Agency leadership is fundamentally different now
… and it keeps on changing.
World events are colliding with economic and cultural changes, making it harder to run an agency than ever before. There are constant pressures on agency leaders to respond and adapt.
Agencies are finding …
- It's harder to attract and retain top talent
- It's harder to develop a smart strategy and make it stick
- It's harder to forecast and plan
- It's harder to work proactively on the business
- It’s harder to actually enjoy owning a business!
Many agencies are struggling.
The pace of adapting is pushing businesses to the edge. Agency teams are fracturing. Leaders are burning out. Agencies are folding.
50% of agencies have less than three months of visibility into their revenue forecast.
SoDA Report on the Global Agency Landscape 2022, published February 2022.
The number of UK registered company insolvencies in April 2022 was higher than pre-pandemic levels, and more than double the number registered in the same month in the previous year.
GOV.UK Monthly Insolvency Statistics April 2022
Wage growth is significantly above the long-running average for advanced economies, a sign of wage pressures building for SMEs.
Xero Small Business Insights Small Business Wage Trends: Country and Industry Insights Research Note, March 2022
50% of agencies say the challenge of finding and/or keeping talent has negatively impacted growth this year.
SoDA Report on the Global Agency Landscape 2022, published February 2022.
But that means the opportunity is bigger now than ever before.
In turbulent times, clients need agencies to be their trusted advisers, helping them sense and adapt. Great agencies are headed for a golden age.
Now is the time to make your good agency great.
We re-invent Fusion every 2–3 years. If we'd kept doing same-same from the outset, we’d have gone out of business. … Systematise as much as possible, and then always be thinking how to tune the system to get rid of low-value busy work, so people are focused on value-creation.
Damien Mair, CEO and co-founder, Fusion, founded 1995.
You can fall in love with leading your agency again.
A healthy, sustainable agency that you love to own.
An agency that runs without depending on you.
With Convivio you’ll have:
An advisory board
Now: alone at the top; unclear about your goals; always reactive; fighting fires; strategy that’s not being implemented; fuzzy positioning; stressed; at risk of burning out; confused
With Convivio: wider perspective; long-term thinking; clarify your strategy, and ways to implement; build momentum; healthy rhythms for the business; focusing your energies in the right direction
A framework for your business
Now: people pulling in different directions; working in the business, not on the business; little growth in either the agency or client projects; always working reactively; running to stand still
The Convivio Way: focusing energy; liberating leadership; aligning action; maintaining momentum; ensuring evolution
Tools to support you
Now: messy spreadsheets; lack of visibility; limited runway; incomplete reviews and analysis
The Convivio Tools: Pyramid of Purpose; Agency Radar; Agency Playbook; Finance Dashboard; Risk Radar. Implement them to get clarity and focus
Power up your work on your agency, today
We call it the virtual advisory board because it's like instant access to wise advice.
Find out more about our different levels of support:
- Best for agencies up to 10 people
- Best for agencies of 10–30 people
- Best for agencies of 30–75 people (or those with big plans)
We’ve led agencies large and small since 1997.
Steve Parks was named as one of the most inspiring agency leaders by the Benchpress survey of 2000 agencies.
The Agency Positioning briefing crystallised my thinking about our proposition, what we are here for and reminded me to keep things simple. It helped me articulate our agency's specialism and for the team understand the value of their skills and roles.
David Mann, Managing Director, dxw
I’ve been using Pulse for a few years now and it’s completely transformed how I forecast and monitor our financial performance. The dashboard helps me maintain a sustainable relationship between our profit, our people, and our reinvestment in the business. I can't imagine doing my job without it.
Andy Hayes, Managing Director, Quietroom