“I want to operate strategically, but I spend most of my time reacting to what comes through the door.”

Sound familiar?

After more than twenty years in the director’s chair, I can tell you firsthand: I lived that life.

But it wasn’t just me. I’ve met countless talented, capable marcomms leaders: people with strong instincts, good ideas, and a real desire to move their institutions forward.

So why do most of us spend years executing day-to-day task work instead of shaping institutional strategy?

Hot take: it’s part our fault, part the institution’s fault.

What the Job Actually Looks Like

When most of us think of critical marcomms skills mastery, we think campaigns, channels, tools, and tactics. But the real job of a marcomms leader looks very different.

It’s spending time effectively:

• Deciding what actually deserves attention
• Navigating stakeholders with competing priorities
• Managing the flood of requests without losing focus
• Translating institutional goals into messaging

None of that shows up in marketing playbooks. And it’s not the kind of sexy breakout session you pick when you’re at a conference.

So we force ourselves to learn these lessons the hard way, one under-resourced project, one new vague institutional initiative, and one frustrating conversation at a time.

The Three Forces That Keep Us Stuck in Task Mode

Wherever a marcomms team is stuck in task mode, you’re bound to find at least one of these.

1. The Internal Agency Trap

Many marketing teams are structured like internal agencies.

It’s no wonder. Those of us who’ve been around for a while are painfully aware how hard it was to survive as a one-person shop. After years of barely keeping our heads above water, many of us were lucky enough to expand our departments.

And what’s the first thing we did? Organize ourselves to do more work. Before you know it, there was two of us barely keeping our heads above water.

As we built our teams to provide more bandwidth, we failed to see the bigger picture. We unwittingly turned ourselves into service providers. In our zeal to do more, better work, we pushed strategic work even further out of reach.

When that’s the model, the work naturally becomes task-centric.

Requests dominate our days.

Strategy gets the scraps.

2. The Capacity Illusion

At most colleges, marketing capacity is assumed.

Every request sounds small:

• Just a quick page
• Just a quick campaign
• Just a quick announcement

Individually, they’re manageable. Collectively? They’re the constant stream of work that crowds out strategic thinking.

Look at your own intake process. You probably didn’t build it to protect the work that matters. You did it to cut down on email. Thinking to use it to filter jobs by strategic value? Yeah… No.

Strategy requires protected capacity. And few of us ever thought to lay down speed bumps.

3. The Authority Gap

Marcomms leaders are often responsible (in reality or perception) for outcomes we don’t fully control. We’re expected to help drive enrollment, reputation, and institutional priorities, but we rarely have clear authority over which projects actually deserve attention or resources.

That gap between responsibility and authority boxes us into the accommodation corner instead of the strategy corner.

We might have finally gotten a seat at the table but we weren’t let in until after the main course, and all that’s left is dessert.

We never got a chance to dig into the meat of the stuff that really matters. We were just invited for the sugar hit… and the sugar crash.

If your president describes you as the person “who makes me look and sound good,” they definitely don’t think of you as a strategic partner. You’re definitely just dessert material.

What Happens When Those Forces Combine

When these three forces show up together, we’re reduced to operating like short order cooks, making only what each person tells us.

Our ability or desire to do strategic work is irrelevant. The system we helped build runs on our output and not our focus.

Strategy never had a chance.

The Shift That Changes Everything

The answer isn’t to chuck our day-to-day work.

Colleges run on collaboration, and as marketers, we will always support a wide range of initiatives.

But we have to flip the switch from service provider to strategic partner.

When we do that, it changes the questions we ask. It changes how we evaluate requests. It changes when marketing actually joins conversations about institutional priorities.

Most importantly, it changes how we allocate our limited bandwidth and resources to doing the work that really matters.

How to Start Moving Out of Task Mode

You can’t quickly undo something that took decades to create, but these steps will start the transformation.

1. Ask one question before accepting work

When a job request comes in, ask a simple question:

“What institutional priority does this support?”

Don’t be confrontational. Just matter-of-fact. Some requests connect clearly to institutional priorities. Many don’t. Use that moment of clarity to reframe the conversation.

2. Make capacity visible

Most institutions assume marketing capacity is infinite. That’s because no one has ever seen the full workload. So show your receipts and track active projects. I bet you’ll be as surprised as anyone. And when your boss sees how often you’re trading important work for urgent tasks, setting real priorities becomes a helluvalot easier.

3. Paddle upstream

Your biggest leverage point is timing. Most marketing teams get pulled in after decisions are made. At that point marketing becomes execution at best. Decoration at worst.

The earlier marcomms leaders are involved in conversations about initiatives and priorities, the easier it is to influence decisions and shape strategy instead of continually reacting to requests.

Ask to join. Then bring your questions… and your data.

Where Are You?

Not sure you’re stuck in service mode? Ask yourself these questions:

• Do we actually decide which requests deserve attention?
• Can we show leadership our true marketing capacity?
• Are we involved in institutional decisions before or after they’re made?
• Who’s the one requester we always say yes to, even though it rarely matters?

If you can’t easily answer these questions, you’re not alone. Most of us were never taught how to operate strategically inside the reality of a college.

Why This? Why Now?

Over the past few years, I’ve been collecting the frameworks, decision habits, and practical tools that helped me navigate this transformation over my career.

What started as a personal exercise became something bigger: helping other marcomms leaders make the same leap that I did.

That’s why I created the Marketing Leader Performance Accelerator.

We just completed our first six-week course in July and I plan to run the next cohort in September. Bring your biggest opportunities for growth and then apply road-tested frameworks to get you where you want to go. It’s maxed out at four people because I want to focus on you. You leave with a 12-month plan and the check-ins we use along the way to refine it and keep you honest.

If you’re a marcomms leader trying to operate more strategically inside your institution but don’t know how to make the transition, I got you.