This is the stage in the lifecycle when the agency is maturing, and it's ready to take the steps to become independent from its founders.

In this stage, you're putting in place a full leadership team and management structure, and you're developing a clearer culture and solid processes.

You've probably reached 30(ish) people.

Toolkit

Problem scouting

In the earlier stages of the agency lifecycle you pretty much have to deal with problems as they come up, but from the Smarten-up phase onwards you have to get ahead of things more.

Agency Playbook

Agency Evolution — Introduction

A healthy agency needs a process to enable it to evolve and adapt.

Agency Playbook

The Smarten-up stage: overview

The agency is ready to take the steps to become independent from its founders, with a full leadership team and management structure, a clearer culture and solid processes.

Agency Playbook

Agency mission: Finish

Evaluate the learning from the experiments, implement the outcome of your mission and document it.

Agency Playbook

Agency mission: Experiment

Try out your idea, and find ways to improve it.

Agency Playbook

Agency mission: Discuss

Keep everyone informed about how your mission is evolving, what you plan to do for an experiment, and to be able to pick people's brains for things that could help you.

Agency Playbook

Agency mission: consult

Gather together the people and knowledge you need for the mission.

Agency Playbook

Agency mission: Break it down

Don't try to work on something too big in one go. It's much harder and slower to make change happen that way.

Agency Playbook

Agency mission: Analyse

Start by researching and thinking.

Agency Playbook

Agency missions — guidebook

A process for enabling everyone in the agency to lead on a continuous agency improvement idea, in a productive way.

Toolkit

Journey mapping

The idea is to draw out the journey the target audience has with your agency, from beginning to end. This could be for prospects, clients, recruitment candidates, staff, freelancers, and so on.

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and get tailor-made support

Two of the senior Convivio team take on a limited number of board roles.

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Smarten-Up

Problem scouting

Agency Evolution — Introduction

The Smarten-up stage: overview

Agency mission: Finish

Agency mission: Experiment

Agency mission: Discuss

Agency mission: consult

Agency mission: Break it down

Agency mission: Analyse

Agency missions — guidebook

Journey mapping

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