An Adaptable Approach to Agency Leadership
by Peter Gandy, Reason
Running an agency is hard. Balancing the demands of changing client expectations, commercial viability, and developing your talent is challenging. Growth periods are often followed by periods of consolidation, or even decline, as the agency learns to organise and plan ahead for the unexpected.
This dynamic environment, mixed with the current economic uncertainty and a new competitive threat from the major consultancies, demands an adaptable approach to agency leadership.
Agencies are often started by frustrated practitioners. Typically, people out contracting at major businesses and disillusioned by the perceived bureaucracy, introspection and slowness that can often be experienced working inside major brands. As entrepreneurs, they know there is a better way, they have the drive and energy to change things, and they start an agency—predominantly off the back of their credibility, reputation and relationships established during their contracting gigs.
You cannot scale out of chaos
During the early days, Founders can survive on passion, practitioner expertise and hard work, with their talent, energy and drive dragging success into the business. Culture and communication are easy when the whole business fits around a lunch table, with easy access to Founders and a strong sense of pioneering adventure. But, as success and thus scale arrive, it quickly becomes apparent that you cannot scale out of chaos. Rigor, process and structure is needed; the very things that are the antithesis of what brought success in the beginning. Employees need career development, increasing project sizes need effective delivery management, and newly won clients need structured account management.
Establishing the appropriate structure and key hires to free Founders up to work ‘on’ the business, and not ‘in’ it, requires an ability to ‘let go’ to a strong and empowered structure below the leadership team. Therefore, as an agency grows, its leaders need to shift culture and mindset from ‘start-up’ to ‘scale-up’. It is the introduction of rigor that enables the agency to kick-on again to the next milestone and leadership to maintain control of the business as they start to ‘let-go’.
Moving from push to pull
MIT’s Douglas A. Ready asserts that sustainable value can come from Collective Ambition - where leadership and employees collaborate to shape direction. So as Founders let go, it’s vital that employees are empowered and have a voice to influence the business. During the transition into scale-up, leaders should seek to complement the ‘push’ mode (tell, direct, delegate) used during the start-up phase, with a ‘pull’ approach (empower, collaborate, coach). Yet as the business scales, Founders start to become more removed from the day-to-day, and the more senior someone is, the more the tendency to tell people, “here’s the answer”, making it hard for employees to contribute, often resulting in the team keeping their thoughts to themselves.
So how do agencies get to the truth and make good decisions, when people aren’t speaking up? Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, suggests introducing ideas by saying “I believe this, for this reason. What do you believe?” When leaders start by listening rather than telling, they transition from directing to coaching and unlock greater value from their teams. This can be extended by leadership making themselves more accessible to the team, via the creation of forums for feedback such as breakfast meetings, 1:1s, lunches and so on.
Mapping capability against opportunity
As the business accelerates and market understanding increases, the agency’s proposition often pivots to meet demand, for example, introducing a strategy capability to inform larger projects, entering new markets or creating product IP. Yet, rarely do Founders view themselves through that same lens. Leaders must regularly ask themselves whether they are still relevant to where the business is going. After all, the skills required to start a business differ significantly from those required to run it at scale, which is why VC’s replace ~30% of their start-up Founders with “professional” managers at key stages of growth.
Ron Ashkenas, co-author of HBR Leaders Handbook, suggests that leadership must continually review leadership skills and capability against the needs of where the business is. “Ask: are we the right people, with the right skills and doing the right jobs to take the agency to the next level? Do our current roles align with the most pressing business opportunities. If not, what shifts do we need to take?”
This is difficult and is often put aside for later. On one hand there is huge scope for Founders to learn and grow as individuals, yet on the other it can lead to tough conversations around whether it is time to move on. But surely, it is better to act and be in control of that decision, rather than have it forced on you through inaction and the resultant detrimental impact to the business?
Agency leaders face many challenges, but with increasing competition from the consultancies and clients finally ready to embrace the digital opportunity, it is clear that we must adapt our approach to remain relevant; and ensure that our businesses are ready to meet the huge opportunity ahead.
Peter Gandy, Reason