An agency principal who built his shop from a handful of people to over 100 in 20 years was once asked the secret of his success.
The expected answers would have been the work, the new business skill set, superior account service, or close client relationships. All of those were undoubtedly part of it. None of them was the answer he gave.
"Restless dissatisfaction," he said.
"What?"
"You heard me the first time. I never stopped reinventing this agency over my twenty years in business. Each year I looked back on what we had accomplished, picked the best, scrapped the rest, and became a new entity to start the new year. This applies to brand, systems, and people. If I didn't think any of these would make it, they were moved aside for better things."
The answer sounds aggressive at first. Think about it seriously and it starts to sound like the only rational response to the business we are all in.
The agency business has always been a commercial version of survival of the fittest. Today the pressure is coming from every direction at once. AI is commoditizing the production work agencies once charged premium rates for. Clients are reassessing agency relationships more frequently and with less loyalty than at any previous point in the industry. The tools, channels, and audience behaviors that defined best practice three years ago are already being replaced. An agency that assessed itself in 2022 and made no meaningful changes since is not standing still. It is falling behind.
Restless dissatisfaction is not a personality quirk. In 2026 it is a survival strategy.
Critically assess the agency each year. Keep the best. Dispose of the rest. It is the only way to break through in a market that will not slow down for anyone.
Here is another way to look at it.
A second agency principal, one who had built a team of largely long-term employees, used to consider that longevity a point of pride. He would mention it to prospects and potential hires as evidence of a healthy culture.
He changed his mind.
He still believes in loyalty. That has not changed. What has changed is his understanding of why people stayed. In many cases, he concluded, the reason people remained so long was that they were not held accountable when they did not perform. Remote and hybrid work has made this easier to miss. When people are not in the same room, underperformance can go unnoticed far longer than it should.
"I believe now," he said, "that in many cases our going easy on people for mistakes, missed deadlines, budget busting, even our treating them like family, leads to a culture of mediocrity, not meritocracy."
Restless dissatisfaction means never believing something is so good it cannot be improved. It means holding the work, the systems, the people, and the agency itself to a standard that rises every year. Demand the best. Remake the agency every year. The business will not wait for agencies that do not.
