Most agencies refer to employees as a “team,” but is that an accurate depiction of what’s going on in your own business?
And don’t even get me riled up by referring to employees as “family.”
In this week’s newsletter, I’ll help you to understand why the “team” moniker matters. But first let’s look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Weekly Roundup
Below are some articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos that we came across during the past week or so that provide useful perspective and information for PR and marketing agency owners. While we don’t necessarily endorse all of the views expressed in these links, we think they are worth your time.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Latest from SAGA
- Outbound sales & your agency (Agency Leadership Podcast)
Articles & Blog Posts
- Your Agency’s Core Positioning Should be a Multiplier (The Sutter Company)
- The Optimism Gap: 57% Expect Growth… But Only 7% Have the Pipeline to Back It Up (RSW/US)
- What Makes Entrepreneurs Unemployable (Punctuation)
- Your brain is telling you a story. (Anchor Advisors)
- The Power of Asking What’s Next for Integrated Communications (Spin Sucks)
- How to Lessen the Pain of Leadership (The Bureau)
Podcast Episodes
- The Case for a Marketing Operating System (Spin Sucks)
- Gen Alpha’s Surprising Influence on Your PR Strategy (Solo PR Pro)
- Grow or Die? (2Bobs)
- Parakeeto vs. Project Management Tool: What’s the Real Solution, with Kristen Kelly (The Agency Profit Podcast)
- Agency adaptation, gym-sized markets, and why your best new business channel is obvious (The Digital Agency Growth Podcast)
- The End of Marketing as We Know It — Trust is All We Have Left (Working/Broken)
- Maiya Holliday, Mangrove – Mission > Marketing: B Corp as Operating System, Not a Sales Tactic (Agency Bytes)
Video
AI in focus
- Leveraging AI for SEO Advantage, with Carl Holden (The Innovative Agency)
Do you have employees or a team?
Anyone who enjoys sports knows that there is a big difference between a collection of superstar players and a winning team.
Just look at some of the Olympic teams that have been composed of outstanding professional athletes, and you will see that top abilities combined into a single roster doesn’t always lead to gold.
The same holds true in our small agencies. We may have a collection of good talent, but how well does everyone work together toward a common goal?
Part of building a high quality agency team lies in recruiting the “best and brightest,” but that’s just the beginning.
Just as even the best athletes need effective coaching to reach their true potential, so do your own employees.
You need to serve as a coach and mentor to help them grow, and you need to make outside resources available to supplement their advancement as needed.
But even that isn’t enough.
Teams need to have a common purpose — a Super Bowl trophy, for example — to pursue.
Since we don’t have the same clear objectives as agencies (and industry awards definitely don’t count), we need to do more to paint the picture for our employees about what the future holds and what we’re trying to achieve.
We also need to work with our employees to help them focus on reaching goals together rather than maximizing their own personal performance.
That’s one of the reasons that I caution against overuse of formulaic compensation that focuses on individual metrics. The spotlight needs to be on the team’s accomplishments and winning the game, not accumulating the most walks, hits, or RBIs.
So how do you know if you have a team or simply a collection of employees?
Listen to what they say and look at how they behave.
If they point fingers at colleagues when things don’t go well, you may not have a true team.
If they don’t step in willingly to help co-workers when needed, you may not have a true team.
If you have clock-watchers and paycheck-collectors who tick the right boxes and nothing more, you may not have a true team.
When your employees aren’t gelling into a proper team, you need to look at the cause to try to solve it effectively.
Do you need to acquire new players who are better contributors, or do you need to change the coach (or at least your behavior) to get the results you need?
Ultimately, no team will be effective without good leadership, so you always need to start with yourself and lead by example. Show you are part of the team and you’re more likely to get the same in return.
If you just have a group of employees, you will never achieve as much as you can with a proper team — no matter what you call them.
