The 6th, and final, role on my list of the 6 core roles of an agency owner is: The Leader (Managing the managers)
If you’ve grown your agency to a size where you’ve successfully employed and managed people this is a significant achievement. Congratulations.
The bigger your business gets though, the more you notice the difference between management and leadership.
In the early days management and organisation are the keys to growth. Later it’s about how you lead. It’s as much about what you don’t do as it as about what you do.
So what are the STANDSTILL pitfalls that get people stuck here?
Once businesses get to a certain size, it becomes impossible for one person to manage everybody effectively. You need people to help you manage whilst you focus on leading the business. You must transition from managing people to managing managers. Warning: If you struggled to delegate work in the past, you will face another step change here.
Managing managers means recruiting people that will challenge you. If they’re good enough to grow the business for you, they will question what you do and how you do it. Sometimes they will be right. Sometimes they will be wrong.
Whatever the outcome, you must be able to take this feedback and work with it if your agency is to grow. You not only need to listen to them, but allow them to deploy their own ways of working. You must trust them to manage people for you (and in their own way).
You can’t create a STANDOUT agency without STANDOUT leadership.
#StandoutOrDie #StandoutSecrets #AgencyGrowth