I keep noticing something about the people who really make an agency move. It’s not their title, or their years of experience, or even their talent. It’s something quieter, that inner sense of ownership and initiative that makes some people move mountains while others wait for instructions. And the more I think about it, the more I realise how ironic it is that we use the same word for the places we work.
High agency people - what does that actually mean in the context of a marketing agency? I’ve always thought of “agency”, ironically as both the literal place we work and the inner force that drives how we work. So there’s this funny mirroring: we say “agency” to mean the business, but we also mean “agency” to describe personal ownership, initiative, self-direction. And in marketing, where everything changes fast, the people with real personal agency often shape the culture more than any process or system.
Let me run through what that looks like in practice.
Maybe lets picture a scene: an open office, half Zoom, half chaos. A new client just dropped a vague brief: “We need to go viral.” Half the team groans internally. But the high agency person doesn’t groan. They lean forward. They ask, “Okay, viral for who? What do they want to feel? What’s the story we’re really trying to tell here?” They don’t wait for permission to clarify; they create clarity. That’s the difference.
So maybe high agency is less about authority and more about orientation. They don’t see a mess and wait for instructions; they see a mess and start building patterns. They assume responsibility not just for their task, but for the outcome.
High agency doesn’t mean hyperactivity. It’s not just the person doing the most. Sometimes it’s the quiet strategist who sees a campaign unraveling before anyone else does and gently reorients the team before the crisis hits. High agency is not about motion - it’s about ownership. Ownership of thought, of energy, of results.
And in a marketing agency, ownership is tricky because the landscape shifts constantly. Deadlines move. Clients panic. Data changes. What was genius last week can look outdated tomorrow. So a high agency person isn’t just self-motivated, they’re adaptive. They don’t cling to what worked; they reframe fast. They ask, “Given what’s true now, what’s the next right move?” They can hold uncertainty without paralysis.
I think about those people I’ve worked with who had that quiet spark - you’d hand them a rough idea and they’d bring it back not just executed but expanded. They’d find connections you hadn’t seen, write the email that turns a good concept into a conversion engine, or pitch a line that unlocks the whole brand tone. And when something goes wrong, which it always does, they don’t waste time assigning blame. They move. They fix. They learn. Then they share what they learned.
And actually… maybe that’s another trait: they expand the agency of others. Because high agency isn’t hoarded energy. It’s contagious. A person who acts with initiative gives everyone around them permission to do the same. They make the room more alive. You can feel it in brainstorming sessions - ideas stop being “mine” or “yours” and start being “ours.” That’s when creativity accelerates.
But what happens when a marketing agency doesn’t have enough of those people? You get what I’d call a “low-agency culture” where everyone waits for someone else to make the decision. Where creativity becomes compliance. Where briefs get executed, not expanded. The energy feels heavy, bureaucratic, safe. You hit deadlines but not breakthroughs.
So maybe cultivating high agency in a marketing agency is really about psychological permission - people need to feel they’re allowed to take initiative, to push ideas, to question the brief. But leadership has to model that. You can’t preach ownership but punish deviation. You can’t celebrate creativity but demand predictability.
Let me ground that in an example. Imagine two designers. Both talented. The first one waits for feedback on every move. They produce solid work but always within the narrow frame of the last instruction. The second designer doesn’t just take the brief, they interpret it. They come back and say, “Here’s what I made, but also here’s what I learned about the audience along the way.” The first fulfills expectations. The second redefines them. That’s high agency. And over time, that person naturally becomes a creative lead and not because they asked, but because everyone begins to trust their compass.
Also I realised something else: high agency isn’t innate. It’s a muscle. People develop it through environments that reward curiosity and self-direction. So in a marketing agency, the best leaders design systems that teach agency and not control it. They give enough structure to guide, but enough freedom to explore. They encourage people to own not just their role, but their reasoning.
The more individual agency you cultivate, the more collective intelligence you create.
Let me loop this back to marketing itself because marketing, at its heart, is about agency too. We’re trying to inspire action in others. To help people see choices, to motivate movement. So maybe high-agency people resonate with marketing because they live what they sell. They believe in the power of stories to shift perception and behavior because that’s exactly what they do internally, every day. They don’t wait for narratives; they write them.
I suppose that’s why they thrive in chaos and they see chaos as raw material. They don’t just “handle” ambiguity; they turn it into advantage. That’s what makes them invaluable in an agency environment where everything depends on momentum and creativity.
But what about burnout? Because high-agency people can also burn out fast in low-agency systems. If the culture doesn’t allow their initiative to land, they get frustrated. They start to feel like they’re pushing against walls. And when that happens, their energy flips from generative to cynical. That’s the tragedy of misalignment: the people who could move the agency forward end up moving on instead.
So maybe the real mark of a great agency isn’t how many high-agency people it attracts, but how many it retains. That means creating psychological safety, clear purpose, and room for experimentation. It means leaders who don’t micromanage outcomes but nurture ownership.
Okay… so to summarise this slowly forming picture:
High agency people in marketing agencies act like internal entrepreneurs - they take ownership beyond their role.
They create clarity in ambiguity, move fast but with purpose, and inspire others to do the same.
They treat problems as raw material, not obstacles.
They’re adaptive, curious, and outcome-oriented, not task-oriented.
They expand the agency of others, building cultures of ownership rather than dependency.
And their potential flourishes only in environments that reward trust, autonomy, and curiosity.
Maybe that’s the essence of it. High agency in a marketing agency isn’t just about the person. It’s about the ecosystem that lets ownership become a shared language.
And when that happens… that’s when agencies stop being just vendors and start being creative organisms, alive with movement, insight, and purpose.
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