Who needs to be in the growth workshop, and what is the total time commitment?

The honest answer is: the people who shape how the market experiences your agency, and the people who make the decisions. I.e. everyone. In bigger agencies that might be the leadership team, and it always includes the owner. But in smaller teams it's everyone.

Here is why the owner cannot sit this one out.

The workshop is built around two lenses examined simultaneously. One group takes the external lens: the buyer's perspective, what the market actually sees, experiences and believes about you, spoken in the buyer's voice without defending. The other group takes the internal lens: the agency's observable behaviour, what you have prioritised, and what those choices signal to the market.

The diagnostic value is in the divergence between the two. Where the lenses match, the system is aligned. Where they diverge, there is a structural gap to address. In my experience the divergence is bigger than anyone expects, and occasionally uncomfortable to confront.

If the owner is not in the room, the most important divergence of all, between how the owner believes the agency runs and how the team knows it runs, never surfaces.

The commitment

Now the commitment, stated plainly because you should decide with your eyes open. Delivering the growth system into an agency involves pre-work, a two-day workshop, post-work, and six months of follow-on coaching (optional).

The pre-work means the two days are spent on diagnosis and decisions rather than data gathering. The post-work turns decisions into commitments with owners and dates. The coaching exists because of a pattern I have seen too many times: a leadership team leaves an energising two days, returns to client deadlines, and the whole thing evaporates within a month. The system only creates value if it changes what you do on ordinary Tuesdays. Six months of accountability is what makes that happen.

Can you do the workshop without the coaching? You can buy a gym membership without going to the gym, too. I would rather you did the whole programme or waited until you could commit to it, because a half-implemented system produces a fully cynical team, and that costs you more than the time would have.