The Agency Value Compass™ — Redesigning How Firms Create and Capture Value
How does your firm compare to others also going through the journey to redesign their value model?
What if we all had a compass that could point the way toward a more scalable and profitable future?
We do. It’s called the Agency Value Compass™.
The Agency Value Compass™
The Agency Value Compass™ is a directional tool we use to help agency leaders understand where their business currently stands in the evolution of value — how effectively they create it, and how successfully they capture it.
It reveals the patterns that hold firms back from scalability and the path to building a business model that rewards expertise instead of effort.
How the Value Compass Works
The Compass looks at two key dimensions that define every agency’s value model:
How you create value
How you capture value
Together, they form a simple but powerful framework for understanding your firm’s maturity — not by size or revenue, but by the quality of your model.
The Agency Value Compass™ helps agency leaders understand where their business currently stands in the evolution of value — how effectively they create it, and how successfully they capture it.
Value Creation
The value creation dimension measures how defensible your market position is.
It looks at how clearly your firm defines and communicates its differentiated expertise — the high-value problems it solves and the outcomes it produces for clients.
The more focused and outcome-led your positioning, the more value you create in your client’s mind — and in tangible business impact.
Agencies that create value well are clear about who they serve, what they do best, and why it matters. They make buying decisions easier — and pricing conversations stronger.
The value creation dimension measures how defensible your market position is.
Value Capture
The value capture dimension measures how effectively your firm monetizes the value it creates.
It evaluates whether your revenue model is tied to time and effort — or to outcomes, impact, and intellectual property that clients will pay a premium for.
The more revenue tied to results instead of hours, the more scalable and profitable your model becomes.
Value capture is where many agencies stall: they create immense value, but lack the systems, confidence, or structure to price it accordingly.
The value capture dimension measures how effectively your firm monetizes the value it creates.
The Four Archetypes of the Value Compass
Using the Compass, we can locate where your firm stands today, surface the risks of staying there, and align on the path forward.
Most agencies fall into one of four archetypes, each reflecting a distinct pattern in how they create and capture value:
Busy by Design™ – Overextended, effort-heavy, low-margin
Scaling with Strain™ – Growing fast, but constrained by operational drag
Expertly Undervalued™ – High expertise, weak pricing leverage
Distinctly Scalable™ – Differentiated, defensible, and profitable
Each represents both a current state and a roadmap for evolution.
The Agency Value Compass™ gives leaders a clear, objective way to see their firm as it really operates — not just how it performs.
And that clarity is what unlocks meaningful transformation: from effort-based growth to scalable, value-led impact.
→ Read about the four agency archetypes.
