There are times when we need to change our agencies’ policies and practices in ways that our team members may not appreciate.
It’s a bit like taking away a toy from a child because it is unsafe or perhaps consuming too much of their time.
It might be trimming benefits, requiring more in-office work, or instituting time tracking.
Regardless of what it is, it can create real challenges with your workforce.
I’ll explore this a bit more later in this week’s newsletter, but first let’s look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Latest from SAGA
- Building the ideal agency: wrestling with the tough decisions (Agency Leadership Podcast)
- The truth about agency profit margins (and why benchmarks mislead owners)
Weekly Roundup
This week’s content kept circling back to what sounds like a simple idea: where you put your attention determines what you get. Whether it’s the problems you solve repeatedly, the visibility you create (or don’t), or the systems you build, agencies succeed or struggle based on what they choose to focus on—and what they keep doing manually when they probably should have automated it by now.
WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK:
WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE — Anchor Advisors opens with a perfect metaphor: when you’re skiing and fixate on the tree you’re trying to avoid, you’ll probably hit it. Focus on where you want to go, not what you’re afraid of. David C. Baker at Punctuation takes this further with solving the same problem only once—if you keep facing the same challenges, you’re not building systems, you’re just getting better at putting out fires. And Spin Sucks explains why the PESO Model needs an operations engine, making the case that brilliant strategy dies without operational discipline.
VISIBILITY ISN’T OPTIONAL — RSW/US delivers a reality check: if prospects can’t find you, they can’t hire you. Seems obvious, right? Yet agencies pour energy into pitch decks while their digital presence gathers dust. Spin Sucks addresses the evolution of this challenge with the PESO Model Certification now built for AI discovery—because the game has changed when LLMs are doing the searching instead of humans.
EVERYTHING YOU DO SENDS A SIGNAL — Karl Sakas makes the case that your out-of-office message is a leadership decision, not just an automatic reply. It signals how you think about boundaries, client relationships, and team culture. Solo PR Pro explores how corporate citizenship navigates the storm of social upheaval, examining what organizations choose to say—or not say—during turbulent times. And The Innovative Agency features David Ebner on authenticity as the agency edge, arguing that in a world of polish and performance, being genuinely yourself creates differentiation.
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN AN AI WORLD — Three pieces this week tackled different angles on what should stay human. Agency Bytes features Dorien Morin-van Dam on the cost of replacing humans with AI—and the course correction. For Immediate Release examines when harassment policies meet deepfakes, exploring the messy collision of new technology and existing workplace protections. The message isn’t anti-AI; it’s about being intentional where machines help versus where humans matter.
ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME — 2Bobs provocatively suggests we are all closet socialists, questioning some assumptions about how creative businesses actually operate versus how we talk about them. And The Agency Profit Podcast features Drew McLellan on how to be profitable at any size—worthwhile listening whether you’re a solo shop or managing a team of 50.
THE BOTTOM LINE — Stop solving the same problems over and over. Stop hiding from prospects who could hire you. Stop sending mixed signals through your daily decisions. The agencies that win this year won’t be the ones with the best intentions—they’ll be the ones who actually built the systems, showed up consistently, and focused their attention on where they wanted to go instead of what they feared.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Taking away their toys
You may remember as a child when your parent took away one of your toys for one reason or another. Even if it wasn’t as a punishment, it usually felt that way.
And if you have taken away your own child’s toys as a parent, you know how difficult that can be.
As business owners, we sometimes need to take away the toys from our employees — metaphorically speaking (if you are taking away actual toys then you have a much different workplace than what I’m familiar with).
In recent years, many owners have experienced this as they ended work-from-home rules or required more time in the office.
But there may also be times when you need to adjust other policies, like reducing health insurance benefits in response to spiraling costs. Or maybe you have had unsustainable leave policies created during boom times or as a result of the pandemic, and it’s time to bring them more in line with your business needs.
And sometimes you aren’t actually taking toys away but instead forcing the team to take their vitamins. Time tracking is the obvious activity in this category, but it could also be requiring more rigor in project management software or other activities that employees don’t enjoy.
So what do you do when you need to take away the toys?
First, I would suggest that you ensure that what you’re doing is truly needed. Whenever you do something that (at least in their minds) makes the lives of your team members more difficult, you should make sure that it is for a good reason and the results are worth the pain.
Assuming that you have reached that conclusion, then you need to communicate clearly about the change and explain the “why?” behind it. They may still not love the change, but at least they should have a better understanding for the logic behind it. Otherwise, they may well think it is a punishment, just as we did when we were kids.
If possible, you may want to find ways to mitigate the change either by phasing it in or offering some additional benefit to partially offset the new policy.
Of course, that’s not always possible. And sometimes you may want to simply rip off the Band-Aid and be done with it so you don’t drag out the change (and the reaction to it).
Finally, you need to understand that — depending on the magnitude of the change — you may end up with lasting morale issues. For employees on the edge of leaving, it may push them over. For others, it may just leave an aftertaste that you will need to work to eliminate over time.
Ultimately, you need to make the decisions that are right for your business. The choices are not always easy (and definitely not fun), but if you are confident you are choosing the right path for the firm, then you need to push ahead, communicate clearly, and handle any reaction it may incur.
