When More Isn’t Better: Why Bloated Agency Teams Kill Creativity and Productivity
In healthcare marketing, our biggest enemy isn’t who you think it is. It’s not MLR, shifting marketing budgets, or even the regulatory guessing game we love to blame.
It’s too many people in the room.
You read that right. And if you’ve ever watched a brilliant idea slowly suffocate under endless comments, edits, and approvals, then you’ve witnessed this tragedy firsthand.
Creative death by 1,000 cuts
I’ve been in the business long enough to say what nobody likes to say out loud: the fastest way to ruin great creative is to let everyone have a turn with the scissors. When too many hands touch a project, the work doesn’t evolve — it dissolves.
Someone waters down the edge. Someone shifts the direction. Someone deletes the coolest line in the whole piece because they wouldn’t have written it that way.
Before you know it, that showstopper of an idea becomes a safe, predictable tactic — one that any agency can come up with. The team wonders why the client isn’t blown away. And the client wonders why the agency can’t bring the heat they promised.
And the idea itself? Long gone.
Clients don’t want a parade. They want progress.
From the client’s perspective, nothing is more frustrating than hearing urgency in their own voice and glacial pacing in the agency’s response.
I’ve seen even the strongest relationships unravel, not because of bad work but because of slow work — the kind that tends to come from giant, overly complex teams where the process is king and speed is impossible.
Large teams can’t pivot. They can’t shift or adapt. They are beholden to the internal machine, not the momentum of the idea.
But when you build a team with expertise, accountability, and efficiency? You move fast without breaking the creative. You keep pace with the client. And you actually get better work because the people touching it are the ones who should.
Why small senior teams hit different
There is a very specific energy that comes from small, experienced teams. On small teams, like here at SFC Group, everyone has skin in the game. Accountability is shared, not avoided. When something goes sideways, there’s discussion — not finger-pointing. And there’s debate, partnership, and, most importantly, ownership.
On oversized teams? You get a lot of “not my job” or “let’s circle back next week.” Too many layers inside one idea leads to unnecessary delays and circular discussions that add zero value to the output.
If you need five people to comment on a headline, your problem isn’t the headline. It’s the team.
Empowering a small senior team to review and make decisions gives the work momentum. They know when to bring others in and when to keep moving.
How we’ve built the right-sized team at SFC Group
In building SFC Group, I’ve had one simple approach — start with senior leadership who can set the course, steer the work, and stay involved from kickoff to completion.
We don’t hand off projects like hot potatoes. We work shoulder to shoulder with clients. We assign the right people — not the most people — to get the job done.
Sometimes, that means a senior leader runs the project from start to finish because they’re the best person for the job.
Here’s one thing I know for certain — a smaller, sharper, accountable team will outperform a giant layered one every single time.
More isn’t better. Better is better. And in an industry where timelines are tight, stakes are high, and differentiation is everything — better is the only thing that matters.
More isn’t better. Better is better.
seriously