When I speak to agency founders, one of the biggest challenges I hear is that they struggle to extract themselves from the day-to-day running of the business. Even when they have a senior leadership team in place, everything still ends up back on the founder's desk.
They've hired capable people and given them responsibility - and yet somehow their senior team just won't step up.
After hearing this time and time again, my response is almost always the same - you need to be tougher.
The founder trap
Most agency founders built their business from nothing. In the early days, doing everything yourself wasn't just necessary - it was the only way to survive. That instinct is hard to shake even when the business has grown and you have people around you who are more than capable.
There's also a deeper issue. Many founders genuinely care about their people and don't want to be seen as the bad guy. They worry that holding someone to account will damage the relationship, knock confidence, or create tension in the team. So they soften the message, let things slide, or pick up the slack themselves. It feels kind in the moment. It isn't.
The uncomfortable truth: by absorbing problems that aren't yours to solve, you're not being kind - you're removing your senior team's opportunity to grow. You're also signalling that the standard doesn't really matter.
The meeting that goes nowhere
You know accountability has broken down when meetings become casual chats rather than updates. When the same issues come up week after week without resolution. When a senior person always has a reason why something didn't happen - but never has a plan for what happens next. When the founder is the one chasing, reminding, and following up on work that was supposedly delegated months ago.
If any of that sounds familiar, the problem isn't your team. It's that the expectations were never clear enough, and the consequences of missing them were never real.
Take the accountability test
Before you can fix the problem, you need to see it clearly. Answer these honestly. One "yes" is a signal. Three or more is a pattern worth addressing immediately.
- Do your weekly leadership meetings regularly end without clear actions and owners assigned?
- Have you solved the same problem more than once for the same person in the last 90 days?
- Could any member of your senior team describe their top three accountable metrics right now, without looking anything up?
- In the last month, have you completed a task that was clearly someone else's responsibility because it was easier than having the conversation?
- Do your senior people bring you problems - or problems with proposed solutions?
- Is there someone on your leadership team whose underperformance has gone unaddressed for more than one quarter?
- If you took two weeks off tomorrow, would delivery quality hold - or would things quietly slip?
The boss I never forgot
The CEO I worked for at my previous agency was a tough cookie. You had a job to do and you were expected to do it. If you didn't, you were held to account. But I genuinely admired him and thought he was an exceptional leader. His time was precious and he expected you to respect it. If you came to him with a problem, you'd better come with a potential solution too. That always stuck with me. Of course, if you were genuinely struggling, he was there to offer support and advice. He got the balance right.
What a real accountability conversation looks like
Most founders avoid these conversations because they don't know how to have them without it feeling confrontational. Here's the difference between a conversation that creates clarity and one that lets things drift.
The conversation that changes nothing
Founder: "How are we doing on new business this month?"
Senior Manager: "It's been slow. A few prospects have gone quiet and we lost that pitch last week."
Founder: "OK, let's keep pushing. Let me know if you need anything."
The conversation that creates accountability
Founder: "We agreed you'd hit £40k in new business revenue by end of the month. We're two weeks out - where are we?"
Senior Manager: "We're at £22k. The pitch we lost set us back."
Founder: "OK. What's your plan to close the gap, and what do you need from me to make it happen?"
Notice the difference. The second conversation starts from a shared number, not a vague feeling. It puts the responsibility for the solution back with the person who owns it. And it leaves the door open for support without the founder absorbing the problem.
Stop assuming. Start agreeing.
It starts with setting clear expectations. Whether you use SMART goals, OKRs, or KPIs doesn't matter. What matters is that every person on your leadership team knows exactly what they are accountable for and by when.
That means sitting down with each person and agreeing specific, measurable goals for the month, quarter, and year. Not vague ambitions - actual numbers, deadlines, and outcomes. New business revenue. Client retention rate. Team utilisation. Gross margin. Whatever is relevant to their role. Write them down. Review them regularly. Make them the basis of every meaningful conversation you have with that person.
A few principles that make this stick:
Set it in writing. Verbal agreement drifts. A shared document that both parties have signed off on creates a different kind of commitment.
Review it regularly. Monthly 1-1s structured around goals - not catch-ups - make accountability a rhythm, not an event.
Make it measurable. Gross margin. Utilisation. Client NPS. Revenue from new business. If you can't measure it, you can't hold anyone to it.
Own your part. If goals are consistently missed, ask whether the expectations were realistic and whether you gave people what they needed to hit them.
Stop solving their problems for them
Once those goals are set, your job is more straightforward - make sure people deliver on them. Meetings exist to check progress against those goals, not to drift into conversation, not to let things slide. When something goes off track, address it immediately.
And when a senior person comes to you with a problem, resist the urge to solve it yourself. Ask them what they think the solution is. That might feel uncomfortable at first - but it is the only way to change the dynamic. You are training behaviour every single day, whether you realise it or not.
Try this: when someone brings you a problem, respond with "What do you think we should do?" and wait. The silence is uncomfortable. That's the point. The answer they come up with will often be better than yours - and it will be one they own.
Who really pays the price
Poor accountability has a cost that most founders don't see until it's too late. Delivery slips. Clients get frustrated. Good people - the ones who do step up - start to resent carrying those who don't. The founder ends up back in the weeds, doing the job they hired someone else to do, and wondering how it came to this.
If the business eventually hits serious trouble, it's the team who suffers most. Redundancies, pay cuts, lost opportunities. The very people the founder was trying to protect by being nice end up paying the price anyway.
Your job isn't to be liked
That doesn't mean you can't be warm, generous, or supportive - the best leaders are all of those things. But your first job is to keep the business in good shape. That is what gives you the freedom to be flexible, human, and decent with your people.
The leaders people remember most fondly aren't the ones who let things slide - they're the ones who believed in them enough to hold them to a high standard. Like the CEO I mentioned. I didn't always enjoy being held to account in the moment. But I'm grateful for it. Being pushed to deliver made me much better at what I do. And that is what great leadership looks like.
