Written by Lynn Swayze
// A Lesson in Agency Growth I Learned in 2014… And Which You Can Learn BEFORE You Scale to Avoid Costly Mistakes and Missed Opportunities
Back in 2014-2017, I had two client experiences – one at an agency and another with a Coach – which cemented in my mind a concept I call “Barnacle Mentality.” And I wrote this back then to help me make sense of this phenomena. I’m sharing it today because well, younger Lynn had some wisdom.
Barnacle Mentality:
Sometimes in Expert Brands (agencies in particular), what I see happen is that due to hiring decisions, an individual (or team of individuals) feels secure in knowing, doing, or being “all the things” for an organization/division/CEO… and left too long, this causes a culture where growth is IMPOSSIBLE because this individual cannot get past their own need to feel needed.
At first, this behavior is necessary – even encouraged- because the business is so small and there are too many hats for the size of the team.
Yet as the organization expands and more individual roles and business processes are needed, the “Barnacle-minded” individual/team displays resistance.
Sure, on paper everyone says they love new ideas and changing group dynamics. But that’s only because the Barnacle-minded individuals are so used to agreeing with everything the leadership directs that they aren’t honest anymore.
Or they’ve done “their thing” for so long that they’ve become out of touch with anything else. It’s a comfortable status quo that has, so far, worked alright enough to get them where they want to go…
But won’t get them to the next stage of business growth.
In teams, it most often manifests first as a lack of communication, because one person (or a group of people) keeps all the info to themselves despite clear rationale that collaboration would be better suited for forward momentum. This lack of communication is not always conscious or intentional, yet still very real.
Secondary to that is a lack of forward progress. When one person is doing the work of 10, there is no mental energy left to plan new things or consider more efficient ways of doing work. There’s also little room for proactive work which is actually just as important as the reactive work, but not as “urgent”.
Also, the Barnacle subconsciously believes that new ideas (not their own) would jeopardize their role… rather than seeing that achieving the organization’s best interests (financial growth, for example) cements their role better than simply doing things as they’ve always done.
Third, it manifests as a lack of delegation. The individual or team believes that by keeping everything under their control, they’ll be seen as valuable. Or, they feel that because they know how to do it best, it’s better if they do it to get it done, rather than take the time to delegate and train. So they will take on all the work, work late nights, volunteer for tasks, and do the work of others. This causes other team members to feel like an unwanted part of the team or feel insecure themselves, because they are not “needed” as much as others.
Fourth, it manifests as a lack of cross-team collaboration. This is especially true when leadership has not created a culture of separated reponsibilities and collaboration between individual roles, causing mistrust. (Note that this is often accidental! No one intends for teams to not work well.) So if you need an entire team to make a new decision on a project, you’ll never get any consensus.
Agency Example:
I once saw this in an organization where the company grew from several dozen employees to several hundred in a year or so.
The entire company had pockets of members who refused change, refused to delegate, and refused to involve others in the loop. The organization became so stagnate that their growth ended up costing them money, rather than fueling more business growth. And high quality employees with a lot to offer left, which only encouraged mediocrity and status quo thinking.
The company has since stagnated in the Expert Business stage and recently, had to lay off the less-smart staff who tried to stick it out.
Coach Example:
This coach had an Executive Assistant who was everything to them… good at lots (including saying YES) but not great at specifics like marketing strategy, sales, or operations. So when that coach brought someone on to help take over growing the business… this “Barnacle” resisted. Including giving that new person a derogatory password, hiding information, hiding work products, and generally not collaborating. That EA is still with the coach, but other consultants aren’t.
So what can you do about it?
BEFORE YOU SCALE: It’s better to hire part-time operations staff one functional area at a time, rather than hire one person to share your smattering of operations mess. So hire a part-time or fractional marketing person, and then an accountant, etc until you have a team of full-time people you can then use to grow a department.
But if you cant and absolutely MUST hire a be-it-all-person (e.g. a VA/EA), go ahead and hire them, but with the FULL understanding (on everyone’s part) that their value lies in building the processes and documentation which will then be used to delegate some of the work to another person. Be sure to remind any Barnacles (person or team) that the goal is to grow the team… not to have one or a few people burn themselves out.
AFTER YOU SCALE: It’s usually too late after you scale, but if you’ve already scaled, be sure to identify which role your Barnacle(s) actually want to do… and put them there. Remind them that their value lies in doing one job well, not doing all of them and burning themselves out. If they can’t do this, then you might need to either find them a role where they can be the all-in-one, or let them go.