How Do You Manage Change in a Growing Agency?

“There’s been a lot of change happening recently,” says Zoë Ogden, people director at Impression. “Not because things are bad; it’s just the evolution of the agency.”

For Impression, that evolution has meant a significant structural shift.

The agency moved from a channel-led structure to a centralised client services model, brought in two managing partners from global networks, and began working with bigger, more ambitious brands than ever before.

That’s quite a lot of change to land at once, even for an agency of Impression’s size, which spans 125 people across four offices in Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds and London.

And inside the business, not everyone experienced it the same way.

“When you’ve got people who remember when you were a 40-person team,” Zoë says, “they sometimes have a wobble and think, ‘Are we losing our soul?’”

Managing that emotional shift became the real challenge.

Zoë and the leadership team leaned heavily on communication: weekly leadership videos, open Q&A sessions, drop-ins, and structured updates across every office.

The goal wasn’t to eliminate uncertainty entirely, but to make sure nobody filled the silence with their own narrative.

“If you don’t communicate,” Zoë explains, “people will create their own story about what’s happening.”

Alongside the structural shift, the team also introduced a skills framework across the business, creating clearer expectations around progression and development.

When the framework finally launched after months of preparation, the response was almost silent.

“By the time we rolled it out, no one cared. There was tumbleweed,” Zoë laughs.

In change management terms, that silence was the sign the groundwork had paid off.

In this session, Zoë will share how Impression managed this transition – and what it really takes to land major organisational change without losing people along the way.

👉 Who is this session for?
Agencies with 50+ people, or those actively scaling towards that level.