(Editor’s note: This is the ADMIN function treatise that follows AIC #179’s exposition of how to get yourself out of client delivery. This is part of our Functions, Not Activities concept that is at the very heart of my WTF Agency Method.)

Like, I'm sure many of you are, I am gifted with ADHD. This makes me capable of accomplishing almost anything. It also makes me incapable of doing a lot of shit that a business owner just ought to be able to do.

Throughout my professional life, there have been two versions of me:

So, I have been really good at figuring out new services, new sales process, new positioning, new messaging, new technology. I've been really good at all of that stuff. (If you haven't noticed, the through line there is new, which for me means interesting, exciting, holds my attention, challenges me…)

At the EXACT same moment, I have been terrible at getting really basic shit done, like bookkeeping, payroll, taxes, paperwork, invoices…that stuff bores me so much that I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a chopstick than reconcile my month-end books.

in my first agency, I was coming up with new ways to do things, new things to sell, new kinds of customers to serve, new value propositions. There really wasn't anything that I could not figure out how we could have an impact on our clients.

As I’ve mentioned before, I I didn't have a really strong management foundation. I didn't have the right mental model of entrepreneurship. I kind of assumed that the CEO ought to be involved in everything.

So, stupid ol’ Tim just kept on loading himself up with more client work, more strategy, more transactions to reconcile, more invoices to send out. I was so overloaded that I could only focus on the things that gave me joy, which was all the new stuff…

There were a myriad of reasons, but that agency, after 4 years and a 7 figures in annual revenue (and that was in 2001-5 when $1mm bought you a whole lot more than it does today…) came crashing down because of my administrative failures. I will just illuminate some of them:

There were so many more that I won’t bore you with my incompetence, but let me give you the outcome:

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And you know what? When I started my second agency, I was still flying fast and loose with things. I was better (send out invoices on time, paid taxes on time, etc) but it wasn’t because I had mastered the admin beast. I was just running a tiny bit faster than disaster was chasing me.

I met with my attorney one day for lunch. We went to a pretty nice spot in downtown Boston - much nicer than I would have picked. Right after we finished eating, he said “Tim, you are a REALLY smart guy. It seems like your business is going well.” I was feeling a little a little flattered, so I started smiling. His face changed and he said, “So why the hell haven’t you paid your invoice in 5 months?”

I won’t go much further than to say that was the last afternoon he was my attorney, and I paid his bill the following day….by emptying out my personal bank account. My wife was THRILLED.

I know if was time to get my shit together.

If you don’t know what the Eisenhower Matrix is, hang tight. It's basically an organizational framework where you decide that something is important, not important, urgent, or not urgent. You throw your tasks in there and it helps you prioritize.

It’s kind of a magical way of thinking - it clarifies what belongs on your plate by how important it is and how far away the deadline is. It's a fantastic way to look at your day, your week, your month. Jumping into the Eisenhower Matrix with both feet saved my second agency.

I learned how to delegate tasks in a meaningful way. But I wasn't as free or as high impact as I really wanted.

As a CEO I kept on holding on to things that I should have let go of…there were things that I did simply because I was the one who did them. I never really dove into whether I ought to be the one to do them. It don't mean to, as I was configuring invoices and sending them out to clients, that this was a waste of my time. The invoices weren't worth more because I sent them. In some ways, they were worth less. I was spending my Friday night gathering all the data and information so I could make the goddamn invoices. So I invented The Kilroy Matrix:

I started from the idea that I added ZERO value to invoices. Then I realized I added zero value to payroll, and bookeeping, and choosing a health plan.

There were some places where I made things WORSE. if I dropped into a client call, I might inadvertently throw off the strategy or agenda with my different point of view or perspective. If I poked my head into an ops meeting, just because I was the CEO, I inevitably sucked all the oxygen out of the room and nothing on the actual agenda got accomplished. Later, when we had a sales team, my in-meeting contributions during sales presos was a net negative because I would want to upsell or cross-sell or offer up something that I wanted to experiment with, regardless if the team knew about it, or felt confident in our ability to deliver.

I had to step back from what I COULD do, and had to intensely focus on what I SHOULD do. Over time, the rubric became simple:

My agency became better because my team wasn’t waiting on me to get my shit done. They had more ownership.

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Well, sorta/kinda. The act of letting others do things is a tricky thing. You have to trust in them, but more importantly, you have got to understand that their competence is a function of your clarity.

You have to understand the outcomes that you need to create, and understand the inputs required to create that outcome. For instance, when I shouldn’t have been in charge of sending invoices, I needed to understand all of the inputs needed to create an accurate invoice, and identify where all of that data came from.

That’s what my job should have been - figuring out what the essential ingredients were for success for a particular task, THEN my job should have been to run that task through The Eisenhower Matrix, The Kilroy Matrix and finally a RACI Matrix.

RACI stands for RESPONSIBLE, ACCOUNTABLE, CONSULTED & INFORMED. We can skip the tail end of the acronym for today, but we need to focus on ACCOUNTABLE & RESPONSIBLE.

As an agency leader, you are held accountable for all sorts of stuff - growth, profits, payroll, etc. But functionally, you shouldn’t be RESPONSIBLE for much of what constitutes the INPUT and the operation of the machine that creates the outputs for which you are held accountable.

It’s kind of a mindfuck that perhaps the very best way to achieve the results you are held accountable for is to remove yourself from almost all of the machinery that creates .

Architect isn’t exactly the right description, because much of architecture involves deep knowledge of materials, building codes and how things are actually built. I want you to think of your role as more of the architect who has the vision for the look, feel and function of the design.

You become the designer of outcomes, the designer of desire, and the designer of “Yes…that’s EXACTLY what we wanted…”

To get to that point, you need to have a deep understanding of how houses are built - from site selection, to structural elements, to an understanding of air and light, and a deep understanding of the mechanics of building.

That experience allows you to create a machine that develops desirable designs that are feasible.

It’s terribly inefficient for a a visionary architect to build their design and then be tasked with understanding the R values of various building materials, because that makes the work linear and subject to bottlenecks. There are developments in building materials all the time. There’s too much change to keep up with as you run your organization and your team.

Your focus has to be on the outcome and not the process that creates the outcome. You are accountable for the outcomes, not the process that creates the outcome.

When you are in the role of CEO, you aren’t thinking about process and steps. You are thinking “Does my delivery team (even if is just me) have all the resources to succeed?”

When you start to work on the task, you shift from “resources and inputs” to “process and output fidelity”. The former is accountable for the function, and the latter is responsible for doing the activities that constitute the function.

This is the way to get out of admin hell.

We start with the Eisenhower Matrix, which is essentially a guide to what needs to get done when, and roughly by whom.

The Kilroy Matrix tells you if you, as the CEO, own something of if you are tasked with making sure that everything that is on the Eisenhower Matrix has the resources needed to succeed.

Now you are ready to move from tasks and to-dos towards a function that you manage. To effect that change, take the prioritized tasks via Eisenhower, the executive ownership via The Kilroy Matrix, and turn it into a repeatable clear process via RACI.

Easy, right?

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