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Most agency owners think they’re doing their team a favor when they quietly absorb the painful, tedious, or time-consuming work. They’re likely not. In this episode, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich look at the sacrifices owners make on behalf of their teams and why those sacrifices often create more problems than they solve.
This isn’t about the occasional tactical sacrifice, it’s about the systemic ones: the conscious decisions to absorb entire categories of work because you’ve decided your team would find them too difficult, too unpleasant, or too much of a burden. Gini admits she’s guilty of it herself, sharing that a new COO sat her down with a list of tasks she’d been handling and told her she shouldn’t be doing any of them. The jobs weren’t glamorous, but they weren’t the owner’s job either.
Chip extends this into two areas where owner sacrifice tends to do the most damage: new business development, where owners keep proposals and pitches entirely to themselves thinking they’re protecting team time, and org chart design, where flat structures are usually not a deliberate choice but the result of owners absorbing management responsibilities no one else wanted. Both patterns block team growth and overload the owner at the same time.
Gini describes a practice she returns to every quarter, sorting her task list into three buckets — things only she can do, things she enjoys but probably doesn’t need to do, and things she absolutely should not be doing. The third list gets delegated immediately. Chip puts it like this: for everything on your plate, ask yourself why you are the one doing it. If there isn’t a good answer, stop doing it.
Key takeaways
- Chip Griffin: “The number of sacrifices that many owners make is extreme and poorly thought out. They solve problems for today, but create problems for the future.”
- Gini Dietrich: “On a new business front, if you bring team members in, even though you might feel guilty about it not being non-billable work, they have the ability to become engaged with the prospect early on, understand the work that you’re doing, and give a different perspective.”
- Chip Griffin: “If most people are reporting into the owner, it’s usually because either they’re a control freak or because they feel like they don’t want to burden people with management.”
- Gini Dietrich: “I sit down with my task list and I split it into three groups. Things that are on my list that only I can do. Things that are on my list that I enjoy doing, but I probably don’t need to do. And things that are on my list that I absolutely should not be doing. The last list needs to be delegated immediately.”
Related
- The one hand rule: you probably have too many direct reports
- Letting go as an agency owner
- Preparing for your agency’s group presentations and pitches
The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And Gini, I, you know, I think I need to make some sacrifices for this show. I think that,
Gini Dietrich: oh, goodie,
Chip Griffin: that I need to make my life more painful so that yours is better.
Gini Dietrich: Oh, even better. Yes.
Okay, great. I have a whole list of things you can do.
Chip Griffin: I, I have no doubt. A few of them might even relate to the show, right?
Gini Dietrich: Probably not. Like laundry, laundry’s on the list, meal planning’s on the list, all sorts of things.
Chip Griffin: Oh, meal planning.
Gini Dietrich: Oh, sure. Laundry. Yeah.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, that. Good luck with that. In any case, before I dig any kind of a hole for myself here, beyond what I already have, the real topic is the sacrifices that owners make for their businesses for reasons that aren’t always good and don’t make a lot of sense if you’re building an actual business that you want to own.
Gini Dietrich: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Chip Griffin: We’ve all look, we’ve all done it. We’ve all done it. But I think we do need to make a mindset shift. It’s so hard and we need to, we need to stop saying things like, I don’t wanna ask my team to do this, so I’m gonna do it myself. Or my team, they would struggle with this, so I’ll just handle it. Or the worst one, and the one that’s most common is, I need to make sure I’m paying my team fairly. I don’t really have enough, so I’m, I’m gonna just, you know, underpay myself.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: The number of sacrifices that many owners make is extreme and poorly thought out.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: They solve problems for today, but create problems for the future.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I will even say like I am super, super guilty of that. Not the money one, I’ve learned that lesson and I pay myself a living wage, but the rest of it I’m very guilty of. And I spend most of my weekends getting caught up on work.
And just today, today we’re recording. It’s a Monday. I sat down at my desk and I’m like, I’m already exhausted. Like just brain capacity wise. That’s not good. If I’m starting Monday off like that, it’s not good. So I think it’s, it’s a lesson I continue to have to learn. And sometimes we do podcast episodes so that I can hear myself give advice that I need to take.
And this is one of them.
Chip Griffin: Do you, do you listen to yourself afterwards?
Gini Dietrich: Sometimes.
Chip Griffin: I listen to every episode. It’s like a, it’s like a, it’s like a, a ballplayer don’t watching game tapes. Oh, I do.
Gini Dietrich: No you don’t. You do? You do not. Do you really?
Chip Griffin: I absolutely do. I watch every single episode.
Gini Dietrich: For real?
Chip Griffin: A hundred percent for real.
Gini Dietrich: I did not know you did that.
Chip Griffin: I do. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s like, it really is like game tape to me. So I, I always want to try to figure out what I can do, you know, better or different. Plus, honestly, I do love the sound of my own voice. I, I know that that makes me sound like an egomaniac, but I actually, I do actually enjoy it.
I find my voice, my own voice soothing.
Gini Dietrich: I don’t enjoy that. So.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. But anyway, before we really just jump off the rails here, I, I mean, I do think that it is, it is a valuable thing for owners to sit down and look at, you know, what are the sacrifices that you’re making and why are you making it? There are some sacrifices that we all need to make at some point in our business.
I’m not saying that you should never make a sacrifice on behalf of your business, but you need to understand why you’re doing it and make sure that it really is a rational decision. And not because you’re, you’re putting off a more difficult conversation or decision that you might need to make, or because you are more worried about other people than yourself.
You really do need to be a bit selfish as an owner. You are taking on a lot of risk and stress and all of that. And if you’re not doing it for your own benefit, why? Sure. You can go be miserable somewhere else and probably get paid more to do it.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, two things for me. It’s because I…
I am so busy and I spend most of my days in meetings. And so because I spend most of my days in meetings, I like, I use, I have a running log of things that need to get done, and sometimes I don’t get to that running log in time to delegate it to somebody. So it just needs to get done.
And that, that for me is the cycle that’s hard for me to break because I’m not, I’m just not gonna say to somebody at six o’clock on a Friday night, Hey, I need this by Monday, I’m just not gonna do that. Sure. I would rather. Right. So for me, the, I have to figure out a different way of working so that I can properly delegate and give people enough time.
That’s, that’s the cycle for me. But you know, I work with lot, I have lots of friends who own agencies, I work with agency owners and I see the cycle is less that and more control and thinking that I’m the only one who can do this work, and when in fact that’s not true. Maybe you’re the only one who will do it a certain way, but you have to be able to delegate and you can’t grow a business if you don’t do those things effectively.
Chip Griffin: Right. And, and they are, I mean, these are definitely interrelated problems where you either you want the control because you feel like you can do it better, faster or whatever. But then there is also the, the sacrifice piece of it, which is you’re doing it because you… not so much because you think you could do it better than somebody else, but because you don’t want to burden them with that.
And in, in your case, you know, where you’re saying, I, I don’t want to give someone something at six o’clock on a Friday that I need for Monday morning. That, yes, that is making a sacrifice. But there are, as you say, there are reasons that, you know, you didn’t get to something soon enough in order to pass it along.
So I, I’m really more looking at the the systemic sacrifices that you’re making. Yep. Where you make just a conscious decision that this, this group of tasks, I’m not comfortable asking someone else to do. Not because I can necessarily do it better, but because it would be painful for them to undertake.
They would, they would not enjoy it. They would stress out about it. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna relieve them of that burden. That is not really your role. If it’s not work that’s appropriately sitting on your desk as an owner, if it’s, if it’s painful or difficult for someone, you need to figure out why.
Figure out if there’s something that can be changed or just figure out if it’s something that has, that they have to just suck it up and do. We all have that at various points. Yes. Nobody loves every aspect of their job.
Gini Dietrich: You have to sometimes suck it up.
Chip Griffin: And your job is not to make people feel like they’re living at a spa and enjoying every minute of employment. You’re going to have some things that just need to be done.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, for sure. So let’s talk about some examples, like, I’m trying to think of an example that, that would fit in that I wouldn’t want, wanna ask somebody else to do.
Chip Griffin: I mean, you know, there are, there are a lot of administrative tasks, right?
Particularly in a small agency where you’re like, well, you know, I, I don’t really want to ask so and so to do, ’cause this, this really isn’t their job. It’s not really your job either though. So, you know, you need to figure out what makes more sense. Is it more impactful to have Joe do this because he’s, you know, more junior, costs less, all of that kind of thing?
Or does it make more sense for you as the owner using time that is irreplaceable
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: To do. And nine times how to 10, it probably makes more sense to have Joe do it.
Gini Dietrich: For sure. Yeah. And I think giving them the opportunity to learn and, you know, even saying this sucks. This job sucks. I’m sorry to have to ask. We just need to get it done. Can you help me out? That usually goes a long way.
It’s funny you say that because I hired a chief operating officer about a year and a half ago, and within the first 90 days she came to me with a list of things she saw me doing and was like, you shouldn’t be doing these things.
And I was like, yeah, but there’re administrative and there isn’t anybody else. And she’s like, I’m the chief operating officer. I will figure it out for you. And she literally took them off my plate and I was like, oh. Okay. But it didn’t even occur to me because we don’t have an admin person. It didn’t occur to me to have to, to take those off of my plate.
She’s like, okay, but if I’m leading the operations team, the admin work comes to my team. And I was like, okay, but then you have to do it ’cause you don’t have an operations team yet. And she’s like, yes, but I’m cheaper than you are. Clients don’t ask for my time. Like she gave me all the reasons and I was like, okay, fine.
So now she, her team handles all of it. But it, it took her coming to me literally with a list of things saying, I see that you’re doing this, this, this, this, and this, and you should not be doing those things. And like they were sucky jobs. Nobody wants to do ’em, but she was very good about taking them from me.
So, if you don’t have an operations person, you probably have to do that work yourself.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And it doesn’t always have to be, you know, pure, you know, grunt work, administrative, it can be things like writing proposals.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: I know a lot of owners who are like, you know, I, I don’t want to ask so and so to write this proposal.
It’s gonna, it’s gonna take a lot of work and, and it’s gonna be, I, I’ll just do this myself. That’s the ideal thing you should be having someone else do, and frankly, you’ll get a different perspective if you’ve got more people helping you on things like proposals.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: But definitely not the kind of thing that you should take on simply because you feel like you’re helping your team.
When we talk about this, when we talk about business development all the time, where, you know, we talk about owners taking it all on themselves and not asking for help, not inviting people to meetings because they don’t wanna waste their time on it. That’s, that doesn’t make sense. So you, you can’t be sacrificing yourself for the team in that way, you need to involve them. Because you’ll actually get an added benefit from bringing them in, not just keeping stuff off of your plate.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I think we talked last week or the week before about how, especially on a new business front, if you bring them in, even though you might feel guilty about it not being non-billable work or blah, blah, blah, they have the ability to, A, become engaged with the prospect early on. B, understand the work that you’re doing, and C, to your point, giving a different perspective. So I think there’s a big opportunity there for us to be able to say, okay, everybody loves this work, but it’s gonna help us. It’s gonna help the business.
It’s gonna help you in your career.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, the other place where I see a lot of sacrifices being made by owners is when it comes to org charts reporting structure. So a lot of times I see owners who will say, well, you know, I’ve got so and so, and geez, you know, I can’t really find somewhere in the organization for them to report, so I’m just gonna have them report into me.
I’ll take care of that so that someone else doesn’t have to. To figure out how to deal with so and so, either because so-and-so’s maybe really talented, but also maybe difficult to manage. Or maybe they, they work on stuff that doesn’t really fit with any of your existing managers. So you’re like, I don’t really want to give, you know, design to my writing team or whatever.
But sometimes it just makes sense because you shouldn’t be expanding the number of direct reports that you have, particularly junior direct reports. Anytime I see junior direct reports to the owner themselves, it’s usually because they’re in their minds making some kind of sacrifice to help the team by having those people report to them.
And that’s really dangerous because it encourages a very flat org chart. And people are like, oh, flat org charts. That’s great. No. Flat org charts are bad. I agree. You don’t need 17 layers in a small organization. Right. But if you have, if everybody is reporting into the owner or most people are reporting into the owner, it’s usually because either they’re a control freak or because they feel like they don’t wanna burden people with management. And the truth is, if you’re going to grow your team, they have to be burdened by those things in order to learn and grow themselves.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think there might be a rule of thumb on how many direct reports you have. It’s five.
Chip Griffin: One hand
Gini Dietrich: I have five and it’s a lot.
Chip Griffin: So it’s a rule of hand.
Gini Dietrich: It’s a lot.
I have, I have five direct reports and it’s a lot. That’s a lot of people. Yeah. And it’s a lot of different personalities and like all of those things. So you, I think you have to think about that too. Like if you have an agency of eight and they all report to you, that’s way too many. You cannot manage that many people.
Chip Griffin: And, again, you think that you’re sacrificing by and helping out by taking on that management load. And you are, but it’s not helping anybody. Right?
Gini Dietrich: Right.
Chip Griffin: Because the reality is those people on your team, you’ve, you no doubt got some of those people who have real potential and they’re going to have to learn to manage at some point.
In an ideal world, they would come into your organization with excellent management, training, and experience. That doesn’t happen in the agency world.
Gini Dietrich: No, it does not.
Chip Griffin: And in small agencies, you generally can’t afford to hire that kind of talent that’s coming in and having that good management training.
But if they come from other agencies, they probably don’t have good management training anyway.
Gini Dietrich: Yep. 100%. Yes. Yeah. Although I will say that my life changed when I could start to afford to hire people with experience.
Chip Griffin: Sure. But there’s a difference between just having experience and being, having management training as part of that.
Gini Dietrich: Well, that’s what I meant is yeah,
Chip Griffin: because agencies are just miserable about trying to teach anybody basic management skills.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I’m, I know I told this story just a couple weeks ago about how I was trained in leadership, quote unquote.
Chip Griffin: Yes. Yeah.
Gini Dietrich: By putting them, putting me in charge of someone who was on a pip.
That is not leadership training, that is not management training, that is none of those things, but that’s how they quote unquote train. Not effective at all.
Chip Griffin: No. Obviously. Someday I will share some of my management training stories. They are, they are brutal. They are, they make no sense. As I look back on ’em, I’m like, really?
Someone thought that was a good idea?
Gini Dietrich: Okay. All right. Right.
Chip Griffin: But I mean, it, it did help me get to where I am. So I guess I should be grateful, but not how I would ever advise people.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah.
Chip Griffin: To do on-the-job training for management. In any case, You know, so I, I think we just, we need to be mindful of the sacrifices that we’re making and think them through in such a way that we say, look, this isn’t, I’m not just solving a today problem.
Right, and so you need to be looking at it over that longer term and saying, you know, what are the potential consequences to me making this sacrifice? It’s not just about the relief that you’re giving your team in the short term. It’s, does it set them up for success for the future? Does it set you up for success for the future?
Does it set the business up for success? Is it making you happy about the business that you are running? And I know I always come back to this, but you have to get satisfaction out of it.
Gini Dietrich: Yes.
Chip Griffin: Not that every minute has to be joyful and fun and ooh. That’s not me. However, you need to be getting what you want from it, and that is probably not torturing yourself by taking on all of these tasks that you think are too awful to give to somebody else.
Gini Dietrich: Right.
Chip Griffin: Think about that for a minute. It’s so bad. You don’t want someone who you are paying to do it, so you’ll do it yourself. Where is the logic?
Gini Dietrich: Very, very good point. There is no logic in that. And I think you’re right, and I, I think we all have, we all tend to do this, myself included, and it is a cycle that needs to break.
I know I’ve talked about this before, but one of the things that I do every quarter is I, I sit down with my task list and I split it into three groups. Things that are on my list that only I can do. Things that are on my list that I enjoy doing, but I probably don’t need to do. And things that are on my list that I absolutely should not be doing.
The last list needs to be delegated immediately. Sure. And things just get there, right? Like throughout the quarter, like things just get there and without me paying attention. And so I delegate those immediately. The middle one usually includes things like blog writing. I’m not gonna give that up.
Yep. Do I need to be doing it? Probably not. But it’s something I enjoy and I’m passionate about it, and so I’m not gonna give that up. So that will continue to stay on my middle list. But then there are things that I shouldn’t be do that I may enjoy doing but shouldn’t be doing. So I delegate that. But it’s something I have to constantly do and I have to do it every quarter.
And that’s how you start to understand, oh gosh, this got on my list. And for whatever reason, because I didn’t wanna, sorry, I didn’t wanna burden somebody with it. I didn’t have time to delegate it. Whatever reason, it’s on your list. Get it off of there. Every quarter. Yeah. Do that.
Chip Griffin: In fact, it, it’s probably a good exercise to just walk through and look at all of the things that you do, in groups, not
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: You know, individually. And just ask yourself why you are the one doing it.
Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yep. Yes.
Chip Griffin: Because I think that would then help you to build the list that you’re talking about. But that simple, that simple question why, it really can help you in a lot of different ways in how you run the business. That’s why there’s a whole book I think about that.
You need to understand those things and once you do, then you’ll sit there a lot of times and say, oh, well that doesn’t really make any sense.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah,
Chip Griffin: Maybe I should do it differently.
Gini Dietrich: Well, this was very good for me because over the weekend I didn’t wanna ask our web firm to create a landing page template for us because it takes them forever to respond.
And so I decided I was gonna do it myself, and I broke the whole website and had to ask the web firm for help anyway. So there you go. Yep. Mm-hmm. It’s really great. Well done. Thank you. Well done very much. Yep. Thank you. Mm-hmm.
Chip Griffin: I’m sure everybody appreciated that sacrifice that you made.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Especially me.
Yeah. So do as I say, not as I do.
Chip Griffin: I was gonna say, we shoulda have a whole episode on the do as I say, not as I do, because there’s any number of things that we have talked about over the years that I’m fairly sure you and I do not practice.
Gini Dietrich: Oh, for sure. Yes. I do have one-to-ones though, every week.
Chip Griffin: Excellent.
Gini Dietrich: Yes,
Chip Griffin: I’ve always been religious about well, at least in modern history, I’ve been religious about it. In modern history. I do feel so strongly about it.
Gini Dietrich: Yes, I agree.
Chip Griffin: So, alright, well on that note, you know, glad we could help you out here. I’ll send you a bill for, you know, having an episode that helps you run your own business.
Gini Dietrich: Appreciate it
Chip Griffin: more effectively.
Gini Dietrich: I appreciate it.
Chip Griffin: And, and do go back and listen to this episode. Because you, it’s good to watch the game tape.
Gini Dietrich: No, not gonna do it.
Chip Griffin: On that note this, this will wrap up this episode. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich
Chip Griffin: and it depends.
