# Building Layered GTM Systems ## Current Form One of the most important jobs for any marketing leader is to simplify. Marketing and GTM are big domains with lots of interdependencies. To be a marketing leader, especially at early and growth stage orgs, means thriving on chaos. You're consistently building the plane while flying, trying to grok any number of variables while hoping that the levers you pull give you lift, not send the plane into a nosedive. These conditions put GTM teams in a tough spot. On the one hand, we have to *do*—for better or for worse your GTM teams need to be active. You have too much growth capital invested in people to have them idle, and we all know that GTM ideas sink or swim in contact with the market. But we also must *think*—random acts of marketing, spray and pray outbound tactics, misaligned account-based prospecting rarely pay. Research has shown over and over again that to grow revenue, we have to [grow the baseline](https://www.warc.com/content/feed/the-multiplier-effect-model-why-integrate-strategies/10284), and that means executing on multiple channels, across teams, on multiple time horizons to both build equity and harvest opportunity. Time and time again, GTM leaders find themselves stuck, chasing the results they have to deliver today and unable to prioritize work to close the gaps in their operations that prevent them from unlocking real growth. #### Thinking in systems Modern GTM work is ecosystemic, and this is often at odds with traditional, top-down management frameworks that are segmented by function. This is especially true in software and SaaS organizations who, even in startup and growth stages, tend to have heavily specialized product and revenue teams. These nascent teams with relatively flat, but functionally siloed management, tend to produce many strategies rather than an orchestrated GTM strategy. I firmly believe the next era of GTM belongs to the orchestrators. The teams that will win are those that are building organizations that treat GTM as an evolving systematic process, executed by many hands, that transcends functional disciplines. With the proliferation of generative AI models, every week #### Building layered GTM systems Not everyone is a systems thinker, and these are the orgs we have. So this is practical advice on how to advocate for the right work, to help align systems thinkers and non-systems thinkers alike, to better outcomes. I call it building a layered GTM system, and it works by creating a mental model for modes of work that teams can use to align on work that happens on different time horizons and across teams. ### Spark I've been thinking about this idea in many forms for a long time now, it's the foundation of the metaphor for [[Greenhaus]]. This feels like the seed of a better way to articulate it. ### Tensions or Unknowns ### Next Evolution ### ChangeLog - [[2025-04-16-Wednesday]] - Captured the esssential idea, stream of thought. Need to come back and structure.