Want to scale your agency, but your team feels overloaded by dozens or even hundreds of clients? It might be time to shift to a “Pod” team structure. It’s essentially having more than one “agency within the agency.”
At agencies, a modular Pod structure consists of small, self-contained teams dedicated to specific client groups. Each pod has the capacity to serve their assigned clients independently. The exact team lineup will vary—but let’s look at a common approach.
A “sample” pod of 3-6 people
Imagine a team that includes 3-6 people—an Account Strategist (who serves as both Account Manager and Client Strategist), a designer, a developer, a copywriter, and a project coordinator—managing the entire client journey.
In this structure, each pod functions autonomously, giving teams flexibility while giving clients a high-touch, dedicated experience. But while a Pod structure has many advantages, it can also introduce new problems.
Balance the pros and cons
If you’re thinking about switching to a Pod structure—or you want to optimize your current Pod model—let’s weigh the benefits, avoid the pitfalls, and find an approach that supports growth and team satisfaction.
Note: In this article, I’ll use upper-case “Pod” when I refer to the type of structure, and lower-case “pod” when I’m referring to a specific (or hypothetical) pod at an agency. If you’re on the fence about Pods, see more about team structure in general—including several other models to consider.
Why Consider a Pod Structure?
The Pod structure is popular among agencies seeking scalable growth without losing the personalization and Warmth that sophisticated clients need and want. Here’s why many agencies are making the shift:
- Scalability with Flexibility: A Pod structure enables scalable growth since each new pod can manage a fixed set of new clients. As your client roster grows, you can add pods rather than overextending existing teams. It’s hard to successfully serve 50+ clients in a traditional structure, but it’s doable with Pods—because each pod might have only a few clients. If you have a larger number of small “maintenance” clients, they might all work through a single maintenance-focused pod.
- Improved Client Experience: Each client gets a dedicated team that knows their business well, resulting in faster responses, stronger relationships, and better-tailored strategies. Clients feel special, and they’re more likely to stick around.
- Greater Accountability and Ownership: With a small, dedicated team focused on specific clients, there’s less room for ambiguity. Each pod has clear ownership over its clients’ success. This tends to improve accountability and make team members feel more ownership of their work. It’s harder for people to “hide” in an ever-changing team lineup.
Building a Pod Team: Roles and Responsibilities
A typical pod includes roles that allow the team to operate independently across various project types, without constantly relying on external resources. The exact roles depend on the services your agency provides.
Here’s an example of roles you might include in each pod, if you do a mix of marketing and development:
- Account Strategist: Leads the pod, while combining the roles of Account Manager and Client Strategist. They’re responsible for guiding client strategy, managing budgets, and coordinating efforts within the team. They might also do UX design, unless you have dedicated UX designers. At development-oriented agencies, a Project Manager might serve as the pod lead, with others handling strategy.
- Designer and/or Developer: Handles visual and technical work, ensuring design and functionality align with client goals. Depending on your agency’s business model, you might have full-stack developers, or separate front-end vs. back-end developers.
- Copywriter: Creates messaging that resonates with client audiences. Might also delegate some writing to an outsourced content agency.
- Project Coordinator: Manages timelines and project flow (and day-to-day budget consumption), keeping everything on track. Depending on the level of complexity, you might instead have a more senior Project Manager, too.
The smaller the pod, the more likely people are to be generalists. An agency that does occasional development work might employ full-stack developers, and project coordinators who also do Quality Assurance (QA). In contrast, a dev specialist agency might have back-end developers, front-end developers, QA specialists in each pod, with a devops person who floats between teams. Speaking of floating…
How support non-core services: “Floating” or “shared resource” roles
Depending on the volume of revenue for each service, you may also consider flexible roles that operate across pods. For instance, if you only occasionally do video work, you might have a “floating” videographer who can jump in when a pod needs specialized skills.
In contrast, a video-focused agency might have a dedicated videographer—or more than one—in each pod. And a PPC-oriented agency might have multiple PPC specialists in each pod. This helps illustrate why there’s not a single “standard” pod lineup.
Benefits of a Pod Structure at Agencies
Agencies enjoy several advantages from the Pod structure. Here are five in particular:
- Easier to Scale the Agency: As I noted above, it’s hard to profitably scale an agency beyond 30-50 clients without a Pod structure. In contrast, Pod-based agencies can [theoretically] keep adding new pods as they grow. This can help you expand to new industries, too—for instance, you might have one pod for home services and another for legal marketing.
- Improved Client Experience: Closer client relationships—and consistency among team members assigned to an account—make it easier to retain clients. Clients are less likely to have to “re-explain” things to the team. And if you have clients who are especially concerned about trade secrets, you might assign their biggest competitor to a different pod.
- Autonomy for Pod Leaders: Each pod leader (usually an Account Strategist, or sometimes an Account Manager or Project Manager) gains significant authority over strategy, budget, and client relationships. This autonomy builds a strong sense of ownership and responsibility, which can lead to higher job satisfaction and improved team morale. It also creates career paths for your team—for instance, someone might get promoted to lead a pod after a colleague leaves.
- Focused Workflows: With a dedicated lineup of clients, there’s less “context switching” between accounts. This improves delivery efficiency and reduces team stress. This also makes it easier to balance onboarding demands, since your head of delivery can decide which pod is the best match for a new client.
- Clearer Accountability: Since each pod serves a specific subset of clients, you can compare performance across pods. For instance, a single pod might handle 1-6 clients (depending on the size of each client). In contrast, a non-pod agency might have a pool of employees supporting a mix of 20-50 clients or more. Since pods are self-contained, it’s easier to compare performance across teams.
Potential Pitfalls of a Pod Structure
Despite the appeal, the Pod structure also comes with new challenges. Here are potential downsides to Pods—and ways to address each concern:
1. Load-balancing across pods
One pod might be over-capacity (due to client upsells), while another might be under-capacity (due to clients who’ve cut their budgets or left the agency entirely). This imbalance can lead to inefficiency and potential burnout. Ideally, clients stay within their assigned pod to preserve institutional knowledge—but this can create “load-balancing” bottlenecks.
Solution: Establish a resource-sharing system to allow for temporary support between pods when demand spikes. Alternatively, consider a buffer system where certain team members can “float” between pods when workloads fluctuate.
2. Role stagnation and retention issues
Each pod typically has 1-2 people in each role, leaving limited room for growth. For ambitious employees, this lack of upward mobility can be frustrating.
Solution: Create alternative growth paths, like skill development programs or project-based promotions that allow employees to grow their expertise without necessarily climbing a traditional ladder. For example, an experienced designer could mentor junior designers in other pods, create cross-pod training programs, or lead high-impact internal projects that span multiple pods.
3. Client monotony and team fatigue
Working with the same subset of clients can feel repetitive, which can eventually lead to employee burnout. Team members may crave variety to keep their work stimulating.
Solution: Consider occasionally rotating team members between pods, or give them special assignments that break up the routine. For instance, your lead developer might collaborate on initial architecture decisions with a developer in another pod. Or if it fits your business model, you might have a “maintenance client” pod that handles 20+ or 50+ past clients who need occasional help—or a pod that only does project-based work.
Key Considerations for Transitioning to a Pod Structure
Moving to a Pod structure at your agency requires careful planning. Here are several considerations for you and your leadership team to keep in mind:
1. Choose the right pod leaders
Since pod leaders manage both client relationships and internal coordination, they need to be skilled in client strategy, project management, and team leadership. Not every employee is ready to lead a pod, so be selective and ensure leaders are equipped to handle the responsibility.
Action Step: Develop a training program for pod leaders to prepare them for their multifaceted roles. This program could cover client strategy, budget management, and team dynamics.
2. Determine pod sizes and capacity
Pods typically include 3-6 people, but the exact size depends on your client needs, service offerings, and team capacity. If a pod becomes too large for your agency, you lose the benefits of a close-knit team. And if it’s too small, you’ll constantly need to supplement it with temporary team members—which can defeat the purpose of building long-running client relationships.
Action Step: Start with a “pilot” pod to find your optimal pod size, and make adjustments based on performance and feedback (from both clients and the team).
3. Balance specialized vs. generalized roles
Some roles may need to operate across pods due to specialized skills or sporadic demand—like video production, conceptual design, or software architecture. However, too many shared resources can blur the boundaries between pods, diminishing the sense of autonomy.
Action Step: Clearly define which roles are pod-specific and which are shared resources. For shared roles, create a process to avoid overloading individuals… and to avoid a sense of favoritism in certain pods always getting the “best” shared resources.
4. Establishing cross-pod collaboration and communication
Pods can become isolated “silos” if not managed carefully, which can create inconsistencies in client experience and internal communication breakdowns. And people in SME or “technician” skillsets can atrophy, if they aren’t working with others like them on a regular basis.
Action Step: Schedule regular check-ins between pod leaders to align on best practices, challenges, and shared resources. Encourage pods to share insights and feedback to maintain alignment across the agency. And find ways for SMEs to stay connected with each other, to share skills and encouragement.
Final Thoughts: Should Your Agency Use a Pod Structure?
The Pod structure offers a scalable way to manage client work without sacrificing the high-touch service that many clients expect. But it’s not the right solution for every agency.
Pods require strong leaders, clear workflows, and flexibility to adjust when work fluctuates. When implemented well, Pods can unlock growth by empowering small teams to deliver stellar results with minimal dependency on other departments.
If your agency is ready to make the shift, start small with a single pod and scale up. Monitor how the model works in practice, gather feedback from clients and team members, and adjust as necessary.
With the right strategy, a Pod structure could be the key to sustainable growth and satisfied clients—and ultimately, a more resilient agency. If you want a future exit, this can grow your valuation, too.
Get expert advice on whether the Pod structure is right for you
Want an expert “reality check” on whether to pursue a Pod structure? Do my Agency Growth Diagnostic project. I’ll review your current situation—your goals, your team, your clients, your schedule, and more—and recommend Quick Wins and longer-term solutions.
I’ve worked directly with hundreds of agencies, so I can typically recommend your new path forward in just 4-6 weeks. And if you like, we can do a followup project where I help you make the shift. Learn more here, and then get in touch.
Question: Would your agency benefit from shifting to—or optimizing—a Pod structure?
