From Order-Taker to Strategic Partner in 6 Weeks

A working lab for marcomms leaders who are done executing other people’s priorities

You’re not stuck because you’re bad at your job.

You’re stuck because your job was never designed to do what you’re being asked to do.

Marcomms roles at most institutions were built for a different era. The environment changed. The job description didn’t. So you take the requests. You show up after decisions are made and figure out how to promote whatever just got approved.

Meanwhile, the work that could actually move your institution — the diagnostic work, the strategic work, the work that shapes decisions before they’re locked — never gets the time it deserves.

That’s not a personal failure. It’s a structural one.

This program is built around fixing the structure.

If you don’t decide what to optimize for, something else will decide for you.

What This Program Is

The Marketing Leader Performance Accelerator is a small-cohort working lab.

Not a lecture series. Not a generic management seminar. You bring real challenges from your own institution. Together we work through a structured process to identify the challenge with the biggest impact and build a plan to move it forward.

Six weeks. Ninety minutes live each week. Maximum fifteen participants.

Bring Your Challenges.

Leave With a Plan.

You’ll bring real challenges you’re facing right now.

Together we’ll work through a structured process to:

• identify and prioritize the challenge with the biggest impact
• clarify what’s really limiting progress
• frame stronger leadership conversations
• focus your work where it can create the greatest return

By the end of the program, you’ll leave with a strategic roadmap and defined milestones for moving that work forward.

The Strategic Operating System

The program is built around a simple leadership framework you can apply immediately.

SEE IT

Understand what’s really happening.

SHIFT IT

Frame better leadership decisions.

SUSTAIN IT

Install systems that protect strategic work.

This framework helps you move from reacting to requests to shaping strategy.

What You’ll Build

During the program you’ll build tools you can use immediately:

• A Constraints Audit — so you know what’s actually limiting progress, not just what feels urgent
• A Leadership Decision Triangle — to frame strategic conversations in language leadership can act on
• An Impact/Effort Work Map — to stop spreading effort across everything and focus where it moves outcomes
• A Request Intake and Triage Framework — to manage incoming work without losing strategic momentum
• A Strategic Roadmap with Milestones — your concrete plan for moving the initiative forward after the program ends
• A Win Tracker — to document progress in a way that builds internal credibility over time

These tools are designed for the real environment marketing leaders operate in.

Who This Is For

The marcomms pro doing strategic work inside a system that doesn’t see it that way.

You know what good looks like. You’ve made the arguments. But the requests keep coming, the priorities keep shifting, and the work that could actually move things forward gets pushed to next quarter. Again.

The director who sees an opening and wants to walk into it prepared.

A leadership conversation is coming. A budget cycle. A reorganization. A moment where you could reposition how marketing operates inside your institution. You want to walk in with a framework, not just good instincts.

Curious if this could help you level up?

The Problem Underneath

Three things keep marcomms teams stuck. Not bad work. Not the wrong team. The structure.

The Internal Agency Trap.

Your institution treats marketing like a vendor. Requests come in, work goes out. The more you execute, the harder it is to be seen as anything other than execution.

The Capacity Illusion.

You’re busy. Leadership reads that as full. But busy isn’t the same as strategic. The time to diagnose, to influence, to shape decisions it never makes it onto the calendar.

The Authority Gap.

You have accountability for outcomes. You don’t have authority over the decisions that drive them. Marketing gets measured on enrollment numbers it had no hand in shaping.

None of these are solved by working harder. They require a different operating model.

Where This Comes From

These tools weren’t built in a classroom.

They were developed over 30 years inside real institutions, including a stretch where I led a team through 4 consecutive years of enrollment growth and counting, built a marketing function from a one-person shop into a full department, and served as national president of NCMPR.

The problems in this program are problems I lived inside. The tools are the ones that actually worked.

How the Accelerator Works

This first group will be the foundational cohort of the program.

• 6 weeks
• 90 minutes live each week via videoconference
• 90 minutes per week applying the tools to your real work
• Small cohort (maximum 12)

The goal isn’t to add work. It’s to replace scattered work with focused work.

Seats are intentionally limited so the sessions can stay highly interactive and focused on real participant challenges.

Two foundational cohorts:

Summer cohort: Fridays, 2PM Central, June 5, 12, 19, 26, July 10, 17

Fall cohort: September & October, dates TBD

Founding Cohort

The first cohort is intentionally small. Participants will help shape future versions of the program while getting direct access to the full framework and tools.

Founding cohort members receive:

• Direct access in a small-group setting with real feedback on real work
• All program tools, reusable long after the cohort ends
• Twelve months of alumni group access and new tools as they are made available
• Quarterly 1:1 check-ins for accountability and feedback for one year to help with your transformation
• The chance to influence future cohort content

Founding cohort investment: $995.

This price holds for 2026 summer and fall cohorts only.

How This Program Pays For Itself

If the program helps you accomplish even one of the following, the investment quickly justifies itself:

• fixes a broken internal process that wastes time or resources
• improves how requests are evaluated, prioritized, and output measured
• gains support for a strategic initiative
• redirects effort toward higher-impact work

Most marcomms leaders already know what needs to change. What they often lack is the structure and momentum to make those changes happen.

This program helps you build just that.

Need help convincing your boss?

Here’s a tip sheet for how to have the conversation.

The Commitment

This is a working lab. You’ll apply these tools to your real work, not case studies.

If you show up and do the work, you’ll notice a change in how you operate and think. We’ll connect regularly over the next year year to help you integrate these frameworks into your workflows. That’s how you will zero in on building the systems and influence to change what’s keeping you from moving forward.

Next Step

Join one of the upcoming listening and information sessions to learn more.

These sessions will give you a preview of the program and help determine if it’s the right fit.

Join me at one of these two sessions:

Friday, April 10, 3pm Central

Friday, May 1, 3pm Central

Can’t make either of these? Pick a time on my calendar for a 1:1.

Learn More

Dive deeper to learn more about the Marketing Leader Performance Accelerator.