First, can you do me a favor by completing the Agency AI Survey I’m conducting? It takes just 5 minutes and you can opt in for the results to see how you stack up to your peers.
Now let’s talk about assumptions. Specifically, the assumptions we often make about our employees.
I see it time and again where owners think they know what their team members want and build plans around that — only to discover their assumption was wrong.
Let me dive into that more a little later in this week’s newsletter, but first let’s look at the latest content, including the SAGA Signals AI briefing and Jen’s usual roundup of useful resources.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Latest from SAGA
CHEAPER ISN’T THE ANSWER. Agencies are getting pressed from all sides. The winners will be the ones using AI to create value that didn’t exist before. In this week’s SAGA Signals AI Brief, I wrote about why cost-cutting alone is the wrong move and what separates the agencies that will thrive from the ones that will just get cheaper.
YOUR TEAM WON’T DO WHAT YOU WON’T LET THEM OWN. Accountability without authority is just blame. If you keep asking why your team isn’t stepping up, the answer might be that you never allow them to do so. In the latest Agency Leadership Podcast, Gini and I dig into five words every agency owner needs to actually understand — leadership, management, accountability, responsibility, and authority — and why not knowing and applying them is making your job harder than it needs to be.
Jen’s Weekly Roundup
This week’s recurring theme seems to be that cutting edge technology is fine to use, but the judgment, relationships, and credibility that make agencies worth hiring are still entirely human. You’re using AI, but are you using it in ways that strengthen the things that clients actually pay you for?
WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK:
AI IS A TOOL, NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR JUDGMENT — Sharon Toerek makes the case for how not to use AI for agency legal issues, a reminder that some problems require a human who knows your specific situation. From Spin Sucks, the podcast AI Runs the System. You Run the Strategy. explains the failure isn’t in using AI too much — it’s using it in place of judgment and accountability. PR Daily adds useful advice with 4 Reasons Your Writing Accidentally Sounds AI-Generated, a practical read for any agency using these tools in client-facing work. And For Immediate Release goes Inside AI’s Human Raw Material Supply Chain, the kind of question agencies should be considering even if they don’t have all the answers yet.
LOOKING BACK TO MOVE FORWARD — RSW/US explains why your agency should conduct a post-win review. Most agencies do post-mortems on losses. Almost none do them on wins, which means they’re missing the feedback loop that could tell them what to replicate. Also from RSW/US, an Under the Hood interview with Craig Johnson of Matchstic, worth watching as an example of how a well-run independent agency thinks about its own identity and positioning.
CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS THAT LAST — Why Clients Come, Stay, and Leave from 2Bobs is a useful reset for any agency owner who’s been spending more time on new business than on understanding why existing clients are sticking around or quietly planning to leave.
GROWTH PATHS AND HAVING OPTIONS — The Digital Agency Growth Podcast features Mandi Ellefson in Offer Innovation, Agency Growth Stages, and Working Smarter, a conversation worth your time if you’re trying to figure out whether your current service model is still the right one. The Innovative Agency rounds this out with Designing Experiences That Stick with Derek Gwaltney, a reminder that operations and experience design are part of growth, not separate from it.
THE BOTTOM LINE — Agency owners keep asking whether AI is a threat or an opportunity. This week’s content tell us the agencies that will be fine are the ones where AI handles the system and humans handle the judgment.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Don’t assume you know what employees want
I could assume you’re here because you want to read about the topic I teased earlier. But maybe you simply kept scrolling when you reached the end of Jen’s weekly roundup.
(If you listen to the Agency Leadership Podcast I do with Gini Dietrich, I’m sure you’re used to these pained segues by now!)
The truth is that I don’t really know why you’re still reading. And you probably make the same mistake with your team members from time to time.
We might assume that a key employee would be happy to take over the business when we decide to hang things up.
We might assume that a team member will be motivated by a financial incentive for hitting KPIs.
We might assume that a star performer would be happy to help drive business development conversations.
But the truth is that our employees don’t always think and act like we do. Heck, they don’t even think and act like each other. Each one is unique.
And that’s one of the great things about successful agencies. They tend to bring together a diverse set of personalities and experiences to create great results for clients.
As we make our plans for growing and evolving our businesses, though, we need to keep this uniqueness in mind. We need to ask questions and have meaningful conversations with our team members to figure out whether what we think they want is what they actually want.
It’s better to find out that a longtime employee has no interest in entrepreneurship before you’re almost ready to retire.
It’s better to learn that a team member is more excited about extra time off or a flexible schedule rather than a formulaic annual bonus.
It’s better to discover that your star performer actually hates the idea of being involved in selling new business.
You will never get the most for your business if you operate from assumptions about what your team wants. Worse, you might actually end up creating needless setbacks.
So have more real conversations with your team. Create an atmosphere in which they can be open and honest with you. Set assumptions aside and find out how you can work best together.
There’s a reason for the saying about the word “assume.” Let it be something you can chuckle about rather than something you experience firsthand.
P.S. Since you made it this far, can you complete the Agency AI survey if you haven’t done so already?
