Once a year the owners agree a set of guidelines to provide to the CEO about their expectations and wishes for the business.

Usually this is developed at the Agency Owners Retreat, through a day of workshops (even if you're a sole founder!) and then summarised in a short document. The CEO (even is that's also you!) can then use it as a guide for running the business.

Essentially, it means you can go away once a year to do some deep thinking about the agency and its future — and then have an easy reminder of that available when you're in the heat of the moment running the business.

At the bottom of this article you'll find a link to a template owners mandate on Google Docs that you can copy/download(docx/PDF) and use in your agency.

The mandate contains these sections: