A healthy agency is continuously transforming — trying out new things and embedding what works.

That's because the primary role of agencies is to be shock absorbers for their clients — sensing the new and adapting to it ahead of anyone else. But it's also because the agency business model demands continuously improving ways of working in order to remain competitive while also sustaining margins.

At a smaller size (fewer than 10 people) these transformations happen in an ad hoc way, often driven by the personality and energy of the founder. But, as the agency grows, that can lead to chaos rather than transformation.

Within that chaos it tends to be the loudest voices, least busy people and trendy things that get the attention. Those don't necessarily provide the greatest value for the business in the transformation they drive.

Therefore, by the time the agency starts to grow past 10 people it becomes increasingly vital to have a structure to guide and support (and constrain appropriately) this transformation work.

And once you start to pass 30 heads it becomes important to deepen this process and provide more structure.

Everybody needs to understand what needs learning or doing in the business, have a chance to raise ideas, see clearly how they can contribute, and know the way they should approach those contributions.

This all needs to be done with a supporting structure that works in an agency culture.

We call this Agency Evolution.

The cycle of agency evolution