Grow or die. It's embedded in the capitalist psyche. But is there such a thing as "bad" growth? Or more to the point, "bad" profit?

Imagine a work environment in which you are judged solely by your effectiveness. Not by how many emails you answered, how many online meetings you attended, or how many hours you logged on a timesheet.

By definition, “average” means the center of the bell curve — the place where most people and companies live. Average isn’t always a bad thing, such as average life expectancy. But in the realm of business strategy, average can be lethal.

While advertising agencies are famous for innovating on behalf of their clients, only rarely are they recognized for applying original thinking to their own business model.

Dutifully filling scopes of work for clients is "thin value." You're doing what's asked, meeting your deadlines, and staying within budget. But all of that is expected; it's what competent agencies do.

If you’re frustrated by your prospective client’s desire to do an apples-to-apples comparison of agencies, there is a simple solution: stop being an apple.

Why do formerly successful agencies experience stall-out? It’s almost always because they are busy solving yesterday's problems instead of exploring today’s opportunities.

Like food on grocery store shelves, the services offered by professional service firms have a “sell by” date. There’s no law compelling you to disclose outdated offerings, but if there were, the menu of competencies in many firms might be significantly reduced.

During the Vietnam war, Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, used a notoriously flawed metric to judge the success of the war: body count. For years, McNamara tried to convince the American public that the United States was winning the war based on the fact that far more North Vietnamese soldiers were dying than American or South Vietnamese soldiers. But Americans could sense that despite these figures — even if true — this armed conflict was getting much worse, not better.

The way to win more business is not to offer the best price, but rather the best pricing approach.

Would you like to earn money while you sleep? Most of your clients do.

While most product and service companies have diverse ways of generating revenues, agencies and other professional firms generally don’t make money unless they’re recording hours on a timesheet. “Work a million hours, make a million dollars,” as the saying goes.

If you’re like most agencies and other professional firms, you’re likely missing a critical component in the model upon which you have built your business. Here's why having a cost structure is not the same as having a revenue model …

Advertising agency income “per unit of work” has fallen 40% during a steady 20-year decline. So reports agency consultant and advisor Michael Farmer, whose research demonstrates that agency staffs are being squeezed to deliver increasing workloads at a time when fees are declining faster than costs.

One view of the future of our business is that increasingly agencies will make the majority of their revenues from the intellectual property they create instead of the hours they work. The “work for hire” model that has persisted for the last half-century is becoming a less and less profitable way to make a living.

When you shop for a car, you’re looking for an “outcome”, not a set of components that comprise an automobile. Imagine visiting your dream car’s website and finding in place of a compelling description of the car and its main benefits, an exhaustive list of features.