00.
The Vision
What are we doing here?
You're here because you want a better way to run your business, and you hope the answers may be here. Give me a few minutes of your attention, and I will describe a world you can achieve by following some simple (but not easy) steps. I want you to read the rest of this chapter as an aspirational vision of where you could end up by following my advice. Let's call this the vision. Park your doubts, clear your mind of the people who populate your business, and read the rest of this chapter with an open mind about what could be.
You run a small company that uses a lot of people's time delivering high-quality services to your clients. Your leadership team finds it easy to communicate with each other when difficult moments happen. Pulses may increase in moments of conflict, but your people have the company's best interests at heart — they're trying to make things better without ego. They are able to have adult conversations without friction. Your team prioritizes decision making at the lowest possible level in the company — the junior designer three months into the job is trusted to make decisions knowing that they're still learning the way things are done around here. You, as the owner, are never the bottleneck. It's common for you to sit back and watch passionate people fight for what they think is the best idea and how to go about accomplishing hard things without turning to you and asking what you think we should do? When decisions need making, you don't need to be the tie-breaker. Decisions don't need to be made by you to get support in the company. Things just have a way of getting done without you needing to be included, but your people are still working hard to impress you as the head of the company.
Your company is small and you may sometimes need to play a part-role in order to get things over the line. When you pick up some Account Management work for an important client, you do so because you know the person on the client side well and you have a good working relationship. When you hear that some important piece of work is delayed, the Project Manager treats you like any other Account Manager, defending the economics of the project without deferring to the boss. When you're playing Account Manager, people treat you not as the owner but as the person responsible for managing the client relationship. People don't pander to your needs and your opinions just because you own the place. They treat you as an equal when you are an equal working in the team as a specific role. If you have a bad idea, you can trust your team to tell you there's a better way.
When things do go wrong, everyone knows what's important and what they must do in order to both correct that situation and avoid it from happening again. Making avoidable mistakes repeatedly is below your standard and your people know the difference between a screw up (they're the first person to raise their hand and own it) and something more complicated. When a mistake is made no one points a finger and no one scrambles to avoid responsibility both because
- Mistakes are usually a team effort, and besides, your people know that being a team player includes accepting that no single player wins or loses the day alone
- Some mistakes win your people praise. Some "mistakes" are simply discoveries, many of which improve your understanding of your business. If a developer uses a new technique that goes against your house style but which speeds up the websites you build, that's technically a mistake (but one worth making)
Yours is not one of those workplaces where your website says that you're always 'creatively daring,' but where your work tends to be more profitable than polished, more bread-and-butter than caviar. Your employees don't gossip about how you say one thing and do another. You're known, internally and externally, as a company that keeps things simple and operates smoothly because everyone knows what to do. When a new project lands and the plan is to make 35% profit from it, everyone (including you) is happy when you make 35% profit from it — you don't ask for more than 35%.
Your employees know where they stand. Roles, bands, and salaries are normalized in the hiring process, so by the time someone is approaching their first year working for you, they know where they stand in terms of the salary they get and the financial range they live within for their given role and level. A Level One Project Manager is paid between V and W; a Level Four between X and Y. You never worry about someone knocking on your door asking for more money because you've communicate in advance what is required to get to the next level and its accompanying increase in salary. They know up front. Everyone in the company understands whether the company pays above, below, or at market rates (you make this clear), and they also understand that a great place to work, where learning is prioritized, is its own form of value. People know that when they do leave for more money or greener pastures, they will be better at their job than when they arrived. They trust that when you say people get treated well, they actually do. This is why people work hard in your company to enable profit. They understand the story of the company, the risks that you took to get here, and are appreciative that you uphold operating values that prioritize their careers. They accept that this business is here to make profit for the ownership group while pushing them to be constant learners.
You communicate to the people that do not progress up the Levels that you expert better from them and that, if they want to stay, they need to be climbing those Levels. Eventually, if someone refuses to climb, you let them go. It's easy to let someone with a poor attitude go and hard to dismiss someone great at the technicalities, but both harm the culture of your company and the believability that you have a standard. That non-negotiable standard is that you expect people to be good professionals, and that includes constantly challenging themselves to improve.
You accept that your best people will leave. You're comfortable telling candidates in interviews that at some point they will come to you and say that they have a better offer elsewhere. You describe how their career will accelerate working for you, how your company does what it says, and the high standards you expect. When they excitedly accept your offer (which fits within the salary bands your salary cap defines), they appreciate how thoroughly you've thought this through. Employees understand where they sit in the organization and what's expected of them. A Designer understands, when they're hired as a Level One, that the Level Two Designer gets more responsibility and more money, and that the Level Four Designer has bigger expectations and a larger salary than both the Level One and Level Two counterparts. When a Level Four leaves, you're excited to add a Level One replacement and move everyone up the food chain. You're prepared for change and happy to deliver on your promise that everyone's careers come before this job.
Everyone understands no-one micromanages. When tasks are delegated they're well described and easy to understand. Relationships between people in the company come with golden rules so subordinates can understand, in simple terms, what good looks like. These golden rules are in alignment with the operating values of the company. Each Project Manager understands that the head of Project Management always wants emails to clients sent within two hours of receiving a request — its in-line with your Operating Values. The Head of Project Management has made this clear to all, and each of them understands and follows this golden rule without passive aggression or uncertainty. People avoid assumptions and make things clear to each other without friction or delay.
Every day has the same structure. A morning meeting confirms the day's commitments and verifies last-minute, pre-flight checks so you can avoid delays or errors using the latest information. These meetings run smoothly because they happen daily and conclude on time. People understand that the commitments they make each day are:
- to themselves
- to their team
- to clients At the end of each day you measure progress to respect the commitment to ourselves, our team, and to clients. People know that when commitments are confirmed in the morning for the same day, closing time is the deadline. No-one is left wondering where work is at the end of the day.
When your team makes mistakes you find out because they tell communicate immediately. You have a process to diagnose what kind of mistake was made and whether it's one they need to avoid recurring or if it's one we can learn from. Your stress levels are kept low because people volunteer having made mistakes and own the challenge to improve. Nobody panics because there's a process to follow that everyone understands. You trust your team to make good decisions (that improve through experience), and they trust you not to get involved just because you're the boss. Each mistake helps juniors learn to stay calm, managing the situation, and producing outcomes that have the least harmful impact and the biggest long-term benefit for improved decision making.
Every single project you sell and deliver comes with the internal expectation that it needs to win on its own terms. Everyone in the company understands that every project's efficiency needs to be at a measurable level. Decisions are made with or without you in the room that benefit the prioritization of this number, balanced with the need to do no harm to the client, the relationship, or the value created by the project. You have a company that's profitable because every project is profitable, which means normalizing an internal understanding that profit is both good and measurable. And that you share with your team what is measured.
Other agency owners find ways of floating the idea of acquiring your company. They hear great things from both the client and employee sides about your operation. You always seem to find a way to leave both parties happy, and from what you've shared with them, your numbers are impressive. You're able to see yourself in two possible futures:
- One where you sell your asset and recognize the equity you've built over many long years
- The other where you continue to build your asset so you can exit your role but retain your ownership Both options are viable because you have prioritized running a saleable company.