He’d built the whole Asana system himself, got his team filling everything in… except they just weren’t.
It clicked pretty quickly: the system wasn’t meeting his team where they are. He’d built it for the team he wanted, not the team he had.
Another had written a nine-page document, the complete guide to how his business runs. His team weren’t reading it. He couldn’t understand why. I said: give people the goal, the context, a few guardrails, and then let them breathe. He went quiet for a second and said, “Yeah. That’s it.”
Another was frustrated that every new person who joined wanted to change everything immediately. That’s because you’re telling them what the system is, but not why. They don’t know the history. They don’t understand how you got here. So of course they want to rip it up, they’re not seeing the thinking behind it.
All of these agencies were nearly working. The systems looked right. The effort was absolutely there. It’s just that something wasn’t quite right.
That’s always where I start, not with “what solution do you need?” but with “what version of nearly working have you got?”
My first session with every founder is 90 minutes, free, no obligation. If something feels off in your agency but you can’t quite put your finger on it, that’s the conversation I’m built for.
What’s your version of nearly working?