10 What if the agency’s star performer leaves midway through the project?
Maybe that agency you just hired pulled the old bait-and-switch, impressing you with their best talent only to replace them half-way through the project with less experienced and possibly more affordable resources.
Or they had all the best intentions, but their star designer or engineer decided to move on and work elsewhere.
Navigate the minefield
01 Remember, you hired an agency, not a person.
Any good agency is more than just its star players. If your project falls apart because one person left, you’ve got bigger problems than just that departure. In fact, a great agency will be very cautious to bet heavily on individuals. Their goal will be to serve their customers reliably as a team, not through individuals.
02 Check your contract
Did you sign up for a specific person, or for the agency’s expertise? If your contract mentions dedicated team members, you might have some leverage. As in any relationship, communication is key. Look for a frank conversation with your account manager and discuss your concerns openly: Why did the star leave? Who’s taking over? How will they ensure continuity? If you’re getting vague answers or promises that sound too good to be true, your BS detector should be on high alert.
03 Meet the “B-team”
Insist on meeting whoever’s taking over. You might be pleasantly surprised.
04 Trust, but verify
Give the new team member a chance, but keep a close eye on the project’s progress. If things start slipping, speak up early and often.
05 Consider it a stress test
If your project can’t survive one person leaving, it might not be as robust as you thought. Use this as an opportunity to shore up documentation, processes, and knowledge sharing.
Remember, star performers tend to shine brightest during pitches. The real stars are often the steady, reliable team members who show up day after day, solving problems and pushing the project forward. On the flip side, many so-called star designers and “10x engineers” may turn out to be poor cultural fits.
If the agency can’t recover from a key player leaving the team, it might be time to consider your exit strategy. But give them a chance to prove their depth first. A good partner will not only have experience dealing with such a challenge, but likely be prepared for it, too.
In the end, a truly great agency is like a well-oiled machine, not a one-man band. If losing one person derails everything, well… maybe it’s time to start shopping for a new agency. One that values consistency over star power.
Our take
Thanks to legends describing the awe-inspiring ascents to global fame of former tech startups like Meta and Google, many companies around the world have tried to adopt what they believe are the ingredients for über-success. Most famous among them might just be the tall tale of the 10x engineer (or 10x designer for that matter), first described in the 1975 book “The Mythical Man-Month” by Fred Brooks.
The idea that a single “rockstar” might just be as productive as ten “average employees” has been as pervasive as it’s potentially damaging. Not only is there little empirical evidence supporting the claim (productivity is a pretty hard thing to measure), but the focus on the individual over the team usually comes with unintended consequences like toxic behavior, poor team dynamics and morale, or a collapse in collaboration.
We try not to hire for output but for experience, the ability to communicate and collaborate, and a knack for creative problem solving. Not only is our output usually well above average – both in terms of quality and throughput – but a focus on collaboration also leads to better adjusted, more appropriate solutions. And team members are much easier swapped out if need be as well.
Example
Agencies like us invest heavily in finding, recruiting, training, and offering the best of the best. Losing a team member after all this effort sucks. There’s no two ways about it. And so it’s probably not a surprise that our account leads find themselves usually a bit nervous when they need to bring the bad news to a customer.
But you know what? More often than not, especially with our most loyal customers, the response is not only very reasonable and forgiving, but outright positive. Turns out our customers buy not only the time of experts from us but also our culture, our approach to training and upskilling, and our general ability to provide a fresh perspective. One of our largest and longest-standing customers has made it an explicit requirement for our collaboration: our contract states that the company wants to benefit from our culture of continuous learning.
Every new person that joins the team presents a new opportunity to engage with us anew. To reap that benefit of working with an external partner all over. This assumes that we are in full control of handover and onboarding so that new team members can hit the ground running as it were.