One of the best questions you can ask yourself as an agency leader is: what’s the worst that could happen?
It serves you particularly well whether you are trying to choose a path forward or iron out an agreement with a client, vendor, or even a potential acquirer.
I’ll explore this more later in this week’s newsletter, but first let’s take a look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Jen’s Weekly Roundup
Here’s what caught my eye this week:
VOLUME LOSES, DEPTH WINS — This week at Spin Sucks, Gini shows HubSpot’s blog traffic fell 75 to 81 percent to AI search, yet revenue grew 19 percent, because what AI took was thin content and what held was real expertise. Over on That Solo Life, Karen and Michelle break down a parallel finding in Muck Rack’s new State of PR report: 88 percent of journalists delete irrelevant pitches on sight, so a solo pitching fifteen relevant contacts beats a larger agency blasting fifty.
WHO ACTUALLY OWNS IT — Sharon Toerek’s talk with Courtney Cotrupe on The Innovative Agency centers on who holds an agency’s culture once the founder’s name leaves the door. And in his blog post, Karl Sakas advises swim lanes for leadership decisions. When you assign a clear decider and a guardrail, most leadership meetings stop being necessary. Almost nothing we hate more than an unnecessary meeting.
STOP PERFORMING, START BEING REAL — David C. Baker at Punctuation says skip the influencer playbook and just be yourself on LinkedIn. (What, like it’s hard?). And Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors demonstrates that caring and attachment to the outcome are two different things, and prospects can tell the difference.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
What’s the worst that could happen?
If you ask yourself this question more often, you may find yourself making better decisions as an agency owner.
In some cases, it may cause you to be more willing to take a risk you were avoiding. In others, you may spot a risk that’s worth protecting against.
Let’s start with the latter: risk mitigation.
When crafting legal agreements for your business, I always encourage mapping out the worst things that could (reasonably) happen. No need to focus on the 1 in 1 million circumstances, but consider those scenarios that would totally shock you to see transpire.
For example, in a client agreement: what happens if they stop paying you in a timely fashion? What happens if they want to sue you? What happens if they ask you to do work out of scope?
These are all bad things that could reasonably occur, so it’s worth examining the contract to understand how it would come into play.
For vendors, you’re simply on the flip side of the same coin and looking at what happens if the other party fails to deliver or makes a catastrophic mistake.
Where it really gets important, though, is with more significant legal documents, like partnership or M&A agreements.
Here the “what’s the worst that could happen” question becomes more costly and more likely to have a negative impact.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of bringing on a smart business partner to share the load or selling your business to a third party, but there are so many things that could (and not infrequently do) go wrong.
Often, an outside advisor can help you think these scenarios through with clear eyes so you don’t leave the resolution of future problems to chance.
But “what’s the worst that could happen” often opens the door to taking reasonable risks that you might have been reluctant about.
Agency owners frequently fret about changes to their website, new service offerings, or agreeing to a new hire.
When you think about the worst-case outcome (and how you would handle it), it often gets less scary.
Say you change the website and it isn’t well-received. Just change it back. We’re not Apple, where everyone scrutinizes every word and punctuation mark.
Or you roll out a new service offering and it turns out to be a poor fit, not profitable enough, or ignored by your prospects. Change it or chuck it, but beyond the time and effort you have previously invested, you’re probably not out much.
Hiring is where this question can really be helpful, though. I see many hiring processes go on far too long without making a decision because of the fear it won’t work out.
The truth is that even the best organizations make plenty of poor hiring choices. It’s inevitable when you are bringing someone on board after – at most – a handful of relatively short conversations.
At least here in the U.S., the risk is relatively minimal. If they don’t work out, you can let them go. Sure, it’s a difficult conversation and not much fun, but it can be done.
So before you make a decision, ask yourself “what’s the worst that could happen?” It will help you frame the decision with a healthy balance between “YOLO!” and fear of failure.
