The traditional digital agency business model is broken. By embracing an agile mindset and self-organization, we can reinvent our businesses in ways that increase engagement, reduce burnout, and improve outcomes.

Prerequisite
Attendees will get the most out of this session by being familiar with basic digital agency operations and management challenges, as well as having an understanding of common industry practices related to team structure, billing, and professional development.

Outline
Over the past few years, I've had numerous off-the-record conversations with digital agency owners about the challenges in running their businesses, such as:

- Pressure to keep rates low while expenses rise
- Team members feeling overburdened with work
- Rising competition for senior-level talent
- Limited time/resources for professional development
- Senior manager and executive burnout

Many of these issues stem from the traditional agency model, which pressures team members, managers, and executives to maximize utilization, often at the expense of team health and work quality.

The good news? There's another way. At Palantir.net, we've spent the last six years reinventing our company, giving our teams space and autonomy to be fully engaged with each other and clients. This has helped to unleash the potential of our team, leading to increased employee/client satisfaction, better financial/operational sustainability, and improved project outcomes.

This session will cover some of the changes we've implemented, including alternative team allocation and billing models, a coaching model for career development, and techniques for self-organization, that give teams more autonomy and more control over their ways of working. We'll also discuss how we work to foster a growth mindset, develop junior talent, and support professional growth and contribution.

Join us to learn how to break the burnout cycle and foster a healthier, more supportive environment for your agency.

Learning Objectives
- How to identify and address the key agency challenges that lead to team and management burnout and "feast or famine" cycles that lead to churn and turnover.

- How the different planes of human development can be applied to organizational culture

- How to embrace agile values and the agile mindset when it comes to how you approach the structure of your organization.

- Tools that support team engagement and participatory decision-making

- Models for self-directed career growth and development built around peer coaching, not top-down management.

Experience level
Intermediate