You cannot fix everything first. A capability audit can uncover plenty of things
By Simon Ellicott · October 9, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
You cannot fix everything first.
A capability audit can uncover plenty of things an Amazon agency could improve.
Scope.
Pricing.
Account ownership.
Reporting.
Sales handovers.
Senior capacity.
Founder dependence.
The temptation is to turn every finding into a project.
New templates.
New meetings.
New tools.
New responsibilities.
All added to the workload of the same people who were already stretched.
The agency now has an improvement programme, and even less capacity to deliver it.
This is where leadership needs to make choices.
Which issue is putting client relationships or cash at immediate risk?
Which recurring problem is consuming the most senior time?
Which change would make the next change easier?
The order matters.
If account expectations are unclear, adding capacity may simply give more people an unclear job.
If every decision needs founder approval, appointing an account owner will not remove the bottleneck.
If sales keeps making commitments delivery cannot support, a better handover template will only document the problem more neatly.
And if nobody has agreed what the client needs from reporting, automation can produce the wrong report faster.
Some fixes depend on decisions that have not yet been made.
That is why an audit should produce a sequence of priorities, with a clear reason for the order.
Start with the changes that protect the business and remove the biggest constraints.
Give each one an owner.
Make time for the work.
Define what should improve.
Check whether it does.
“Rewrite the SOW” is an activity.
“Sales, delivery and the client agree what is included, who owns what and how changes are approved” is the result you need.
“Introduce decision rights” is an activity.
“Account owners can resolve routine issues without waiting for the founder” is the result you need.
A completed document is useful only if it changes how the agency operates.
A good audit should leave leadership with fewer competing priorities and greater confidence about where to begin.
If your team could properly deliver only one improvement this month, which would make the biggest difference to the work that follows?