-10% to 40%+ EBITDA in 9 Months - Part 4/4

Here we are part 4: Management Accountability Systems

The final part I want to highlight with this case study - is the importance of accountability for your teams so that managers can manage more effectively.

If you missed part 3 last week, lack of management systems is the #1 reason agencies can't scale effectively (loss of profit).

And the #1 reason why agency owners end up working more even though they hired managers to solve problems.

I’m Nick Avaria, agency owner, and founder of Agency Acquisitions. Every week I share case studies and insights of growing businesses while making more profits.

This is how we got the last 9% of the additional profit for this company.

But more importantly, this is how we cemented the previous gains.

Making one big push to 40%+ profit is hard. Sustaining it is even harder. A lot harder.

Management is hugely overlooked in agencies. Instead, you find a lot of emphasis on leadership.

And this is a problem. Why?

Leadership = Energizing people

Management = Organizing and getting into formation

If people are out of formation and you energize them… it's chaos. 

Leadership truly shines when management is present.

Management systems need SOPs, guides, checklists, training, etc.

It needs to be built out EVEN MORE than your core product.

Because delivering a product or service is much easier than managing people.

So here’s the checklist of the items we deployed to get that last 9%+ and keep it:

1. Each role has to have objectives that have metrics that have KPIs

   1. 3-5 objectives per role. 1 metric per objective, 1 KPI per metric (example below)

   2. The objectives MUST align the roles' success to the organizations' success.

   3. If role and organizational objectives are misaligned, people will optimize for their role objective at the cost of the organization's objectives. Translation = missed targets/goals due to friction between management and the employee.

2. Objective/Metric/KPI needs a management guide that walks managers through how to coach employees to effectively hit their (and the organization's) targets.

3. Institute a standardized coaching methodology to iterate on results and constantly improve them. An agency is only as good as its people and we need to take care to educate/train them constantly.

4. There needs to be a management methodology that clearly outlines when a performance issue falls on the manager or the employee. Otherwise, you cannot hold the manager accountable. (I’ll have free pieces of training on this, message me if you’re interested).

5. Ongoing weekly (1 hour) management training.

This is the hardest step. If you want the full overview, check out the training video on how we did this step-by-step.

Wishing you a scalable and profitable agency. May your hard work pay off.

Nick