You Can’t Optimise Your Way Out of the Wrong Identity

(A Strategic Provocation for Agencies in the Fog)

For years, agencies have operated, structurally, as factories. They built teams, refined processes, layered in project management discipline and measured health through throughput. Even those that adopted the language of consultancy often retained the same economic DNA: time, frameworks, leverage.

But they were not consultancies, just factories in sharper suits.

The underlying assumption was rarely questioned. Revenue and profit come from production capacity. Apply more capacity, charge more, protect margin. Value is assumed to follow. That logic worked while production remained scarce.

But production is no longer scarce.

AI has accelerated the shift, but it did not begin it. Delivery had been compressing for years, and platforms had already begun embedding optimisation. In-house capability was already expanding, and procurement not only required predictability but also more for less. Production mechanics had already become increasingly abundant and increasingly commoditised, and when production becomes abundant, capacity ceases to be a differentiator.

But there is always productisation.

As AI advances further and faster, productisation re-emerges as the answer. Codify the expertise. Standardise the output. Create repeatable units.

Yet the moment expertise is codified, it becomes replicable and AI just shortens that cycle further. Productisation may refine efficiency, but it does not redefine identity. It optimises the factory; it does not reimagine it.

This isn’t just theory; it was lived. I was involved in shifting an agency away from pure delivery economics. We stopped leading with hours. We structured engagements around programme arcs - cycles of achievement that moved clients forward in stages. Outputs still mattered, but they were no longer the anchor. The anchor was what changed in the client organisation as a result.

It created real space upstream. Conversations happened earlier. Decisions felt more considered. The work became less about throughput and more about alignment and value added.

But we never fully left the factory behind.

Parts of the business still operated on production logic. Larger clients continued buying in familiar ways. The wider group optimised for standardisation and efficiency. Two economic cycles ran in parallel - one oriented around judgement and orchestration, the other around capacity and delivery. And when pressure increased, the gravitational pull of the factory strengthened.

We were pulled back, too.

Not because the upstream model was flawed. Not because clients rejected it, in reality, they preferred it. But because the factory is easier to measure. Easier to manage. Easier to defend internally.

In uncertain markets, factories feel safer than lighthouses.

Factories build, whereas lighthouses do not build at all. They mark danger. They illuminate the coastline and create orientation in poor visibility. Their value lies not in throughput but in revealing context, helping others see where not to sail and where safe passage might lie.

The judgement still belongs to the sailor. But without orientation, judgement falters.

Just like the sailor, agencies are now entering the fog and at the same time as their clients.

The agencies that endure will not simply be those who adopt new tools or adjust pricing models. They will be those that restore orchestration - where intelligence flows rather than sits; where capability, clarity and customer fit strengthen base performance; where leadership attitude multiplies rather than constrains.

In such organisations, value does not emerge from headcount. It emerges from alignment. This is why layering consultancy language onto factory economics rarely works. Traditional consultancy has often relied on time-based leverage and codified frameworks just as heavily. Rebranding does not redesign economic DNA.

The real question is.

Are you willing to relinquish factory identity?

That means questioning some long-held comforts: utilisation as a proxy for health, headcount growth as validation, retainers as security, frameworks as shorthand for judgement.

It also means accepting something harder. When identity wobbles, talent does not always transition neatly to something better. Sometimes it is made redundant. If the factory needs fewer hands and the lighthouse requires different capabilities, the shift is not seamless.

In my earlier piece, I argued that agencies were optimising capacity in a world that no longer rewards it. This is the extension of that thought. Optimisation is not neutral. It reinforces identity. It makes the existing model more efficient, and therefore harder to question.

But there is a limit.

You can only optimise a factory for so long before there is nothing left to refine. What you cannot do is optimise your way out of the wrong identity.

Fog does not reward the most efficient factory. It rewards those who find a new way through it.