Healthy entrepreneurial agencies are flexible and fast-moving. Rules, admin and controls are lightweight.

But as a business grows the temptation is to centralise, control and wrap things up in bureaucracy.

A smart founder, supported by a wise board, takes time to regularly prune this back to stay nimble. Liberating the teams, and liberating the founder.

Objective

In this session the board will explore how the agency can further distribute leadership, decision-making and accountability, with the aim of:

  • Freeing up the time and energy of the founder(s) and senior team
  • De-centralising for increased flexibility and speed
  • Reducing the bureaucratic burden
  • Enabling team members to grow and lead

All with the ultimate objective of keeping the agency fluid and fast.

Pre-reading

Agencies start out totally reliant on the knowledge, skills, and pure energy of their founders.

But as they grow — and if they are to grow calmly and healthily — they need to move past this stage to become a business that can stand on its own.

This means the agency needs to run well without needing a parental figure to make decisions, tell everyone what to do, answer questions, and make sure things get done.

Otherwise, it risks slowing to a crawl while everyone waits for instructions and decisions as the agency scales past the founder's capacity. This will lead to losing the best talent, and frustrating clients. At worst, it can burn out the founder and the agency can flatline.

So, a vital part of the role of an agency advisory board is to be the wise heads that can help founders see the issues and learn to let go of things they've come to feel they need to grip tightly to stop everything fall apart.