Will Your Firm Endure?
Tim Williams
Business and revenue model strategist for advertising agencies and other professional services firms
It’s quite unsettling to look around the advertising agency industry and see that it’s populated with 50-somethings at the top, 20-somethings on the front lines, and virtually nobody in-between. So many agency leaders lament their firm's lack of “bench strength” and are worried about not having a clear second in command.
Our chronic lack of attention to developing the careers of our key people has put agencies in a situation where “middle management” hardly exists. Precious little attention is paid to grooming the next generation of agency leadership and management. One recent study by the agency Arnold Worldwide and the American Association of Advertising Agencies found that a Starbucks barista gets more training than the average advertising agency account executive. We fail to invest in our people, then lament that our clients fail to see the value in what we do. A vicious cycle.
One of the frequent arguments against investing in professional development is “What happens if I train my people and they leave?” A better question is “What happens if you don’t train them and they stay?”
Nowhere is professional development more important than in firm full of knowledge workers – like an advertising agency – where what clients really buy is what we know, not just what we do. And the very top priority must be the the people we have identified as the future of the firm.
No one is irreplaceable
Leaders of agencies are also notorious for believing that no one in the firm could ever take their place. This is not only narcissistic, but ignores the fact that most of today’s enduring professional services firms were started by long-gone larger-than-life founders. James McKinsey and David Ogilvy had the foresight and good sense to identify and groom their successors.
Nurturing your lieutenants requires a serious commitment of time, energy, and patience. The skills required to lead a company are quite different from those needed to serve the needs of clients, and those skills must be deliberately taught and cultivated. Even your most talented people must learn the art of management.
In my consulting work with advertising agencies, I've seen a stubborn tendency for agency principals to expect that their successors must exhibit 360-degree perfection. Especially in the creative services business, brilliance in an area doesn't usually go hand-in-hand with "well-rounded." (Imagine Salvidor Dali as an art director.)
Even David Ogilvy acknowledged his inability to be good at everything. In a memo to his senior managers in 1971, he wrote:
Long ago I realized that I lack competence, or interest, or both, in several areas of our business. Notably television programming, finance, administration, commercial production and marketing. So I hired people who are strong in those areas where I am weak. Every one of you … is strong in some areas, weak in others. Take my advice: get people alongside you who make up for your weaknesses.”
What you’re looking for isn’t someone who works and thinks just like you do, but rather someone who can get the job done – even if they do the job in a very different way from how you’d do it. Remember that ultimately you’re looking for someone who can produce results, not someone who mimics your style.
Where there are peaks there are valleys
People with outstanding strengths (like the ones you should be grooming to run your firm) also have outstanding weaknesses. Peter Drucker tells the story of how during the American Civil War, advice-givers counseled U.S. President Abraham Lincoln that the highly effective General Ulysses S. Grant was a drunkard. “Perhaps,” said Lincoln. “But he knows how to win battles. If I knew his brand of whiskey, I’d send a barrel...to some other generals.”
Says Drucker, “In business, as in war, what's important is the outcome. Keep that topmost in your mind when assessing future – and current – workforces.”
Too many execs doubt the potential of their younger staff members. Remember, it’s likely that someone felt the same way about you at earlier in your career, but you have obviously proven him or her wrong. You learned the art of management, and so can the other bright people in your firm if you’ll invest in their personal and professional development.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Williams leads Ignition Consulting Group, a U.S.-based consultancy that helps advertising agencies and other professional service firms create and capture more value. He is the author of Positioning for Professionals: How Professional Service Firms Can Differentiate Their Way to Success. Tim is also co-founder of Thought Legion, a leading provider of training for marketing professionals via on-demand webinars.
Twitter: @TimWilliamsICG / Blog: www.ignitionpropulsion.com
Marketing and Communications Manager
3 年Particularly valued reminder about hiring to complement rather than mimic. Very useful (and for me, timely) article. Thank you
Having worked at agencies, then left for the 'client' world, I find my biggest challenge in dealing with agencies as a client to be the insularity of the people. Grooming internal talent is great, but not necessarily the entire story. Clients regularly hire agency talent away (and that's where your gap between the 20- and 50- somethings is created - the 30-somethings are going to the client when they can't advance internally). But agencies typically don't pull client-side talent in. There's a somewhat incestuous round-robin: job descriptions call for "X years of account management experience" or "X years of agency experience" rather than "X years of marketing/advertising experience." I get calls from old agency friends asking if I can refer candidates for roles they're having trouble filling... so I put incredibly smart, talented marketers in front of them who could not just add value, but bring in some fresh client-side perspective, and I hear "oh sorry, we need someone with 10 years as an Account Director for this Account Director role."
Director Digital Ecosystem & Transformation | CMS Expert | SaaS | Kontent.ai Strategy MVP | Strategy & Technology Consulting | Customer Experience & Enablement | Enterprise Sales
11 年So very true.... very common in organisations
ICT CONSULTANT
11 年there is none is perfect as a human ,but the atomsphere and the good management make people do right and improve them selves
President at SimplyLEDs, Co-Founder at Home, Coach on the baseball field
11 年Excellent as always Tim. I would also add that many leaders/execs/principals/founders simply don't want to train because it involves divulging their knowledge base, sharing their learned skills, their know-how, their "secrets" of success, if you will. In holding the information to their chest, they hold the power. They don't consider that they won't be in power forever and someone has to be at the helm; we all like to think we will be razor-sharp professionals running bleeding-edge agencies until we drop dead at 97. Many guard a virtual lifetime of experience, that could be garnered from and used to groom and train, with the verocity of a wild boar protecting it's young. They simply don't want you to know what they know. Your darkness in any one aspect of ability is simply a chance for them to shine their light even brighter (at least in their own minds). This applies whether it's internal company training or outside training or certification. In their mind, the sustained ignorance of middle management ensures their continued success as leaders. Wherever the training may come from, the fear of an "underling" being on equal knowledge-footing with them, on any level, sends shivers up their spine. This epidemic is much broader than the marketing/advertising world and applies to corporate America as a whole, but I will not segue into that observation any further. BTW, the use of your Grant/Lincoln anecdote was superb.