The Real Reason Our Clients Get a Better Agency — It Starts with How We Treat Our Team

Sign #1: Anonymity. Not Here. We Know Each Other as People

Lencioni's first sign of a miserable job is Anonymity. Which makes sense. In a past professional life, I spent a year or two in a cubicle form and not really visible to anyone.  The feeling that your manager and colleagues don't know you, see you, or care about you beyond your output. When people feel invisible, they disengage. And disengaged people don't do great work.

At RED66, anonymity simply doesn't exist. From day one, every team member shares a list of their favorite things — snacks, candy, drinks, flowers, restaurants, where they like to shop. It's a small thing, but it signals something big: we see you as a whole person, not just a job title.

Our team meetings go beyond the standard EOS personal and professional best check-ins. We include icebreakers, shoutouts, and headlines in every single meeting, every single week. We celebrate each other, call each other out for great work, and create space to just be human together.

Each person on the team also has a quarterly personal roadmap discussion. Together we review their unique genius, what they’re best at, passionate about along with their personal and professional goals over the next year. These are items we put on scorecards and track to support reaching those goals.

This matters for our clients because a team that feels known and cared for shows up with energy, creativity, and commitment. The enthusiasm you experience from your RED66 account manager and our specialists? It's real. It comes from a place of feeling valued and knowing we’re invested in their growth, contributions and impact.

Sign #2: Irrelevance. No Way! Everyone Here Knows Their Work Matters

The second sign is Irrelevance — the feeling that your work doesn't matter to anyone. Lencioni argues this is one of the most demoralizing experiences a person can have at work. If you don't know who your work impacts or why it matters, even a well-paying job can feel hollow.

We work hard to make sure every person at RED66 — from our account managers to our designers, writers, and SEO specialists — understands how their contributions directly impact our clients' growth. When a client lands a major lead from a blog post we wrote, or their website traffic doubles after a year of SEO work, we share that with the whole team.

We celebrate client wins — new leads, new clients, new hires, milestones — as a team. We also celebrate the ways we support each other internally. Because relevance isn't just about the client relationship; it's about knowing that the work you do for your teammates matters too.

For our clients, this translates into a team that's deeply invested in your success. We're not punching a clock. We're genuinely excited about your growth because we've connected that growth to our own sense of purpose.

If you have a team that works production or “shift work” little things like sharing how their work impacts their co-workers, customers, and bigger picture things like customer retention or profitability help give them a why and a what for. It can be about more than a paycheck.

Sign #3: Immeasurement. Can You Imagine No Goals? We Track Progress and Share It Openly

The third sign is what Lencioni calls Immeasurement. When people have no way to measure progress or success. When people can't assess whether they're doing well, they lose motivation and become dependent on subjective praise (or the absence of criticism). That's a recipe for anxiety and stagnation.

RED66 runs on data and scorecards, as most companies do. Every team member has clarity on their individual metrics, and each department has its own scorecard. But we don't just track deliverables and hours — we also check in on capacity. How are you feeling? Are you stretched thin? Do you have what you need to do great work?

Monthly and quarterly, we share revenue, new business, and other metrics important to the whole team. Transparency builds trust, and trust builds the kind of team that goes above and beyond. It’s not because they have to, but because they're all rowing in the same direction.

You'll recognize this same discipline in how we serve our clients. Monthly reporting, analytics dashboards, strategy review sessions. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. And we hold ourselves accountable to keep making an impact on our clients business.

For your business, what if you gave people a metric or a number they were accountable for? We’ve seen several production floors that track pieces or parts per hour, scrap counts, on-time deliveries, and things like that. Think about giving someone a number they can track to show impact in their work, and for the company.