Picture a leadership meeting inside almost any modern organisation.
The agenda is already full, yet someone raises the question that always seems to appear.
“Should we be doing more on LinkedIn?”
“Do we need a new CRM?”
“Should we test TikTok?”
“Maybe we should try a webinar series.”
Everyone has ideas. All of them sound plausible. All of them feel urgent.
The room is filled with suggestions, comments, half-formed strategies and requests for “quick wins.”
No one is doing anything wrong.They are simply trying to move the organisation forward.
But something subtle is happening.
The more options that appear, the more chaotic the decision-making becomes.
The meeting ends. Everyone is busy. But no one is any clearer.
This scenario plays out every day in professional services, not for profits, property development, government, education and growth-focused organisations of every kind.
The Problem
The real issue is not the ideas. It is the structure behind the ideas.
Most organisations attempt to solve marketing problems by adding more tactics.
- More channels
- More activity
- More tools
- More experiments
- More campaigns
- More internal requests
But marketing does not fail because of a lack of tactics.
It fails because the decision-making system behind those tactics is unclear.
Without a clear system of decisions, everything looks like a good idea. And when everything looks like a good idea, the organisation becomes reactive.
This is the pattern behind most marketing frustrations:
A lack of strategic decisions creates a surplus of tactical activity.
This is why teams feel busy but unfocused.
This is why messaging drifts.
This is why priorities shift constantly.
This is why campaigns become inconsistent.
This is why growth feels harder than it should.
The real problem is not execution. The real problem is decision-making.
“Your marketing isn’t underperforming — it’s underaligned.”
What Organisations Actually Need to Do
To move forward with confidence, organisations need to step back and establish a system of decisions that guides all marketing activity.
This means answering, with absolute clarity:
- Who are we?
- Who do we serve?
- What value do we create?
- What do we want to be known for?
- What matters most over the next 12 months?
- What are we not going to do?
- What does “good” look like for us?
When these decisions are clear, everything becomes easier.
Teams understand priorities.
Campaigns become more coherent.
Budgets align with strategy.
Messaging sharpens.
Tactics have context.
And decision-making shifts from reactive to confident.
Marketing becomes less about “What should we try next?” And far more about “What supports our strategy?”
This is the fundamental shift modern organisations must make.
Because marketing is not a list of activities. Marketing is the expression of strategic decisions.
When the decisions improve, everything improves.
