In this episode, inspired by a newsletter from David C. Baker, Chip and Gini discuss the authentic motivations and realities behind agency mission statements and values. They emphasize that many agencies publish values that are either not reflective of their true operations or are overly broad and similar to others.

The hosts stress the importance of being honest about the core purpose of a business and aligning public statements with actual behavior. They argue that values should stem from the owner’s true beliefs and actions rather than aspirational ideals.

They also caution against spending too much time wordsmithing values for marketing purposes, as clients are more interested in results. The conversation touches on the impact of leadership behavior on agency culture and the pitfalls of misrepresenting agency values.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And, you know, I wanna talk about the, the mission of this podcast and Okay. What we’re trying to achieve.

Gini Dietrich: Okay. Our values, talk about values

Chip Griffin: and all of the values that I hold, hold dear that I’m sure you do as well.

Mm-hmm. That, that we want to embrace. Mm-hmm. As podcast hosts and purely doing this entirely out of the goodness of our hearts for our community, there’s no marketing benefit to us. There’s no thought leadership benefit. It’s all about you, the listener, and how much free stuff we can give you.

Gini Dietrich: I mean, some of it is, but yes, we do get value from it.

Chip Griffin: I mean the, the reality is I probably would just come on and talk anyway, even if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing for a business. ’cause it’s just fun.

Gini Dietrich: It’s fun. I agree.

Chip Griffin: But the reality is, I mean, you, you gotta have some real motivation behind it and it, and for this podcast, it’s marketing our respective brands, both personal and business, and sharing our insights.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: As an agency you also have mission, values, and purpose.

Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: But I can pretty much guarantee you that it’s not aligned with what you’re publishing and sharing with prospects, putting on your website, including in your proposals and all this kind of stuff. And this, this discussion is inspired by an article in David c Baker’s newsletter where he talked about value washing and, and he touched on a, a bit of this, you know, agencies and, and how they present their values.

But I want to go further than that because I’m particularly cantankerous today. And I just, I, I kind of get sick to my stomach when I see these, you know, missions and value statements and all that kind of stuff that agencies just love to put out there. Because the reality is for most agency owners, your mission is to make money for yourself as the owner, to give yourself flexibility to do what you want, when you want, from a time commitment standpoint. And all of the other things are side benefits of it.

You are not running a not-for-profit. Unless you are a nepo baby with a trust fund, you’re not sitting there purely doing good for others. You have to do good for yourself too. But I gotta tell you, I have yet to see a mission statement for an agency that says anything about that.

Gini Dietrich: I’ll share mine ’cause it does.

Chip Griffin: Do you publish it publicly though?

Gini Dietrich: No, I was gonna say now it’s not public, it’s not on the website, but like internally, everybody, especially on the leadership team, they know exactly what we’re driving toward. They know exactly, and it is not, I mean sure like ethical PR and cri, like doing good from a reputation standpoint and those things for sure.

But our mission is to become the best and biggest consulting firm that implements PESO. Well, truth be told, the only one, ’cause nobody else can do it, right? Because we own the copyright. But that, that is our mission. Like that’s what we’re working to achieve. And so, and, and we wanna work with the best and the brightest organizations in the world to do that.

That’s our mission. Is it published on our website? Absolutely not. Do our, does our internal team know? Yes.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, look, I, I think the problem is that we need to start by being honest with ourselves as agency leaders about why we exist and what we’re doing. And it’s fine to want to do some of the nice stuff as part of it.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yes.

Chip Griffin: But, but it has to start with an acknowledgement of what the core purpose of the business is. And when you start pretending that it’s that that’s not what it is, that’s where I start to have an issue. And then we start looking at what’s actually said publicly by most agencies about their mission and purpose and all of that.

And most of it is so broad, so vanilla, so similar to what everybody else is saying, that it, it’s, it doesn’t really serve a purpose. And I know I’ve, I’ve been part of, of agency conversations where there are, are deep, thoughtful, ongoing conversations about mission, values and purpose. Why? Why? And none of that means that you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t have, you know, a general ambition, an ethical framework, all of those kinds of things.

Sure. Yes. But you don’t need to burn a lot of time on it.

Gini Dietrich: No.

Chip Griffin: And you don’t need to work on wordsmithing it to share with prospects, because I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, your prospects don’t care.

Gini Dietrich: They don’t care.

Chip Griffin: They are not hiring you because of all of these things that you say, they, they don’t really care.

They care about the results you’re getting and how much it costs them.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: That’s the only two things they care about.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. I just had this very conversation

Chip Griffin: and as side benefit that you’re decent to work with.

Gini Dietrich: Sure. Of course. That they like that you have chemistry and they like working with you.

Yeah. Like they wanna show up, be able to show up to meetings with you and humans like other humans, you know? Right, right. I just had this very conversation with a client because she was stressing about her clients and some changes, and I was like, listen, they don’t care. They don’t care. As long as the work gets done, they’re still getting the same results or better.

They don’t care. So. Let’s, I, I understand you’re worried about it. I understand you’re stress, but let’s put that stress somewhere else because this bucket, they don’t care about. As long as you communicate it, the work still gets done. They’re still getting the results that they expect. You’re fine. Let’s put the stress somewhere else.

So, as an aside, but I agree with you, like, most of us go into business for ourselves because we know there’s a better way to do it and we wanna make more money. And for me, I have a problem with authority. So. And there may be others that, that feel that as well.

Chip Griffin: I think, I think a lot of, of business owners and entrepreneurs are unemployable for that very reason.

Gini Dietrich: Correct. Yes. So that that’s why we own businesses and there’s nothing wrong with that. For now, we live in a capitalist country where you can actually make money and it’s okay. It’s okay for you to make money. It’s okay for you to be profitable. It’s okay.

Chip Griffin: And, and I mean, profit itself is not a dirty word.

Gini Dietrich: No, it’s a great word. I love it.

Chip Griffin: There’s a fair argument to be had about is there, is there a point where the profit is too much? Where the compensation is too much? That it, it, it’s a, it’s a worthy debate to have at some point, but I can guarantee you that 99.999999999% of small agency owners don’t need to worry about that.

Gini Dietrich: And don’t have enough profit,

Chip Griffin: probably a hundred percent, but I’m just being holding open the possibility that there’s just some small agency out there that you know is, is really just rolling in it.

Gini Dietrich: And I will add that you probably 99.9999999999% of agencies don’t make enough profit. 5% profit is not enough.

Break even is not enough. 10% is not enough.

Chip Griffin: Well, particularly when that profit doesn’t even include the owner’s compensation. But that’s an argument that,

Gini Dietrich: right.

Chip Griffin: That we’ve had ad nauseum on, on this show and that I have ad nauseum with clients as well who, who like to count the profit while paying themselves zero zero. Right. And your profit margin, that does not count.

That does not count.

But I mean, you know, I, I think we also need to be mindful of the fact that a lot of the, the missions, values, and purpose kind of things that I see out there do not conform to how the agency even operates. So not only are you starting from a point where you’re not acknowledging what your real objectives are, but what you do say may not reflect the reality.

And it’s this, this goes along with, you know, when I get asked by agency owners, you know, how do I create an agency culture of X, Y, or Z? What do I need to do to establish this culture? And, and my first piece of advice is always, well, that’s what you need to do first, right?

You need to actually be echoing what you’re saying. You need, it needs to reflect what you’re doing, how you behave personally, and that establishes the culture. You don’t say that we have a culture of X, Y, or Z. You don’t say that we have these values and then assume that they just, you know, take root.

Your values come about because of what you and your team are actually currently doing internally and externally. Right. It needs to reflect what it is. You can say you want to change it for the future, but it should never be, your value statement should never be an ambition. It should be an accurate reflection of what the reality is.

And if you don’t like that reflection of reality,

Gini Dietrich: right, then you have to make,

Chip Griffin: figure out what you need to change.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right. I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but I… As I mentioned, I have a problem with authority and sometimes that includes clients, not often, but occasionally. And we had a client who we loved their marketing team.

We loved their chief marketing officer. She’s great. She and I are still friends. She actually lives down the street. Their CEO though was not a good guy. And I remember him coming to a meeting with us unexpected. He, he was not expected to be there, and he shows up to this meeting because he’s mad that the website copy doesn’t reflect the culture that he wants.

And I had this conversation with him about it. He’s like, well, I want to like demonstrate that we do rooftops for Cubs games on Friday afternoons and we have a beer cart and like all of these things. And I was like, but do you do that? And he’s like, well, no, I expect them to work 12 hours a day. We don’t do that.

And I was like, well, we can’t say that and then not have you with that. And he, I, we actually ended up parting ways with that client be because of this. Because he would not, I mean, he got very aggressive and unprofessional with me about it, but I wouldn’t step down either because I was like, no, like you can’t, you can’t say.

And he kept saying, but then we’ll get the brightest and the best that come in and wanna work here. And I was like, yeah. And then they’ll leave because all the things you promised them aren’t true. And he just, we, he and I could not, and we were butting heads big time. But I think you’re right. Like you can’t.

You have to live the culture that you want to demonstrate, that you wanna talk about, that you wanna publicly put on your website before you can actually do those things. And if you, you’re absolutely right too, that if, if you want to have a culture where you do rooftops for Cubs games every Friday afternoon or when they’re in town, or you have a beer cart or wherever it happens to be, great.

Do those things first and then you can start to talk about it.

Chip Griffin: And, and I would also, I would go so far as to say that in a lot of agencies when I look at their published list of values or whatever, that a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times those are actually some of their biggest weaknesses.

So when I see an agency that talks about how they value their team members, to your point, there’s a better than even chance that they’ve got some team morale issues. And they’re trying to spin it for themselves and make them feel like, you know, we, we are actually valuing it, but they’re not doing the things that they need to do in order to actually achieve that.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: Another pet peeve of mine and, and all, I, I would say this one is more often than not, when I see an agency’s website talk about the importance of ethics, that is almost always a red flag for me. Because I think the vast majority of the time that I’ve seen anything about ethical behavior, there’s a, a really, really strong chance that there is some variety of unethical behavior taking place.

Gini Dietrich: I agree. Yes, I agree with you.

Chip Griffin: And it’s definitely in the category of me thinks you doth protest too much.

Gini Dietrich: Correct. Yes. I absolutely think you’re right. Yeah. I have a theory about that, which I will not share here, but yes, I agree with you. That’s, that is definitely what’s happening. Yeah. It’s kind of like when you read job descriptions and it says things like, energetic employee candidates that don’t mind long hours. Like, you know, and you start to read between the lines where it’s like, we want 22 year olds who we can’t afford to pay and we expect to work 12 hours a day. And like, those are the things to read between the lines. Right? Yeah. Those are the kinds of things that you, that I, I think people are getting really smart too in these days where, especially Gen Z, they’re like, yeah, I’m, I’m not putting up with that.

I understand what you’re trying to say. And so I, I think, you know, just when, and we’re from my perspective as a communicator and I from, that’s the lens I look at things like if you’re going to communicate something, you have to absolutely live it. You can’t say it because that’s what you want or that’s what you aspire to.

You have to be living it.

Chip Griffin: And you’ve just given me a great idea for a future episode, it would be fun to just take a blind list of job descriptions, job listings.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, we should totally do that.

Chip Griffin: in the agency world and, and translate for people what what is actually being said there, because it’s sort of like real estate listings. You know, when it, when it says cozy, it means super tiny.

Gini Dietrich: Right?

Chip Griffin: When it says lots of potential, it means it would fail every code inspection possible. And, and there are a lot of those kinds of things that I do see in agency job descriptions that, that immediately tell you, this is a sweatshop.

Yep. You, you are, this is gonna be a miserable place, or

Gini Dietrich: we really don’t value our employees.

Chip Griffin: Right. Or, or, you know, your role here is to sit down, shut up, and do exactly what you’re told. Yep. And there are a lot of things in job descriptions that often make it pretty clear what’s really going on.

And it’s usually because they ran some past employee into the ground and they said, well, the way we’re gonna solve this is we’re just gonna tell them what they need to do upfront. And they don’t ever look in the mirror to see if their management style, if their behavior as, as leaders, as owners, as whatever contributed to it.

And so, your values are not something that you establish. They’re something that, that come from your behavior and the behavior of your team and the activities and the clients that you take on, right? And, and you can’t be putting things out there that don’t reflect reality because people figure it out and it just makes it worse.

So if you say that, you know, you’re looking for a diverse workforce and you don’t actually have one, that’s a problem. And I think David C. Baker specifically, I forget whether it was the same newsletter or a different one, where he singled out agencies that talk about a diverse workforce, but then you look and they, they have diversity in some ways, but not others.

Gini Dietrich: It’s all, it’s all white young women.

Chip Griffin: They all think alike. And, and, and that’s not, that’s not what you are actually, you, you’re saying something that doesn’t reflect reality. And so you need to understand why that is and whether perhaps you should make a different claim. Perhaps it’s not something that you want to actually make a claim about anymore.

Perhaps you need to change your behavior so that it, you know, more closely mirrors it what there are things that you need to do. But the, the bottom line for me is just that so much of this is rubbish out there and so much of it doesn’t reflect reality. And so much of it is a wish that is, is not rooted in what is actually going on.

And if we do not understand what our actual mission, values, and purpose are as a business, we have no business making public claims that don’t back that up.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Absolutely. And I think that you, you started to make this point, but I think it’s incredibly important for us as agency owners to understand that the values are derived from us personally, because we are the ones who are driving all of that.

So if you are, if you are living things that you believe are important, that’s going to come across whether or not you put it in writing, right? So. I think that’s, I think it’s really important for us to remember that. And if your values, if you’re trying to create a value for the agency that you may not mirror or don’t agree with, it’s not gonna work.

It’s just not going to work. So really understand that until you get to a certain size, and I would say it’s big, like it’s not 20 employees. It’s big lots and lots and lots of employees. Your values are derived from you personally. And that’s what you have. If you’re going to be thinking about this and you’re going to be publishing values and you’re going to say to your team, these are our values, really look inward to understand what your values are and what you stand for, because that’s what’s going to drive the, the business as well.

Chip Griffin: And again, it’s what you actually stand for, not what you wish or hope,

Gini Dietrich: right.

Chip Griffin: That you stood for.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: And, and I think that’s where we often get lost. Because we wanna sit down and we wanna put down a list of values of, of things that we aspire to. But that is very different from what, what we’re actually doing now in most cases.

Yep. There, there are times where we’ve already reached all our aspirations. Fine. Okay. If, if that’s you, kudos to you. You’re not, you don’t need to listen anymore of this episode. If you are like most of us, where you have aspirations that are beyond where you are at today, you need to understand where you’re at today first.

Yes. And you need to acknowledge that and work from that basis. And, and to your point, it all does start with the owner. Yep. I would say. Even in the largest independently owned agencies. So we’ll take the holding companies out of it, but Yep. But if you found the largest independently owned, no matter how many hundreds of employees they may have, it still is derived from the owner themselves.

And the reason for that is because what you model for your behavior, your direct reports will then model to their direct reports. That’s right. And so on. That’s right. And so if you are a micromanager, there’s a better than even chance that your own managers are gonna be micromanagers because it’s what they see.

It’s what they believe is expected of them. Yep. And particularly in the agency world, in the small agency world where most managers don’t have any real experience before their current management role that you’ve given them, they will absolutely mirror your behavior. So if you yell at them, they’ll yell at their team members.

If you’re inspiring, they’re more likely to be inspiring. Yep. You’ve got to be looking in the mirror more often and, and understanding that and not putting out all of this stuff that just, you know, reads like traditional marketing speak about your own business. Because nobody cares at all, but nobody cares, particularly if it’s not accurate.

Gini Dietrich: You know what I will challenge everyone to do and it won’t take you very long, but take all of the URLs for the websites of the agencies that you admire and, and then your own, and throw them into AI, your AI tool choice, and ask it to create a chart of what the values are. And what they, what, which, what, what each agency says they deliver.

And have the AI create a chart so you can see side by side comparisons. And I will guarantee you, to your point Chip, it’ll guarantee you that nobody is different. You can take that then and go, oh, geez, okay, now we get, we have some work to do, but really let’s not focus on our values, our mission, and our our vision statements for the website.

Let’s focus on our true differentiators. it’s not results driven and ethical. And yes, because those things, we all do those things. What makes you truly different?

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and they’ll all tell you by the way that their teams are their differentiator. Yes. Because that’s

Gini Dietrich: mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: Every agency loves to say that, but.

It’s not possible.

Gini Dietrich: Results driven. Team. Yep. Our people. Yep. They all our team. Yep. That, that’s exactly what they’ll all say.

Chip Griffin: Our, it’s all about our people.

Gini Dietrich: Okay. Do the work I wanna see. And then sending your results.

Chip Griffin: Please do. And maybe, maybe then we could have an episode where we walk through some of that and find out that they’re all exactly the same.

Gini Dietrich: They’re all exactly the same

Chip Griffin: that everybody has submitted to us.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: But yeah, in any case, I think that’s probably enough beating up on people today. We do this a lot now, maybe we need to be a little bit, we do, yeah. Kinder and gentler to the agency community.

Gini Dietrich: It’s okay,

Chip Griffin: but you know some someone’s gotta speak truth to it.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: And that’s what we do. So on that note, we’ll wrap this episode up. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.