The moment an agency begins to lose it is when it hires its first traffic manager. A traffic department acts as a buffer between the creative and account handling departments. It is designed to ensure work flows through the agency more smoothly, ensuring processes are duly followed and mistakes are eliminated.

Seems sensible, doesn't it? But it's not.

The trouble is that it becomes the moment the client is even further distanced from the creative process. Typically, account handlers have to arrange meetings with creative teams through the traffic department - even for some simple amends. The team spirit and sense of shared responsibility that often develop between account handlers, planners and creatives is fractured. Most critically, the responsibility for successful campaign management moves to people who are not directly answerable to the client. For example, a job is only urgent if a traffic manager says it is. The client, screaming for a fast turnaround, is not their problem.

Traffic departments, along with yachts at Cannes and 4 weeks to deliver initial concepts, belong in the 1990s. Nimbleness and flexibility are key to a modern agency's success and digital technology enables us to deliver on that. Creative people working directly with account handlers they trust is the best guarantee of great work that keeps a client happy. It's more fun, too. Account handlers have more responsibility and a better life. And creatives who win the trust of clients are more likely to win awards.

If you can't manage your agency so everyone works together and takes direct responsibility, it's not the size that's the problem, but the structure.