Focus is your new ops advantage

TL;DR

The conversation between Katie and Sachin opened on a truth every marketing leader knows but rarely admits: speed has become the new vanity metric. Teams move faster than ever, but their output often feels scattered.

• Marketers are drowning in distraction: The real bottleneck isn’t ideas or tools—it’s focus. Teams chase speed but lose direction.

• Design is the new strategy: Intentional workflows beat reactive campaigns. Structure creates creative freedom.

• Focus compounds like revenue: Fewer priorities, clearly defined, lead to deeper execution and stronger outcomes.

• Ops is everyone’s job: Marketing operations isn’t a backend task—it’s how clarity scales across the org.

The fix isn’t more tools or dashboards — it’s a design problem.

The real productivity problem isn’t time, it’s focus

Most teams don’t struggle with effort or energy. They struggle with direction.

Katie described how marketing teams often chase too many priorities at once—new campaigns, channels, and quick wins—while losing sight of what actually moves the business. The work looks busy, but it’s fragmented.

Sachin reframed the challenge: focus doesn’t happen by chance. It has to be designed into the operating model. You can’t just tell teams to “do fewer things.” You have to create rituals, templates, and workflows that make focus automatic.

In short, focus is a design outcome, not a motivational one.

Design your ops like a product

Katie and Sachin both view operations as a form of experience design.

Just as product teams map user journeys, marketing leaders should map the internal “work journeys” that determine how efficiently teams execute. Where does work get stuck? Where do decisions slow down? Which tasks repeat weekly and could be automated?

Operational design isn’t about control—it’s about creating momentum.

When structure is intentional, it accelerates creativity. Teams with well-designed workflows have fewer blockers, faster collaboration, and more energy to invest in storytelling and brand.

Focus compounds like revenue

Katie compared focus to compounding returns. The more consistently a team aligns around clear goals, the more every effort pays off over time.

Most marketing teams have two scoreboards: one for output and one for attention. When attention fragments, so do results.

By narrowing scope and sequencing initiatives, Katie’s teams at CaptivateIQ drive depth over volume. Instead of chasing ten goals halfway, they go all in on the two that build durable advantage: customer insight and creative excellence.

The takeaway: alignment compounds just like revenue does.

Ops is the bridge between chaos and creativity

Sachin pointed out that operations is no longer a supporting function—it’s the connective tissue of a modern GTM engine.

Good ops is like good UX: invisible when it’s working, obvious when it’s not.

Katie emphasized that marketing ops, when done well, unlocks creativity. It provides rhythm, structure, and clarity so teams can spend more time thinking and less time reacting.

The shared belief: clarity is the real growth engine.

Final word

The future of marketing isn’t about moving faster. It’s about moving with intention. Katie and Sachin’s conversation reframes productivity as a design discipline:

• Focus is a system.

• Ops is creative infrastructure.

• Structure scales trust.

Teams that design for focus, not chaos, don’t just deliver more. They deliver meaningfully.

About the CMO

Katie Foote is the Chief Marketing Officer at CaptivateIQ, the leading platform for sales compensation management. With over 15 years of experience scaling marketing organizations across the SaaS landscape, she has built and led teams at Salesforce, Drift, and now CaptivateIQ — transforming marketing from a cost center into a growth engine.

At Salesforce, Katie led global marketing and field strategy across 46 countries, building one of the company’s most operationally disciplined go-to-market functions. At Drift, she stepped into the CMO role to redefine revenue marketing and accelerate growth during a pivotal period of transformation.

Now at CaptivateIQ, Katie brings her operator’s mindset to a new era of AI-driven GTM, helping organizations align clarity, focus, and creativity in the way they market and sell. She also serves as an advisor to emerging startups including DIVACS and Breakout, where she mentors next-generation marketing leaders.

Her approach blends creative storytelling with operational design — ensuring that focus, alignment, and customer connection scale together.

About the series

This is from Breakout Sessions, where marketing leaders unpack how AI is changing GTM and the way buyers buy.