Marketing Without a Map - Leading Through Ambiguity
Why strong marketers often start with less direction, and deliver more clarity
Sometimes, there’s no roadmap. No positioning deck. No customer insights. No shared language.
Just a kickoff call and a vague sense of urgency.
This isn’t rare. It’s reality. Especially in founder-led companies, startups, or teams in transition.
So how do you lead when you’ve been handed a moving target?
Step 1: Get oriented. Fast!
Start asking:
What is the company actually trying to prove right now?
What does success really mean, and for whom?
What do Sales, Product, and the exec team each think is the priority?
Where are the tensions? What’s being said privately, not publicly?
This isn’t just information gathering … it’s strategic positioning. You’re listening for truth, not consensus.
Step 2: Surface the disconnects.
Ambiguity often hides disagreement:
Sales is chasing volume, Product is chasing prestige
Leadership wants innovation and efficiency, but hasn’t picked a lane
The CEO says "go big," but the budget says "stay small"
Your job is to name those contradictions, not solve them immediately. Clarity starts by putting them on the table.
Step 3: Create a narrative everyone can work from.
Not a campaign. Not a slogan. A shared understanding of what the business is trying to say, solve, and achieve.
Even if it’s provisional, even if it changes, that working narrative lets teams build together instead of sideways.
Great marketers don’t need a perfect brief.
They need enough raw inputs to build clarity. And they know how to lead others through that process.
This isn’t guesswork. It’s a muscle. One that turns ambiguity into alignment, and earns trust along the way.
→ For a deeper dive, read our full Perspective: When Marketing Has to Extract the Strategy
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