What happens when you hit every KPI and the team still burns out? This one cuts into the tension inside agency planning: the difference between what you measure and what actually drives results. Host Grant Hultgren sits down with co-host Kurt Schmidt for a direct, sometimes dry, look at the unsexy work of leading ops when old-school KPIs no longer tell the whole story. They dig into the trap of benchmarking blindly, what management consistency really means, and how top teams are experimenting with incentives and org design. Real examples, not theory. If you’re tired of grading yourself on metrics that don’t move the needle, this episode spells out what to measure, what to ignore, and why your planning layer matters more than ever.

WHAT YOU'LL HEAR

• Why margin comparisons and classic KPIs often backfire when planning for agency growth.
• The difference between management consistency and micromanagement, and why most ops leaders get it wrong.
• How incentive models are evolving as agencies move from billable hours to retainers and outcomes.
• The big risk of optimizing output at the cost of engagement and retention.
• Actionable methods for aligning teams behind metrics that actually fit your business.

TIMESTAMPS 00:00 | Cold open 00:10 | Intro 00:20 | Co-host intro: Kurt Schmidt 01:17 | Are KPIs still useful? 02:00 | How most agency leaders set metrics 03:04 | The accidental path to agency ops 05:03 | Why classic metrics miss the mark 07:10 | Untaught skills and leading up 08:29 | Building your own success framework 10:21 | Parallax mid-roll 11:00 | The myth of good communication 12:04 | Consistency in management 13:49 | Communication and expectations post-COVID 15:59 | Team performance: focus and laggards 16:35 | When to hire, when to fire 17:12 | Why middle management is burned out 18:20 | Defining success and incentives in 2024 20:16 | Changing value models and performance culture 21:42 | How teams are experimenting with incentives 22:30 | The new value of "unlimited tokens" 23:21 | The struggle to measure value 24:23 | Outro and next episode preview 24:40 | Closing

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Parallax, Deltek, Promethean, McKinsey, Gallup, Gartner, Jeff Matlow, NASA, Oppenheimer, Anthropic

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