Facing friction
You’ve hit the limit of brute force growth. The business has traction with clients but the day-to-day is chaos without leaders stepping up. And as you hire more people, you’re building a bigger ship that becomes ever harder to steer.
Agency leaders need empowerment. Your leadership layer exists, but without clear expectations, defined responsibilities, or genuine authority. It feels like the team just managing tasks, rather than owning outcomes.
Accountability is low. Leaders don't understand how their work impacts the business or KPIs. Feedback loops and 360 Reviews don't exist, and accountability is low for such a talented team.
Decision-making is bottlenecked. The agency has grown past the point where everyone can be in every conversation. Now decision-making is glacial with you or your core leaders feeling like the bottlenecks.
Goals are missing their mark. You’ve shared where you want to take the business but the leadership team isn’t rowing towards it. Progress on internal initiatives is inconsistent and even completed ones don’t move the needle.
The business is not resilient (and sellable). You’re not going to do this forever. Eventually, you’ll want to sell the business, and buyers are going to want a business that can operate profitably and sustainably without the owner.
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Turn friction into traction
Become the go-to
Build business practices that make you the go-to agency for your specialty.
On the revenue side (Revenue), we ensure the agency has a sound foundation in terms of an Ideal Customer Profile, business operations, and project-level profitability. From here, I work with your leadership team to identify new revenue sources for your target customers and to develop program management tactics for growing those relationships.
On the cost side (COS), it’s common for agencies to become top-heavy at this stage: long-tenured employees have been promoted and complex business challenges have necessitated senior hires. We’ll evaluate the current team composition and establish a growth plan that protects the agency’s profit margins as it continues to grow.
Accountable teams
Cultivate the leadership team that will take the agency to the next level.
A great agency is built with leaders who execute the vision, mentor team members, win business, and get client projects over the finish line. Working with executives and leaders directly, I design systems that clarify expectations for all sides and create mechanisms for ownership, feedback, and accountability.
Outside the leadership group, it’s important that other team members understand how they can grow at the agency, either in terms of their role or in skills development. We’ll ensure that roles & responsibilities at the organization are clear, and I’ll work with managers to translate responsibilities into a framework for career development that cultivates high performing team members (Culture Creators).
Aligned leaders
Ironically, many agencies excel at managing their client programs but struggle with their own internal initiatives and projects. This can manifest in a couple of ways across strategy and execution:
Lack of company goals. The day-to-day work is getting done, but internal work that can mature the agency isn’t well defined.
Goals that miss the mark. Internal work is happening, but when it wraps up, it doesn’t move the needle.
Lack of execution. Internal work stalls out before a goal can be met. Team members are stretched thin and wide across many initiatives.
For all intents and purposes, I drop in to your leadership team as a temporary, external program manager. Once I’ve observed how internal work happens at the agency, I address problematic communications and processes. Then I manage key initiatives and meetings until the team can take the reigns back.