How can you allot more time to strategy and larger picture items when you're leading a smaller PMM team (less than 3 total ppl)?

Protect your calendar! Set aside Do Not Disturb (DND) time for strategic thinking and honor that time. Try to establish a "no meeting" day at your business where you have dedicated space to GSD and think strategically. Set the expectation that if you accept a meeting, there must be a clear agenda along with expected outcomes for your attendance. That helps to narrow down how to spend time so you can prioritize the most valuable/impactful sessions.

I also run a lot so that helps to create space for deep thought/strategic work. Also where my best creative thoughts come from!

This is a challenge at all size organizations, but certainly hard on small PMM teams. Depending on the larger picture items you are talking about, you may need a lot of time or maybe it requires less. Regardless, this type of work requires focus. Here are some considerations I've found useful:

1.  Delegate - I would first take a hard look at what you are delegating. Is there anyone else that can take on that project you've working on? This is definitely something I had to check in with myself on regularly when I first started managing people. Context switching all the time can be hard so even offloading a small project could help make time and headspace for other things. 
2.  Prioritize - If these strategic initiatives are important for the business, then your manager will probably want you to prioritize them. Consider if there are trade-offs the team could make, while still hitting goals. Work with your manager to make sure you understand priorities clearly and discuss if it makes sense to make some shifts.
3.  Set a timeline - Once you chat with your manager, propose a timeline for the strategic project, and stick to it. 
4.  Organize your time - Consider being more strict and structured with how you spend your time. Here are some ideas, but it really depends on your as an individual. 

•  Time blocks - this is basic, but if you don't already do this, try blocking 2-3 times a week when people can't schedule meetings and decide on one that can be used for more strategic work. 
•  Slack is a time suck - You can create rules of engagement or yourself and let your team know. Maybe you set yourself as away or update your slack status to "Focused work" when you won't be responding. I've seen colleagues do this and always respect it. 
•  Organize your days by focus - If you want to take your calendar to the next level, try organizing your activities and focus areas by day. Monday could be for team meetings and stakeholder check-ins, Tuesday for team 1:1s, Wednesday for strategic planning etc. It won't work out perfectly every week, but you try and organize your meetings that way and then block time when you do your best work for 1-2 hours

I really appreciate this question and to be candid, it's a challenge that scales up and down, whether your moving from an IC to having your first direct report all the way up to when you run a department and have several product marketers reporting to you. My best piece of advice here is to be highly structured in how you approach your work phases + set time aside for each phase of your work and to be absolutely ruthless about your calendar. 

This is such a good question. I get it. Everything is moving fast. There just isn’t enough time to discuss strategy. But if you don’t discuss strategy, you run the risk of not doing the right thing. Worse - you may be disconnected from the company and leadership priorities - which often change in a fast growth environment

Here are some helpful tips that can work in the situation you have described

1. Don’t think of strategy and execution as anything different. Good execution isn’t about working the plan, but is really about working the plan, monitoring the work, reporting on the work and iterating on the work. Think of the monitoring, reporting and iterating as just part of “being in the weeds”. Coach your team to constantly monitor, report on and continue to improve their work. e.g. after every launch, ask them to capture the metrics that made that launch successful (engagement, adoption etc.), report on them in every forum and plan for how to improve them for subsequent launches. 90% of “topics that need to be discussed and brought up with leadership” can be covered by this helpful framework. Most strategy and larger picture items come out of such discussions
2. Link your work to stated business goals - Think of the big business challenges your business is trying to tackle. Is it pipeline, win rates, expansions, NARR etc. ? Now try and connect the PMM work to those business goals ? Are your helping improve win rates with better enablement ? Are you helping drive new feature adoption with launches ? Are you helping convince a new audience with a new value prop ? If you can report on the ‘in the weeds” PMM work by linking it to the stated business goals (or even unstated business challenges), you are already laying the ground for a strategic discussion with your leadership
3. Move your time horizons, gradually - If you are too bogged down in project based execution (e.g. next big launch, campaign or field event) , then start moving your reporting and thinking frontiers a bit longer. Maybe start on quarterly planning and reporting. Focus not just on what went well, but what could be done better. Report on customer trends and buying behavior - everyone (sales, product, marketing) can benefit from that. All of this can help start the right dialogue on strategy. Once you have that cadence going, maybe take those horizons further - half yearly or annually. See if you can be part of the annual strategic planning process. 

Getting out of weeds isn't easy, but hopefully these tips can help. And remember, even in the most tactical of discussions, it is perfectly ok to ask take 5 mins and ask "What problem are we solving ?" and "What does success look like? You will help the entire group zoom out and work on the stuff that really matters

While leading a smaller team means you're often still in the weeds, it also means you're closer to the customer and metrics. That's a huge advantage to influencing the strategy! Here are a few suggestions:

• Connect with leadership and understand when strategy discussions or milestones are taking place. This could be annual or quarterly planning and carve out time to be an active contributor to those discussions. 
• Take time to reflect on what you've learned. Develop larger themes and challenges across your product area that you want to surface. Review campaign metrics, adoption trends, and customer feedback that best support these themes.
• Carve out time to refresh foundational work regularly (e.g. refreshing competitive analyses or ideal customer profiles). It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day work, but this foundational work can help influence and shape strategy conversations. 

The only way to do this is by closely collaborating with your direct leadership and negotiating priorities with them. 

Their priorities will always be based on their KPIs and/or personal goals for their profession and from their perspective for the company. You need to collaborate and coordinate with them to ensure that you're satisfying their expectations while also getting their buy-in for your bigger ideas. 

Good luck!