ensure there are canapes (the nice ones, remember) at the customer networking event.

And to implement a strategy, we need to do specific actions, a list of things to do, a strategy is not going to just do it itself.

So yes, we need a to-do list or, my preference, a Kanban board (I’m down with the agile cool kids). However, while being strategic does need a to-do list, a to-do list does not need a strategy.

One litmus test for which side of this we are on is whether new entries and requests on the to-do list have something to challenge them.

Does this thing, task, campaign, new whitepaper, or channel align with an outcome that supports our goals, or is it simply because Harper, the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion), said so?

You are probably bored with me talking about my marketing objective of creating ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust), but that’s my thing. Challenging whether being on TikFace, making the logo bigger, or adding more cowbell will create ART.

That’s my ticket off the hamster wheel.

So, ask yourself, is this a strategy or a to-do list?