Grow or die. It's embedded in the capitalist psyche. But is there such a thing as "bad" growth? Or more to the point, "bad" profit?

Advertising agencies are facing competition from every dimension and direction. Upstream, they complete with marketing consultancies and brand strategy firms who seek to provide planning and strategy services to marketers. Downstream are production companies, independent freelancers, and even media companies who now aim to not just sell media but produce content.

There is a cardinal belief in professional services that our inventory is not parts, but people. If that’s true, professional firms are facing unprecedented inventory shortages. Competition for the best people has always been fierce, but is now intensified by the economic impact of a global pandemic.

Imagine a work environment in which you are judged solely by your effectiveness. Not by how many emails you answered, how many online meetings you attended, or how many hours you logged on a timesheet.

While advertising agencies are famous for innovating on behalf of their clients, only rarely are they recognized for applying original thinking to their own business model.

Dutifully filling scopes of work for clients is "thin value." You're doing what's asked, meeting your deadlines, and staying within budget. But all of that is expected; it's what competent agencies do.

The agencies that stand out are those who innovate and create solutions outside the confines of a client brief. They deliver proactive thinking and serve up ideas without waiting to be asked. They develop their own intellectual property and product ideas.

Have you ever had the frustrating experience of trying to execute a “multi-pronged strategy?” It never goes well for the simple reason that a strategy with multiple prongs isn’t a strategy at all — it’s just a wish list.

Like food on grocery store shelves, the services offered by professional service firms have a “sell by” date. There’s no law compelling you to disclose outdated offerings, but if there were, the menu of competencies in many firms might be significantly reduced.

Have you experienced the “life-changing magic of tidying up” your home? Such is the promise and title of the book by Marie Kondo, who teaches the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing.

Do the people in your firm complain about an overwhelming number of simultaneous priorities? Does every task and client request have an ASAP attached to it?

If a talented art director in your firm can design a brilliant logo in five minutes instead of five weeks, should you get paid less — or more — for it? In the flawed pay-by-the-hour system, the only way your firm could possibly capture the value you have created is for the art director to misrepresent the truth on her timesheet.

Business professionals have a voracious appetite for learning the “best practices” in their industry. They want to know what has worked for other companies so they can replicate these approaches in their own firms.

If you’re like most agencies and other professional firms, you’re likely missing a critical component in the model upon which you have built your business. Here's why having a cost structure is not the same as having a revenue model …

Exceptionally talented professional firms are distinguished not by what they do, but what they believe.  Their work is unique because their beliefs are unique. They create dissimilar solutions because they have a dissimilar mindset.

If your firm uses the term “full service” on its website, here are two good reasons you should stop. First, “full service” is one of the phrases that has officially joined the lexicon of expressions so overused they’ve lost their meaning — words like “quality” and “excellence.”

If every agency in America is a “full-service, integrated marketing communications firm” (like they say they are), why do clients chronically complain about the lack of integration from their agencies?

What are the key criteria you use when looking for prospective clients? More importantly, what criteria are your key prospects using when they’re looking for you?

What exactly constitutes success in context of a professional services business like an advertising agency? Should success be defined exclusively in financial terms? Is it more about reputation and recognition?

Most businesses start out with a fairly simple business model. As time goes on, they add new services and capabilities and extend out to new markets. Some of this diversification is strategic and deliberate, but most of the time companies start sprawling in ways they never intended.