Strategy

One of the key reasons agencies end up stagnating during their lifetimes is that there is a lack of clarity and cohesion around a unified strategy.

Therefore, helping the founders think at this high altitude about the ambitions and focus for the agency is one of the highest value activities the advisory board can do.

Objective

To support the CEO in defining, refining and challenging the strategy for the agency.

Pre-reading

Every agency has a strategy — a set of beliefs about how to proceed with the work, guiding decisions and actions.

The challenge is that few agencies have only ONE strategy. A unifying set of beliefs turned into a plan.

It's quite typical to find different silos in the agency where different strategies are in play. And in really chaotic agencies, each individual could be pursuing their own strategy.

So when a founder says "Yeah we haven't really got a strategy at the moment", what they actually mean is their are many and various strategies dreamt up by people on the fly and nobody is joining them up.

A key role of the board is to support the founder in recognising the roots that will grow into the weeds of chaos, and control them. Focusing the agency's energies instead on nurturing the beautiful plants you really want to grow.

That requires conscious choices, and lots of communication.

At a basic level, having a strategy requires two levels of choices: