Does your agency need a project manager with Ben Aston

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money and keep more of what you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ, is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies survive and thrive in today’s market. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. I’m excited that you’re here. Today’s topic is probably one of the most frequent topics of conversation that agency owners want to have. And so I went looking for an expert on this topic because I know it’s important to you. I’m going to put a pin right there on that. I know I’ve got you on the edge of your seat with bated breath, but first I also want to tell you about a mini course that we have launched. I mentioned this in my last solo cast, we’ve put together a little mini course that’s called My Future Self. And what it is is, it’s actually an exercise to help you think about where you personally want to be in your professional life five years from now. It’s a series of questions, a guided… I was going to call it a guided meditation but that of course is not exactly what it is, but a guided set of questions… We should do a guided meditation sometime. That would be interesting. But anyway, I’m sorry. I digress.

Drew McLellan:

Anyway, it’s a guided list of questions that walks you through where you want to be in five years. And I will tell you, I did an exercise similar to this about gosh, 12, 15 years ago. I was working with a coach and I was astonished at what I came up with. I was also a little dismayed because where I saw my future self was very different than where I was at at that moment. I will also tell you that today, I am living that future selves life, almost to the T. I’m not going to get into now. There’s more explanation about the mini course on the website. If you go over to agencymanagementinstitute.com/myfutureself, all one word, myfutureself, all one word, you’ll see it. And we’ll put a link in the show notes as well, but I’ve had several people do it. And they’re astonished at the results, but they also are excited about what they uncovered about themselves. I would hope that for you as well.

Drew McLellan:

All right, let’s get back to this super important topic that I was hinting at. One of the biggest challenges for agencies, I am a firm believer that there are four core quadrants, if you will, that if you have excellence in all four, you’re going to have a rock solid, profitable, scalable, sellable, if you want to, down the road agency. And those four quadrants are leadership, and that’s you and your leadership team, you really have to be firing on all cylinders, doing all the things right to grow your team, to attract the right people, to make the right choices. That’s one quadrant.

Drew McLellan:

The next one is biz dev, and that’s about having a biz-dev system in place that really attracts your right fit clients right to you. And then the third quadrant is getting it done. And that is really, how do you actually do the work with excellence? How do you deliver the results you promise for clients? How do you deliver on time and on budget at a really high level? And when you get that quadrant right, then the fourth quadrant of course is money. And that’s all about pricing and proposals and making sure you’re profitable.

Drew McLellan:

But today’s topic falls into the getting it done quadrant. And one of the keys to getting it done in most agencies today is having someone who is riding hard over all the work. You can call them a traffic manager or project manager, whatever you want to call them, but they’re the person in your shop who really knows where everything’s at that is allocating resources, maybe working with department heads to make sure that everybody’s plate is full, but not too full. They are watching like a hawk deadlines and budgets and things like that. This is a skillset that is incredibly valuable to clients.

Drew McLellan:

Many of you have asked me, when do I need to have that person? What I will say is that I think an agency of any size can benefit from that if you can afford it. When you’re small and you need almost everybody to be billable, it’s hard to justify a traffic manager or a project manager, although I believe they should be billable. And I talked about that, I think in the solo cast where I talked about project managers and traffic managers, but I think you should put 15 minutes of their time on every project that runs through the shop, and then they’re super billable. And believe me, they are going to touch every project for at least 15 minutes.

Drew McLellan:

But anyway, if you’re 10 or 12 people or less, a traffic manager or a project manager may be a bit of a luxury, but incredibly valuable. But by the time you get to 15 people, 20 people, you need this person. You need someone to keep you on track to keep making sure nothing falls through the cracks. And the traffic person or the project manager, whatever you want to call them, their job is to make sure that everybody else is really clear about what their job is that day and that week. They can save an agency a ton of mistakes and time and money and unhappy clients. Super important.

Drew McLellan:

The problem is, most agencies don’t know what one looks like, so it’s hard to hire for one, and they’re not sure how to train someone if they want to groom someone to be in that position. I have been following and been acquainted with a gentleman named Ben Aston for a while. And Ben has an interesting… His own career path is interesting, but basically, he self-taught himself project management and realized how hard it was and found some resources. And then eventually actually created the digitalprojectmanager.com website. And it’s actually a training and membership site where for about 150 bucks a year, you or your employee can become a member. They have access to courses, templates, samples, eBooks, and there’s a mastermind group specifically for project managers. Ben has figured out how to really create a craft, a skill set around this, and then to teach it.

Drew McLellan:

I wanted him to come on the show and chat with us about what a project manager does and what do they look like and how do you as an agency owner or leader find them, and what should you be looking for when you go looking for that kind of a person, and what can you expect them to bring to your shop? I know that this is going to be a lively conversation. I have a ton of questions for Ben on your behalf, and so I just want to jump in and get started. All right, Ben, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Ben Aston:

Thank you so much for having me.

Drew McLellan:

Give the listeners a little bit of an idea. Project management is a hot topic any time I’m talking to agency owners, how is it that you come to have this knowledge and all this insight into a critical pain point in most agents?

Ben Aston:

Do you know what, my professional career I guess started off in advertising agencies in Above the Line agencies. Actually, my first account was on working for Stella Artois. I was working on beer, which is everyone’s dream.

Drew McLellan:

It’s like the dream client, right?

Ben Aston:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Especially when you are young.

Ben Aston:

And one of my first days was going to the brewery and drinking beer. That was a [crosstalk 00:08:26]

Drew McLellan:

What a shame.

Ben Aston:

I started off in account management at Above the Line agencies, but transitioned into digital pretty early on. And it was then that I was really able to apply my technical skills because I’d been building websites since the age of 14, so I knew how to get stuff done in the world of digital. And so the transition to digital project management I thought would be a pretty easy one, but it actually turned out it was quite hard for me because when I landed in this project management role, I realized there’s nothing out there telling you how to do this.

Ben Aston:

But digital project management as a field of expertise was very much the Wild West. It was very fast and loose. Everyone was doing things different ways. To be honest, I found it quite hard right at the beginning of my career. Thankfully, I had some good mentors around me who taught me how to do things, but that experience, I guess, of falling into a role and not really knowing what I was doing is something that I actually discovered was something that was very similar experiences. Across the industry, people often found themselves-

Drew McLellan:

That’s the agency onboarding system, right?

Ben Aston:

… Yeah. Definitely.

Drew McLellan:

Welcome to your job. Here’s your desk. You have a cloud meeting [crosstalk 00:09:51] in 10 minutes, and by the way, be excellent. Go.

Ben Aston:

Can you just pull together a quick estimate and timeline because we told them that we’d present it in this meeting? That was very much my experience. Frantically, this is true, I was on YouTube trying to figure out how to create a Gantt chart. And man, under massive time pressure, I did it and it ended up being okay. But that experience really stirred me a bit later on in my career to start this website, thedigitalprojectmanager.com. And through that experience of running this community for the past 10 years, and through I guess 15 years of agency life… I’ve worked at agencies with big brands, like Wunderman and DDB, and smaller agencies as well, including Tag and an agency called FCV here in Canada. My whole career has been really immersed in the agency world.

Drew McLellan:

You talk about digital project management.

Ben Aston:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Is that different than… Most agencies don’t just do digital, they do traditional, they make stuff that you can hold in your hands. Is project management project management, or is digital project management something different?

Ben Aston:

I think digital project management is the same as project management. I always think of it as a flavor of project management. It’s a context and an environment in which we’re managing, leading, directing projects. Actually, when I was at Wunderman, we sat next to the Y&R team and we were the Land Rover account and we were digital on one side and Above the Line on the other side. We were working hand in hand with one another and depending on the type of project, maybe digital would lead it or maybe Above the Line would lead it but we’re working on integrated campaigns for the client. The client doesn’t really care how it happens, they just want the campaign to go live. They just [crosstalk 00:11:59] In my mind, digital just describes the environment or the types of projects that we’re running, which tends to be involved with screens and with data and with interaction in some way.

Drew McLellan:

And when you say Above the Line, just for our clarification, you’re really talking about traditional advertising, right?

Ben Aston:

Yeah, TV, radio, press.

Drew McLellan:

Why do you think this is such an Achilles’ heel for most agencies? We’ve been doing agency life for a long time. You think the idea of, how do you get a project to go from start to finish on time and on budget would be something we would have mastered a long time ago? Why haven’t we?

Ben Aston:

I think particularly in the digital world, I think it’s because things are evolving so quickly. I think when we’re creating something like a TV commercial or a print ad, that poll process tends to be quite predictable. We know the parameters of what needs to happen. The process is quite predictable. When we’re working with technology, I think there’s a lot more uncertainty. And I think actually in a digital world, when we’re looking at agencies that focus on digital projects, I think project management can often be a bit of an afterthought. Projects can tend to be run by the person who seems to be the most organized, maybe someone more senior, but who hasn’t really got time to do it.

Ben Aston:

And then this gap appears, it’s hard to manage these projects because there’s a lot of uncertainty there. We need to define a lot more upfront so that we know exactly what we’re trying to build and why we’re trying to build it. And I think some of that, I guess, intense planning, intense thinking, becomes more of an afterthought and then we run into problems because really, I think we haven’t defined the brief properly, we haven’t planned properly. And then we don’t manage to control it because we don’t know what we’re managing and controlling. So we end up in this disaster of late projects that are over budget.

Drew McLellan:

One of the things I find fascinating is that for many agencies, no one owns project management. They may or may not have a tool, a project management software or whatever, but many agencies are lacking the person who is overseeing and driving project management. Is that manageable? Does that work? Have you ever seen that work where it’s a committee-driven activity?

Ben Aston:

I think in a small agency, I think that can work, but I think once you’re past five to 10 people, I think that becomes very difficult to sustain. At that size, you’re beginning to run into resourcing challenges or resource allocation issues. You’re not all talking every day. It begins to become problematic as you grow and as you scale, but also as you start to deliver more complex projects. I think typically what happens in a small agency is that the CEO is the de facto project manager to begin with, and then it sometimes gets passed through to account management. But these holes begin to appear as the team size increases, as the complexity increases. And you realize that maybe… I think the early warning signs are the projects are going over budget, they’re being delivered late, the client’s not happy because they didn’t get what they thought they were getting. These are all telltale signs that there’s a project management issue that can be addressed and should be addressed.

Drew McLellan:

What I say to agencies is, a traffic person or a project management, whatever title you give them, is a luxury below 10 and pretty much a necessity after you get to 10 because no one person can carry it all in their head at that size anymore. When you’re four or five people, maybe a person can keep track of everything that’s going on when it’s due. And by the way, the agency owner is the worst person on the planet to be doing this work because they’re not detailed people as a general rule, right?

Ben Aston:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

And they’re in and out of the office all the time, so really not well crafted to be that role. When you think about the ideal profile of a good project manager or traffic manager, what do you think are the necessary skills and personality traits that make up the ideal candidate for that role?

Ben Aston:

I think the soft skills and the character are probably what I look for most importantly. I’m interested in someone who’s innately curious, someone who asks lots of questions. I think they have to be reasonably outgoing to be able to step out and ask these uncomfortable questions to people more senior than them when they feel like there’s uncertainty there. I think as a digital project manager, what we’re trying to do is create certainty where there is uncertainty. We’re trying to create clarity where there’s confusion. And that requires us to be curious, to ask questions, to be bold. And so we’re looking for someone who’s got that tenacity in asking questions, that curiosity to dig into the crux of the problem and get to the bottom of issues. I think that kind of curious, inquisitive, tenacious character is important. Someone who’s reasonably outgoing enough to ask those questions.

Ben Aston:

Obviously, organization is important. Someone who thrives being organized, but also likes to make that muddle less muddled and create clarity there. I think those soft skills are really important. And then obviously the technical, the hard skills of creating estimates, timelines, statements of work, managing and controlling projects, the more experience you have in doing that, the better you’re going to be at it. But I think it really comes down to those soft skills. And what wraps all these things together is communication. I think of communication as that wrapper that enables us to do all these things well. We can have the hard skills, but if we can’t communicate clearly around it, then it’s not going to be effective. We can ask lots of questions, but if we’re not then relaying those responses to the right people, we’re not going to be effective.

Ben Aston:

So communication ultimately is the thing that… That is what project management is, we’re communicating, we’re making sure the team know what they’re supposed to be doing and relaying that information back, we’re providing clarity around what has to be done and why. It comes down to communication. But the core of that person has got to be someone who has this interest, this drive to dig into the project and really get into the weeds.

Drew McLellan:

And I think one of the traits that they need is they have to have a high emotional intelligence because you’re trying to get a lot of different people with a lot of different personalities to do stuff when you need and want them to. You have to know, who do you kid around with and who do you scold and who do you bribe with chocolate and who do you… You have to be able to read the room and know how to get people to do stuff they may not want to do.

Ben Aston:

A hundred percent. Emotional intelligence is so important. I think when project managers fail or aren’t doing perhaps such a good job, it’s because that emotional intelligence perhaps isn’t where it needs to be, is because they’re not engaging with their team in the right way. And I think as project managers, we’re constantly having to have difficult conversations. Difficult conversations are something that we’re doing every day, multiple times a day, whether or not that’s with the clients and managing expectations, whether or not that’s with the team, trying to define our expectations and find out where people are at, why they haven’t done the work that they said they would do. It’s an ongoing difficult conversation. So yeah, emotional intelligence is super important.

Drew McLellan:

But all of that said, even if you have the right person, they need some of the right tools, they need the right information. Let’s talk a little bit about project or creative briefs, because I think that’s a place where a lot of agencies either don’t do them at all, or they do them in a very cursory fashion, sort of sets the whole project up to fail. What are your thoughts about creative or project briefs and what do we have to do to make them better?

Ben Aston:

I often think about briefs, and this was right at the beginning of my career, if we have spam going in, we’re going to have spam coming out. And it was actually Steve Harrison who was a big fan of the creative brief. And that’s carried with me throughout my career. The creative brief is so important because if we haven’t got that right, everything else that follows is just not going to be right. We’ve got to get the right work done in the first place, and then we can worry about getting the work done right. But so often we’re not actually doing the right work, and it comes back to this, we think about product market fit, thinking about, is this desirable? Is it feasible? Is it viable? I think so often we start projects because the client asks us to do them when there isn’t really a product market fit for it.

Ben Aston:

So I think asking those difficult questions upfront helps us do the right projects in the first place. We’ve just mentioned creative briefs there, but I think what’s important is that we look at, as an agency, what’s the kind of work that we’re doing? Are creative briefs what we need, or… I like to use different types of brief, creative briefs, craft briefs, action briefs. Having different types of brief, different types of work, depending on what stage of the project we’re in, but also I’ve worked with clients where we’re working on more of a retainer model and actually, the brief can be as simple as the client, in the first instance, filling in a form. If what we’re doing is really quite productized, it can be as simple as a form. And I think the more that we can design our briefs around the type of work that we do rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, it gives us a lot better ability to actually deliver something that works.

Drew McLellan:

You said a craft brief. I’m not familiar with that phrase. What does that mean?

Ben Aston:

For me, a project typically would have a creative brief and that’s the foundation. That’s giving us the rationale of the project, it’s giving us the high level insight into why someone should believe what we’re trying to say. It’s giving us that insight, the USP. It’s giving us some high-level insights, but it’s not defining exactly what needs to be crafted. Maybe after we’ve come up with the concept, we’d use the craft brief to then design the user experience or the design or the development. It just goes into a bit more detail. We know why we’re doing it, it’s what it is.

Drew McLellan:

So one is conceptual and then the next one is about the deliverables?

Ben Aston:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

And who do you believe should be completing those briefs? How should those get done?

Ben Aston:

I think it needs to be collaborative.

Drew McLellan:

What you’re saying is the AE shouldn’t do it in a vacuum and then just send it to the creative folks?

Ben Aston:

Yeah, that will not ever go down well. The briefs have to be signed off by the heads of department for sure. I think the project manager or the account exec can create the brief and that’s fine, but then we need to go around and make sure that everyone buys into the brief before the work gets started. And I think a mistake that we can make is we don’t get to the brief until the day before-

Drew McLellan:

Or don’t do it at all.

Ben Aston:

… don’t do it at all, send it round. No one’s had a chance to look at it. The briefing starts and then people start questioning whether or not the brief is right. The work can’t start, the work gets delayed. So, having a brief prepared well in advance and getting everyone… It comes back to this, getting alignment, getting direction on the projects. If we can start off with a really clear brief, everything else will flow from that. But as soon as we’ve got uncertainty on whether or not the brief is right, it throws everything up in the air.

Drew McLellan:

We’re going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to talk about scope creep, because that is the bane of every agency’s existence. And so if you can solve that problem for the listeners, they will crown you king for a day. Let’s take a quick break so that’s going to give you a little prep time because you’re going to have to come big and bold with the answer, how do we manage and handle scope creep? Let’s take a break and we’ll come back and Ben is going to tell us all how to do that.

Drew McLellan:

Hey there, you know I am incredibly grateful that you listen every week, and I want to make sure you get all of the support and tips and tricks and hacks that we have to offer. In every issue of our newsletter, I tell you what’s on my mind based on the conversations I’ve had with agency owners that week. We also point you to additional resources and remind you of anything we’ve got coming up that you might benefit from. If you are not subscribed to our newsletter now, we can fix that in a flash. Head over to agencymanagemeninstitute.com/newsletter and complete the symbol form. And we’ll take it from there.

Drew McLellan:

All right, let’s get back to the show. All right. We are back and Ben is now going to crack the code of scope creep. How do we define and manage scope so that it does not get out of hand?

Ben Aston:

Man, this is one of my favorite topics, I think probably because I’ve been burned from it many times, as you’ve just been alluding to. I think fundamentally, when we think about scope creep and what happens is we’re thinking about, what exactly is happening here? What is scope creep? Well, it’s happening when there’s a lack of clarity about what is in scope and what is out of scope and that’s happening because of either internally we’re gold-plating, internally the creative director perhaps, or someone from user experience or even development or whoever it is is deciding that we need to go above and beyond. And I think sometimes that’s fine to go above and beyond if it’s been accommodated for in some way, if the budget allows for it, if the timeline allows for it or internally, there’s been some signing of a paper to say, “We’re going to invest in this above and beyond.”

Ben Aston:

But I think all too often, internal gold-plating happens when senior people in the organization make decisions about how much they want to invest in something that takes the project over. We’re having internal scope creep, and it doesn’t feel like scope creep because we’re doing it, but it’s scope creep and it’s impacting our profitability. And then we have obviously the clients coming in and saying, “Hey, I thought we were getting Z on this project, but you’ve only done X and Y. Where’s Z? This comes down to just a lack of clarity. And I think what I’m a big proponent of and a big fan of is defining things upfront, making sure that we’re turning gray areas black and white.

Ben Aston:

And this doesn’t need to be a 50-page statement of work, although I think that would certainly helped, but I think it’s about looking at the… I think it really is down to a conversation. And this comes back to why I think communication is such an important skill as a project manager, is about initiating the conversation that says, “What exactly are we doing? How much are you going to pay, and what are you going to get for what you’re paying for?” Now, I know obviously different engagement models accommodate for this in different ways. On a time and materials engagement, which in some ways it feels like a great idea because there’s an endless supply of money and you’ll just get what you get and you keep paying, that can feel great, but often [crosstalk 00:28:41]

Drew McLellan:

Probably not to the client, it doesn’t feel great, right?

Ben Aston:

Yeah. If there is uncertainty, if they appreciate the uncertainty around that ask, I think they can sometimes accommodate it. But I think more typically people want to know much they’re paying. I think we’ve got to define what we’re doing. And this takes more time. But also, I think one of the things that we can think about when we’re defining scope is not to try and define the entire project upfront. And I think sometimes there can be a bit of a temptation to define the entire project upfront. And what I would suggest is, let’s split this project back phases. And the way to think about this is a traditional project management term is to think about your planning horizon, by how far ahead can you accurately and realistically make a plan that’s going to be viable, that you can know confidently that you can execute?

Ben Aston:

And I think so often, we go beyond that planning horizon and we think, “Well, if everything goes to plan, then a hundred thousand should be enough for this.” But we haven’t really done the technical discovery yet, or we haven’t really defined the concept yet. We’ve just given this figure and went like, “We’ll just back into it. We’ll back into that hundred K and try and figure out a way to deliver something.” But what will happen is the client likes the expensive concepts. You’ve given them a quote for a hundred K and you’re going to go over budget. So I think splitting the project into phases, being realistic about your planning horizon, are really good starting point when we’re trying to manage that client’s scope creep.

Drew McLellan:

Part of that idea of the horizon is about being a little less rigid in your project planning. Talk to me about how… One of the things I have seen as many agencies implement project management, maybe they have their first project manager or traffic manager, because they’re being rigid, everything gets bloated. Like writing a blog post now takes 23 hours if you follow the exact process that they’ve outlined. Talk to me a little bit about, how do you infuse flexibility and common sense into project planning so that it’s so not rigid that it becomes unusable?

Ben Aston:

I think one of the things that we can do is rather than trying to define everything, I think it’s instead putting limits around what we are going to deliver. It is thinking about a canvas and we’re trying to block in the canvas to define some of the things that we might be able to deliver. In that statement of work, we can give options so that we could say, “Deliverables could include X, Y, and Z.” It’s assumed that we’re going to deliver no more than five things or whatever it might be. We’re just trying to limit, we’re just trying to define the constraints of what might be achievable within the time that we have. We’re not saying, “Well, this…” We’re not trying to define every little thing, we’re just trying to lock in the canvas of what we are delivering.

Ben Aston:

And I think one of the things that’s really important is defining negative scope, scope of the things that we’re going to actually deliver and the things that we’re going to do. But negative scope as well is important because in that we can include those conversations where we’re saying, “Just so that you’re clear, this statement of work, or this cost does not include copywriting, or does not include content entry or does not include photography.” It’s really important to define negative scope as well, because then it can just provide these limits to the extent of how far we we’ll go, what we’ll be delivering. And that can really help limit I guess the rigidity of a statement of work.

Drew McLellan:

Well, that’s all client-facing, but I also see the rigidity internally. Look, we want to have a template for how long it takes to do a thing so that we can just click a couple buttons, it goes into the resourcing and it assigns the workout. But I think a lot of times in the definition, we’ve accounted for every weird thing that ever happened anytime we’ve done a TV spot. Well, we’ve got to allow four hours to evacuate for a hurricane and we need to allow six hours… What happens then is that scope is so bloated that the budgets are ridiculous and the team gets used to working in that slower bloated timeframe. And then when you go, “This is getting a little ridiculous. We need to skinny this back down.” Then they struggle to get the work done in the timeframe allowed.

Drew McLellan:

How do you prevent that as you’re building out your system or your process, and you’re thinking about, “We do certain things all the time, so we should have a step by step of, here’s how we get this done, here’s about how much time it takes, and here’s what we’re going to charge for it?” How do you manage to create those in a way that is flexible enough, that it doesn’t become a hindrance?

Ben Aston:

The challenge is, how do we create effective templates for our estimation and statement of work process that are valuable? And I think one of the things that I found super helpful is being a bit more data-driven and a bit lessons learned-driven. Having a lessons learned database and referring to that when we’re looking at projects. But I think time tracking is essentially what is really important here. And [crosstalk 00:34:41]

Drew McLellan:

I’m sorry, say that again [crosstalk 00:34:44] because everyone listening is cursing your name now.

Ben Aston:

I know.

Drew McLellan:

They loved when you talked about scope creep, but the minute you say time-tracking, now not so much.

Ben Aston:

Do you know what? I think the thing about time tracking, I’m a massive fan of it, not because it means that I know how hard people worked, which I don’t think time-tracking tells you how hard people worked, but I think for individuals, it’s helpful for them to be accountable and understand how they use their time because the way that we think we use our time and the way we actually spend that time are two different things.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Ben Aston:

Time-tracking is not magic. It’s still very prone to user error, for people forgetting how they spent their time and not doing their time sheets. And I know it’s a pain, but without the data, we are completely blind. And I think all too often, people think, “Well, we’re not that kind of agency. We’re creative. We’re cool. Time tracking is just going to make everyone feel bad and that’s not the culture we want, but if we don’t have the data, we don’t really know how much time we’re spending on hurricane evacuations.” And it might be way more than four hours. Plus, the wrap-up part of the projects where we’ve only estimated two hours might actually end up being like a 40-hour process that we didn’t really understand.

Ben Aston:

So data is incredibly important. Data is our friend. And I think reframing time tracking is, “Guys, I don’t want you to work at the weekends. I don’t want you to have to work over your holidays.” Time tracking is a way for us to enable us to resource your time more effectively. And I think pitching it to people that way can be a way to help them understand, “This isn’t a trap. This is a technique and a tool that we can use to better manage people’s time.”

Drew McLellan:

It’s just data collection. Anyway, sorry, going back to building your templates, you said, “Start with time-tracking.”

Ben Aston:

I would start with time tracking and then I’d be trying to produce analogous estimates. So I’m looking at what happened before, I’m looking at the lessons learned, I’m trying to match these things as closely as I can so that… Firstly, I’m working out, “Well, what are the five different types of projects that we produce? Maybe one of them is the TV spot, what has happened in the past? Can we look back and work out… Look at all those different variations.” And then we look at the extremity for those most expensive or the cheapest, what were the things that characterize them so that we can know what we should accommodate for in our templates? But then I think the way that I’ve done this is to have a template with a whole load of line items and just to be granular.

Ben Aston:

I think when we’re trying to lump too many things, too many paths, the process together, if we only have an estimate that has five line items in it, then it’s very hard for us to break this apart. But the more granular we can be in understanding our process and understanding, “Well, which part of the processes are necessary for this? Do we need that pre-production meeting or the second or the third pre-production meeting? Or is this actually really quite straightforward?” Breaking apart the process so we’re not lumping together pre-production as, “Well, that’s always 40 hours. It always takes us 40 hours. Does it, or is that because it’s six meetings?” Understanding the process, breaking it apart, I think is really key.

Drew McLellan:

I think so too. You’ve watched a lot of agencies, both when you were in agencies and now in your work, you’ve watched a lot of agencies struggle to keep both projects and their teams on track. What are some best practices or some things that every agency could or should implement to help keep projects and teams on the right path?

Ben Aston:

We keep on coming back to this, but talking is probably the most important thing. And communication. And I think particularly now when the temptation can be for people to be working increasingly asynchronously, everyone’s got their own schedule, doing their own thing. Those touch points that we used to have more informally aren’t perhaps happening. So being more intentional about creating touchpoints with the team, I think is key. To keep the project on track, we need to be talking as project… understand what’s happening so that we can ascertain, are we on track or not? Firstly, we’re setting the direction right at the beginning of the project, and then we’re making sure that we’re on track. And again, how do we do that? Well, it comes back again, I’m going to say it, time sheets, time tracking is important. Are we spending the number of hours that we thought we were going to spend? If we haven’t spent them, where’s the effort going, or what exactly is happening?

Ben Aston:

So, part of it is data collection, part of it is communication. And then we’ve got to assess what’s happening, decide what to do about it. And I think oftentimes projects go off track and we know that they’re going off track, but we just don’t do anything about it because we hope for the best. And I think hoping is not a very good strategy. I think actually making difficult decisions and making decisions early is super important. If we think of our project as we’re trying to get from A to B and we’re going to go off course, ideally it would be a straight line from A to B, but we’re going to start deviating at different points along that journey. So, it’s firstly identifying, is any deviation occurring and understanding if it matters that it’s occurring? And then deciding.

Ben Aston:

And I think so often nobody decides because no one has that responsibility. And that’s why I think a really important pivotal role of project management is ensuring that we’re delivering value and ensuring that we can hit the finish line and we can get to B. So being clued up on what’s going on in the projects, how do I need to adjust? And then deciding to adjust, maybe that’s a conversation with the client and say, “This project is late,” or maybe it’s a conversation to say, “We’re going to need some more budget to get this done.” Maybe it’s to talk to the team, say, “We need some more resources.” But there are these small decisions that we need to make. If we make the decisions, we can get to the finish line in one piece, if we don’t or delay those decisions, then there can be a really bad impact.

Drew McLellan:

One of the things I think a lot of agencies do is they think, “We have six or eight or 10 people touching a project. If we all come together to have this quick meeting, I’m multiplying our hourly rate by six or eight or 10 and going, ‘Oh my God, we don’t have that in the budget.’” But when we don’t do that, then sooner or later we’re going to hit the brick wall, everybody’s going to have to come together, not for 30 minutes, but for an hour and a half, to figure out how to fix the car crash that has now happened. And now we’ve got not only that hour and a half of meeting, but now we have to fix the car, which adds extra hours. It seems like we’re often in such a rush to get done that we don’t pause in the middle to make sure we’re still on course.

Ben Aston:

And I think so much of that has come down to the fact that maybe we are not estimating accurately. We didn’t accommodate the time for the meetings because we didn’t know we spent so much time in meetings. Again, it comes back to that time tracking and being using analogous estimates, understanding how we’re actually using our time. And the reality is that 30% of people’s time will be spent in meetings. That just happens. People need to spend about a third of their time talking. That can be attributed to the project, and that can be… It doesn’t mean it’s not billable, but we need to accommodate for that in the budget and in the timeline because that’s just what it takes.

Drew McLellan:

And I think a lot of agencies just don’t include that at all. If they include account service time at all, they shortcut that, but they don’t include a lot of time for actual conversations between creatives and devs and account service and all of the different parts of the whole.

Ben Aston:

Yeah. I think it’s so important that actually, as we’re estimating projects, as we’re planning projects, we are being mindful of these things, that we’re being robust in the way that we’re estimating planning projects so that we find projects and we find clients that are a good fit for us and what our team can actually deliver rather than stretching ourselves and then finding that, “Dear, we haven’t really got enough budget for this because we undersold ourselves. We undersold the project.” So, data’s your friend, project management’s your friend.

Drew McLellan:

A lot of people don’t hire a project manager or a traffic manager because they view it as a non-billable position, which I disagree with, but they view it as an non-billable position and so they think it’s going to impact profitability, but I think that not having one impacts profitability. What’s your take on that?

Ben Aston:

I a hundred percent agree. I think when we are looking at our leave as a profitability, let’s talk about traffic or resourcing. One of the things that a resource manager or a traffic manager can help with is resourcing people effectively, maximizing their utilization. If we can increase across the board everyone’s utilization from 70% to 80%, that’s going to have a massive impact. But also, there’s the traffic and resourcing side of things. When we’re looking at the project management side of things, if we look at the cost of the project overruns and the impact that that has on our profitability, if supposing agencies maybe will be targeting upwards of 15% profit margin on the work, and it doesn’t take much for that profit margin to be eroded. We need to be super careful about the way that we’re estimating because any overruns, any scope creep is going to really damage our profitability. If we can just decrease the percentage of overrun so that we’re not eating into all of our profits, it will pay for itself very, very quickly.

Drew McLellan:

I think you’re absolutely right. This has been a great conversation. I think you’ve given everybody a lot of food for thought. If folks want to learn more about your course and the work that you do, what’s the best place for them to go and learn more about all of that?

Ben Aston:

Head over to the digitalprojectmanager.com. You can find there our own podcast where we talk about everything about delivery in a digital world. You can check out our DPM School, which is an online training course we run, and also our membership which we offer to help people who are delivering and managing projects do it better.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. Thanks, Ben, for being on the show. This is a hot topic, as you know, for agencies, and so I know people were leaning in and listening because this is a problem that many agencies are still trying to solve.

Ben Aston:

Thanks. Great to be on the show.

Drew McLellan:

It was great to have you. All right guys, this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. And you know what? One of the things that I love about the conversation we just had with Ben was we didn’t talk about one tool. We didn’t talk about this software or that software, it was really about the principles and the concepts of project management and how it can serve you, your agency, your bottom line and your clients. One of the things that we know from our research is one of the things that gets under a client’s craw faster than anything else is when we miss deadlines or we miss budget. And so being able to put into practice what Ben talked about is a client retention must, and it certainly is a way for you to build up a healthier bottom line, a more consistent bottom line.

Drew McLellan:

I’m hoping that you were taking notes or making note as you were walking on the treadmill or taking the dog for a walk of some things that you could implement inside your agency, and I hope you go check out Ben’s site. There’s a lot of resources there for you. I think a lot of you, if you did not grow up doing project management, that you were on a different path to agency ownership, one of the frustrations for you is it’s hard to teach something that you don’t know. Ben’s site, his course, the podcast, some of the other things, all great resources for the people inside your agency who are actually delivering against this job description and this really important role inside your agency, so make a path over there and check it out.

Drew McLellan:

I want to remind all of you that we are going to gather in August for the Build a Better Agency summit. 250 or so agency owners and leaders, some amazing speakers on topics, everything from how to get your agency ready to sell to imposter syndrome, to having difficult diversity conversations in your organization. Variety of conversations. I’m going to expect you to show up to learn, and I’m also going to expect you to sit at some round tables and teach and share what you know. I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for you to connect with other owners and revel in the community of AMI and the idea of sharing what we know and helping everybody get better. If you’re interested in the Build a Better Agency summit, you can head over to the website and check it out and grab your ticket now before they go up in price. You know how conferences go, the closer we get, the more expensive it gets. So grab your ticket now.

Drew McLellan:

Also want to give a shout out and a thanks to our friends at White Label IQ, they are the presenting sponsor of the podcast, and they serve many agencies as a white label solution for dev, design and PPC. If you want to check them out, it’s whitelabeliq.com/ami. All right? I’ll be back next week with another guest. In the meantime, you know how to get ahold of me. As always, I am grateful that you made the time to be here. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.

Drew McLellan:

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.