When you run a small agency, roles and responsibilities tend to be fluid. The same person who lands the client might also be managing the relationship and ensuring delivery happens smoothly. That flexibility is often an advantage ... until it isn’t. As an agency grows, lack of clarity around who owns what, or even what the functions are that your agency needs to scale, can slow things down, cause frustration, and ultimately impact both profitability and client experience.

That’s where a functional chart comes in.

A functional chart looks like an organizational chart, but instead of showing reporting relationships and which people have which roles, it instead defines who is accountable for which functions, regardless of reporting lines.

In a small agency, the same person might “own” multiple functions. But by using a Functional Chart, you make it clear the hats each person is wearing and ensure that as you grow, these roles can be distributed effectively to new employees. This, in turn can help with common challenges for small agencies like:

• Focusing Leadership Time Intentionally - Clearly defining who owns what makes it easier for agency owners to prioritize their time and delegate effectively.
• Identifying Hiring Needs - Identifying functions and accountabilities can distinguish where specialists (for small agencies this will largely be contractors or fractional help) are required versus where a generalist role can still cover multiple functions.
• Aligning Investment with Performance - Assigning measurable goals to each function allows leadership to assess where additional resources or process improvements are most needed. For example, if your revenue retention already exceeds industry benchmarks, and owning that function isn’t taking time away from other things, it may not require additional focus.
• Ensuring Scalability - Teasing out activities that are currently happening within an agency allows owners and operators to highlight processes that need formalization. If one person is handling both sales and client onboarding, for example, key details may be stored informally in their head, something that won’t scale as the agency grows.

Here’s an example of what a small agency functional chart might look like. Note that we at ServiceCrowd like to use the Visionary/Integrator paradigm as espoused by the EOS model of small business management:

Functional Charters

Once you have your functional chart mapped out, now you need to sit down and create a charter for each of the functions. The charter gives the following information about each function:

• Who currently owns it (this should really be a single person, and there should be a name in each box)
• What agency KPI it is accountable for
• What are the current responsibilities it is accountable for
• Any subfunctions that nest under it

By documenting the charters of each of your agency’s functions, you make it easier to understand exactly where everyone’s time should be going and easier to identify gaps when one person is so overloaded that they can’t attend to everything they’ve been assigned (a very normal thing for a founder at a growing agency to be!). The charters can also help in drafting a new job description and understanding the skillset of the people that will be needed to backfill those roles. Charters can even help someone who is reluctant to let go of some of their assigned functions as the agency grows and clarify what KPI or outcome they were driving, so that when someone else takes over, success or failure is easy to measure.

How To Use Functional Charts and Charters

Creating functional charts and charters isn’t about adding bureaucracy; it’s about making your agency work better. When you clearly define accountability, you make it easier to delegate, grow, and ensure that every function of your business is driving the right results.

If you’re looking to implement this in your own agency, start simple:

1. List out all the major functions of your business.
2. Define KPIs that measure the success of each function.
3. Assign person to each function. It is normal in a small agency for one person to be in multiple boxes. Remember, ownership does not mean doing every task; it means accountability to the function’s KPI. Make this descriptive first, and then, if everyone is on the same page, try moving accountabilities around amongst the leadership team. Maybe you can better balance the functions.
4. Clarify accountabilities so there’s no ambiguity around who handles what.
5. Review and evolve over time. As your agency grows, this document will need updates to reflect new roles, priorities, and business needs.

By taking the time to create and refine these documents, you’re setting up your agency for sustainable growth and clear ownership over the key drivers of that growth.

Curious how we typically take our functional chart and turn it into a charter? Download the Small Agency Functional Charters document here.