Lack of Vision, Strategic Thinking
Pros
BCV is a fun loving agency, featuring weekly happy hours, themed holiday parties and vibrant, youthful personalities across account teams. The CEO is passionate about the agency staff and his open door policy makes for unique relationship between senior level executives and other employees. Work schedules are generally flexible and pay is competitive. Account team's will enjoy a level of autonomy uncommon to most agency environments.
Cons
As the agency grows, it's bleeding strategic thought, talent and innovation. The idea of a 2-3 person client team servicing upward of 25-30 clients at a time seems impossible, but that's the model BCV chooses to employ. They'll tell you it can work provided the team focuses on scalability and understand that "some accounts will require more work than others." It's a lie. All accounts are weighted on their potential to leave the agency. Directors will push for more work on select accounts, tactic scalability and fee merit will be ignored. The sales team will sell services the agency cannot accommodate and leadership will leave it to the account teams to provide band-aid solutions. The potential of client loss breathes panic into the agency, which births insight-barren ideas that do more than satisfy the "at-least-we-tried" checklist. Even with a wealth of data available to develop cogent strategies, the creative output will lean on the whims of what one or two leaders thought was "really cute." There's also a palpable disdain for junior level staff, fueled by senior leaders who aren't quite sure how important that group is, what they should/shouldn't be doing or how to grow talent at the junior level. Juniors are routinely asked to do more, but more has no standard definition across accounts. If there was ever a critical need, it resides in the agency's ability to define the role of junior staff and provide a clear pathway for those staffers to succeed.