Last week I told you that there are five words you need to truly understand to operate your agency effectively. They are: leadership, management, accountability, responsibility, and authority.
(If you haven’t read part 1, go ahead and take a moment to do so before continuing.)
A little later in this week’s newsletter I’ll round out the list by discussing accountability, responsibility, and authority to help you understand why they matter and how that knowledge will produce better results for your agency.
But first let’s take a look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Weekly Roundup
Below are some articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos that we came across during the past week or so that provide useful perspective and information for PR and marketing agency owners. While we don’t necessarily endorse all of the views expressed in these links, we think they are worth your time.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Latest from SAGA
- Are you ghosting your own agency? (Agency Leadership Podcast)
Articles & Blog Posts
- From burnout to AI: 7 trends defining agency talent in 2025 (Sakas and Company)
- Pricing Data Comes Best from Conversations (Punctuation)
- There are two kinds of failure: which one are you choosing? (Anchor Advisors)
- 6 Ways to Scale Trust with the PESO Model (Spin Sucks)
Podcast Episodes
- Carl Smith on The Future of Agencies (The Digital Agency Growth Podcast)
- How to Manage Your Brand on the Dead Internet (Spin Sucks)
- Are Webinars Your Agency’s Secret Advantage? with Logan Lyles (The Innovative Agency)
- Understanding Earnouts (2Bobs)
- Optimizing Annual Planning for Agency Growth, with Kristen Kelly (The Agency Profit Podcast)
- Is It Time to Stop Trying to “Go Viral”? (For Immediate Release)
Video
- Matt Cyr on Just Ask Jody Live (The Sutter Company)
AI in focus
- How the New Era of AI Search Impacts PR Pros (Solo PR Pro)
- Kirstin Russ, Practical Edge AI – AI Adoption for Agencies: From Internal Automation to Sellable Services (Agency Bytes)
5 words critical to agency management success (part 2)
Last week I explored Leadership and Management to explain the difference and how they both work together to help you build the firm that you want to own.
Now we will move on to the remaining words on my “5 critical words” list for agency success: accountability, responsibility, and authority.
Accountability
Novice managers demand accountability from their direct reports, while effective managers understand that accountability is a two-way street.
We owe it to those who work for us to hold ourselves accountable, just as we seek to do with them.
So having a culture of accountability starts in the mirror. We need to make sure that our actions and words are linked. We need to honor our commitments. And we need to admit when we have fallen short and try to figure out how to improve next time.
At the same time, we need to understand what accountability means, especially in terms of manager-subordinate relations.
Sometimes when I talk with an agency owner who is concerned with accountability of team members, they speak more in parental terms where they suggest punishment or penalties for falling short or missing deadlines.
That’s the wrong way to think about it.
Yes, we want our team members to be accountable to us, but when they don’t meet the goals we set we need to start by understanding why.
Certainly it can be a failing on that individual’s part, but often there are other factors at play: contributions (or lack thereof) from other team members, action (or inaction) by clients, or other external dynamics.
Accountability requires that we identify root causes and seek to address them.
One of the messages I have always had for employees is that I accept that mistakes will be made, but I ask that we not repeat the same mistakes in the same way twice.
We also want to view accountability as not just between an employee and their manager but also as something that should reflect between peers. If employees are accountable to each other, there will be more success than if they only feel the need to be accountable to their individual manager.
One final thought on accountability. If you have an employee for which you consistently feel that accountability is a problem, it may be time to move on from them.
However, if you have a team-wide issue with accountability, you need to look in that mirror and ask what you need to do to change since that is the common denominator. You’re either hiring the wrong people or you aren’t managing as effectively as you could.
Responsibility
A close cousin of accountability is responsibility.
In order to truly hold someone accountable for something, they need to have responsibility for it.
It is not uncommon for me to see a situation where an owner complains about accountability, only to discover that the problem was that the team member didn’t know that they were responsible for something.
Sometimes this is because the owner or manager simply assumes that an employee knows what is expected.
That’s always dangerous. Even if you think you are stating the obvious, it can often be helpful to be explicit about your expectations.
More important, you need to designate a single person as responsible for key activities.
If I ask a manager who is responsible for a certain project and they give me more than one name, then I stop them immediately.
You can’t have co-owners of anything.
One person needs to hold ultimate responsibility for the completion (and success or failure) of any business endeavor.
That doesn’t mean that others can’t play significant roles, but if you think two people are in charge of something then I can pretty much guarantee you that nobody is.
That lack of clarity leads to an inordinate number of failures. It’s too easy for one co-owner to assume that the other has things covered. Even with the best of communication and intent, things will fall through the cracks.
So be sure that you are communicating your expectations clearly and assigning responsibility without ambiguity.
Authority
Now we will wrap up with one of the toughest words, especially for small agency owners: authority.
In any small business, there is a tendency for the owner to need or want to be involved in every little detail.
As agency leaders who often have our names woven into the brand, we want to control everything that might impact our reputation — and often we think that is everything we do.
But you cannot assign responsibility and expect accountability without sharing the appropriate amount of authority.
Responsibility without authority is a recipe for failure.
So we need to learn how and when to let go.
We need to figure out how to empower even relatively junior and inexperienced team members with enough authority to get the job done and feel some level of control over the outcome of their part of the project.
Ceding authority is a good way to avoid becoming a micromanager.
When done right, sharing your authority also becomes very liberating. Once you realize you don’t need to approve every decision, edit every piece of content, and participate in all calls and meetings, you free yourself up to work on higher-value (and often more interesting) things.
Conclusion
If you want to see your agency advance to the next level — regardless of where you are today — then you need to understand these 5 critical words: leadership, management, accountability, responsibility, and authority.
Once you do, you will improve how your business operates, the outcomes you achieve, and ultimately the personal satisfaction you get from being an agency owner.
