The gaping hole when efficiency is prized more than judgement.

A scene familiar to any agency leader: a critical problem with a critical client, or a crunch point in the year-defining pitch. The account handler comes asking for direction – what should be done? Relieved to have an answer, they leave quickly, keen to get on before more time is wasted. Underneath, feeling uncertain not just about how it will play out, but why this way is best.

The account handler can't ask why this way is best because asking feels like weakness, plus the question might land as criticism. The senior can't explain because often it's just a judgement call, gut feeling from years of experience. They aren't used to explaining, so it feels like defending. Unintentionally, agency culture conflates curiosity with criticism and explanation with exposure. So the system goes on efficiently reproducing the very gap between doing and understanding that it desperately needs to close.

Both parties get what they think they need in the moment, at the cost of what's needed in the long run.

This gap – between doing and understanding – has always been a career millstone around the neck of good account handlers working with experienced but overstretched seniors. Still true now but not just career-limiting. As AI takes care of the execution, the need for sound judgement is what remains.

The gap is not only bad for business – it's agency existential.

The leaders I've seen break this pattern do something deceptively simple. They explain their reasoning, even when it's just a gut feeling with no clean answer. They make it explicitly safe to ask why, not just what. And this shifts the register entirely: explanation stops feeling like defence, curiosity stops feeling like criticism, and the invisible decision becomes visible.

The account handlers who close the gap do something equally simple, and equally hard. They notice the double fear rather than bury it. They ask for the why, not just the what – framing it as wanting to learn rather than questioning the call. And they start reverse-engineering decisions around them in real time: what did the more experienced person see, what were they weighing up, what you missed.

It took me years as an account handler to appreciate the gains from asking for the reasoning, not just the answer. And as a leader, to understand that explaining my thinking wasn't a sign of weakness – it was my job. Worth saying out loud that some of the biggest lessons in account management can be learned in days rather than years on the job.

The tone is always set from the top. Leaders who get this right multiply the quality of decisions their whole team makes. They don't keep their people dependent. They aren't afraid of doing themselves out of a job.

The judgement and reasoning are nearly always there. But they're not always shared if nobody thinks to make them visible.