6 Changes Agency Owners Can Make to Free Up Their Time
One of the biggest frustrations I've observed owners wrestle with is figuring out how to work on their business and not in it.
This is a crucial distinction to make if owners want to scale their agency and not find themselves as the bottleneck.
Unfortunately, I’ve worked with agencies where it seems no one can answer questions until the owner comes in with the final say. While this is common, it makes the agency extremely inefficient and it’s impossible to scale beyond the owner.
So, what's the problem? The answer can be a bit tricky. Ultimately, when daily processes are backed-up or stunted by a "final say" from the owner or boss, that's usually a key indicator that the owner or boss is too closely involved.
Fortunately, the solution to this problem carries a double-positive. By learning how to effectively delegate, communicate, and create boundaries, agencies can become more autonomous with their work and agency owners can free up time to address other things that matter. Win-win. But how does that situation occur in the first place? And how do we solve it?
Let's dive in.
How Did We Get Here?
There are many paths an agency owner may have taken to ultimately end up completely engulfed in their business, rather than being a few healthy paces outside of it. However, during my years in operations consulting, I've noticed a pattern of how this occurs.
Here’s how I’ve normally seen this situation play out:
The owner or owners take on client work and produce amazing results for their clients.
Through excellent work, they’re able to grow their business and hire people to help with more project work.
As the business grows, the owner is oftentimes able to step away from work at an individual contributor level, however they aren’t able to step away from client work at a strategic and business-goal oriented level. Nor are they able to step away from critical areas of the business such as certain operational functions and sales.
They also seem to be the person people go to when projects get complicated and are “out of the norm” for answers.
The owner then finds themselves in a dance between needing to sell enough work to support the now larger team, the person to get sucked into day to day problem solving for client and employee issues, and all the other responsibilities that come with running a full-fledged business.
If this sounds like a familiar tale to you, there's good news. There are actually a few simple changes agency owners can make right now to begin delegating more effectively, empowering their team and, ultimately, creating more space for other things that matter.
Change #1: Commit
Without first making a commitment to yourself (and others) that you’re going to step out of the weeds, you’re setting yourself up to fail. I know how hard this is, sometimes being an agency owner can feel like you’re constantly battling against quicksand. Here are some preliminary tips to be able to commit to working on the agency and not in it.
Identify your quicksand. What do you find you keep getting sucked into that takes up time and energy that should be spent elsewhere? For many owners, this is getting sucked back into project work.
Create contingency plans to prevent you from being sucked back into areas that you’re committed to delegating to others. Keep a roster of contractors and resources that you can tap into when work tries to pull you back in.
Draw a line in your proverbial quicksand. Make an agreement to yourself that you will look at all other options before re-entering your danger zone.
Change #2: Delegate
Delegating is challenging if you’ve been the point-person for a particular piece of the business up until now. After all, you not only have to delegate the actual performance of the task(s), but the responsibility of it as well. The latter is equally important to make sure you’re shedding the mental load of the work. So, if it's been a while since you've relinquished one of your responsibilities, here are some tips for letting that go.
Create a job description for yourself. Document all your responsibilities and parse them out into sections by departments/roles (i.e. Sales, Operations, Marketing, etc).
Look to your team to find who is appropriate or has the particular strengths to take on the responsibilities you want to shed. Keep in mind that if certain responsibilities aren’t currently suited for internal team members, it could mean an opportunity for growth OR an external hire may be needed.
Find the best way to transfer knowledge to your delegates. Send over any documentation, recordings, or information you have and if possible have them shadow you. Once they’ve shown they understand the main concepts, it’s your turn to shadow them!
Provide some boundaries by making it clear when they should try and figure things out on their own, and when they’re encouraged to seek your guidance.
Once your team members have the knowledge to take on these tasks, give them the autonomy and encouragement to fully take these new responsibilities on.
Change #3: Create Boundaries
Creating boundaries is critical for ensuring you're not over-extending yourself or interfering with others' work flow. Boundaries are what create a safe space for the team to do their best work.
But how do you implement them? It starts with making sure you have an organizational chart in place that makes sense for your agency and your goals. Organizational charts help everyone understand the role each person plays in the company, and how to work with one another.
Read more about How to Define Your Agency’s Organizational Structure here.
Once you’ve gotten clear on everyone’s role within the agency, you’ll next want to make sure you’ve set up clear expectations of their responsibilities through a thorough job description. My recommendation here is to create the following sections in each person’s job description:
The Role: describes the role’s purpose at the agency.
The Responsibilities: a detailed list of all the major responsibilities of this role.
The Ideal Candidate: list the traits, qualities and skills that make up an ideal candidate for the role.
Requirements: list any education and years of experience requirements.
To really solidify the boundaries around each person’s role, the RACI chart is a fantastic tool to use to do this. It’s a matrix indicating who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed of major responsibilities. If you want to build one yourself you can Download a template here.
All of these things when implemented and maintained will provide healthy boundaries for you and the team.
Change #4: Create a Culture of Recommending Solutions
Embracing a culture of problem-solving skills is crucial for an agency owner to stop being “the person with all the answers” and start relying on their team to problem-solve and lead with recommendations. Doing this allows their team to fully step into their responsibilities and create space for owners to focus on the business.
The rule to implement here is simple, always ask that team members suggest a recommended solution when presenting a problem. As long as there’s a foundation of psychological safety within your agency’s walls, you’ll find tremendous value in practicing this skill with your team. This creates a way for team members to practice the important skill of problem-solving when challenges are presented.
Change #5: Document Processes
One of the most impactful but often overlooked steps agencies can take to scale their business effectively is to create documentation for their internal processes.
So much information exists in owners’ heads due to the sheer amount of hats they have to wear on a given day. To lighten the mental load, documentation can encourage teams to find answers on their own, freeing up owners from being the go-to person for answers.
Take my Operations Manual Guide, for instance. It offers a robust outline for documenting many important internal operations processes and information. Implementing a tool like this, especially one that captures information that only has to be recalled a few times a year, saves everyone valuable time.
Documenting workflows thoroughly is crucial for business owners as it significantly increases operational efficiency and overall success. Everything from daily processes and procedures to training and compliance; having crucial pieces of the business documented facilitates knowledge transfer and mitigates any hold-ups.
Change #6: Give Everyone a Number (The EOS Business Model)
Borrowed from the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) model, this rule refers to giving each team member a meaningful number for them to know whether they’re meeting the expectations of their job.
Put another way, this rule ensures that everyone has a number by which they can be measured to determine if they're doing their job well. For example, as a content marketer in an agency, your number might be driving a certain number of monthly leads using content.
Other examples of numbers for various roles at your agency:
Sales - bring in X sales per month/quarter/year
AM - client lifetime value, NPS scores
PM - % variance from budget
Ops - all the financial metrics
Individual Contributors - the amount of billable time / week + time spent working on a passion project or tool that also benefits the company.
At the end of the day, having the flexibility to step away from the agency when you want will ultimately free you up to spend time on things that are important to you + work on the business.
You Can't Pour From an Empty Cup
At the end of the day, being an agency owner is demanding and can often feel overwhelming. However, to grow the business, owners must be able to step back from the daily tasks and focus on more high-impact initiatives for the business.
Ultimately, implementing some of these operational changes will empower employees to have more autonomy over their work and give owners the space they need to focus on bigger goals. And one of those goals, of course, should be to focus more on themselves because, as they say, "You can't pour from an empty cup."
