One of the most common challenges that I see agencies experience (and one that I experienced myself) as they grow, is creating an organisational structure that enables progression for top performers, but also:
- Maps neatly and efficiently to client delivery.
- Creates progression for people who don’t want to (or shouldn’t) manage people.
There are challenges that always appear as headcount grows, particularly if you’ve focused on hiring high performers who are ambitious:
- You get a bottleneck at manager level – there aren’t enough roles to promote everyone.
- You become top-heavy with senior folks who are progressing quickly.
- You promote people into management positions who may not actually be great managers.
- You have individual contributors who are hungry for progression who don’t want to manage people, so they don’t see a path for them.
- You build your structure around keeping your team happy, as opposed to what’s best for effective client delivery.
At the core of this is the most common issue at most companies, not just agencies – being a manager of people is the only way to truly progress and earn more money.
The accidental ceiling
Most agencies don’t set out to create a “management or nothing” progression path. It happens naturally as you grow, even more so if you’re a fast growing agency and you’re just trying to keep up!
As you grow, you start seeing a need for a bunch of people-related things:
- You need department heads to manage teams.
- You need client leads to own relationships.
- You need people on the SMT who can make strategic decisions about the business.
All of these roles naturally prioritise management capability: leading people, handling clients, thinking strategically about operations.
The visible markers of seniority become tied to these roles. Who’s in the important meetings? Who has a seat at the table? Who gets consulted on big decisions? It’s the people managing teams and clients who are perceived to be the most important – particularly those who manage people.
Meanwhile, your brilliant technical SEO specialist, your exceptional creative who comes up with the campaigns that actually win awards, your strategist who can see patterns no one else spots, they all hit an invisible wall.
They’re great at what they do. But if they want to progress, to earn more, to be seen as senior, the only path available is management.
So they start expressing interest in “managing people.” Not because they genuinely want to do it, but because they’ve worked out it’s the only route to progression they can see.
I saw this exact pattern recently. The technical specialist mentioned earlier had told their founder they were “open to managing people.” The founder’s immediate reaction was doubt, not because of any personal failing, but because whilst this person is a top performer when it comes to outputs, they do sometimes struggle to organise their own workload. Giving them line management responsibility would consume the time they should be spending on technical work, the thing they’re genuinely brilliant at.
But here’s the trap: if the founder says no to the management path, what’s the alternative? What does progression actually look like for someone who doesn’t want to, or isn’t suited to, managing people?
Most agencies don’t have a good answer to that question.
The retention bonus that didn’t work
You might think the solution is simple: just pay specialists more. Recognise their value financially.
Money alone doesn’t solve the perception problem. Other team members see who’s in the room when decisions get made. They see who gets consulted. They see whose voice actually matters when the business is discussing its direction.
The specialist watches junior people progress into management roles and wonders why their expertise, the thing the agency actually sells to clients, doesn’t seem to count for as much.
The real issue isn’t just compensation. It’s visibility and perceived value.
If your pitch deck says “our creative thinking sets us apart” but your org chart says “client management and operations are what matter for seniority,” your best specialists will eventually notice the gap.
They’ll either leave, or they’ll push for management roles they’re not suited for, creating a different problem.
The problem with trying to fix it
So, you decide to build an “individual contributor track” for highly skilled people who don’t want management responsibilities. Great idea in theory. I actually did this at my agency.
But it’s genuinely difficult in practice.
You can’t just create a “Head of SEO” role and hire someone above your existing technical specialist. That feels like bringing someone in to manage them, which will likely push them out the door. One founder I spoke to recently was explicit about this concern: if they hired a Head of SEO right now, their star technical SEO would feel undermined and probably leave.
You also can’t just give them a fancy title without changing the actual work or influence. “Senior SEO Specialist” means nothing if they’re still not in the strategy meetings, not consulted on business decisions, not given genuine input into how the agency operates.
The typical solution, “they can be senior without managing people,” sounds good until you try to define what it actually means day to day.
- What meetings are they in?
- What decisions do they make or influence?
- How does their progression path differ from someone on the management track?
- What does “senior” actually mean if it’s not defined by team size or client revenue responsibility?
You need to map this out concretely. Not just the job title and salary, but the actual responsibilities, scope of influence, and status markers that don’t rely on line management.
This is harder than it sounds. Especially when the person in question also wants to be seen as caring about “business things,” not just being “pigeonholed as technical.” The tension is real – you need them to focus on what they’re brilliant at, but they perceive that focus as limiting their career.
Building an individual contributor track isn’t impossible. But it requires genuine thought about what progression looks like when you strip away the traditional markers of people management and P&L ownership.
This takes time and headspace – the one thing that you don’t have when you’re trying to keep the wheels on a fast growing agency!
Starting to build a specialist track (without overthinking it)
You don’t need a perfect system from day one. But you do need to show your specialists that there’s a path forward. They need to know that there is a next step for them.
Start by mapping out the structure you’d need at 50 people, or roughly double your current size. This forces you to think about functions, not just individuals. What would a “Head of Creative” or “Principal Strategist” or “Lead Technical SEO” role actually do at that scale? What decisions would they own? What would success look like?
Then work backward. What elements of that future role can you give to your current specialists now, even without the formal title?
Bring them into strategic conversations. Involve them in client renewals and pitches for new business in their area. Make their expertise visible, not just to you, but to the rest of the team and to clients.
Show that you need them and that you value their core expertise.
Be explicit with them: “Here’s what your progression path looks like, and it doesn’t require you to manage people.” Show them the roadmap, even if it’s still being built.
Recognise that some specialists might turn out to be great managers. But make that decision based on actual capability and genuine desire, not because “it’s the only way up.”
In the situation I mentioned earlier, the founder has started working with their team to map out exactly this kind of structure. The goal is to create clear progression paths that don’t force someone brilliant at technical work into a management role they don’t want and might not be good at.
It’s not easy. But the alternative, losing your best specialists or promoting them into roles where they underperform, is worse.
This is genuinely hard work. There’s no template you can copy and paste, because the structure needs to fit your agency’s size, services and the specific people involved.
But the cost of not addressing it is clear. You lose your best specialists, either because they leave for somewhere that values them properly, or because you promote them into management roles they struggle with, creating a cascade of problems.
What typically happens in my experience is that specialists like this will bounce around different roles every couple of years because the truth is, not many companies have effectively solved this issue.
These specialists are often the people who make your positioning credible and your client work actually excellent. They’re the reason clients choose you over competitors.
If your agency’s pitch is “we’re different because of X,” whether that’s creativity, technical depth, or strategic thinking, your structure needs to reflect that. Otherwise, you’re asking your best people to believe something your org chart contradicts.
And eventually, they’ll stop believing it. So will your clients.