Welcome to episode 85. This episode is for you if you’re interested in understanding how a project management team and an account management team work together in an internal communications agency.
Sara Forner Howland and Lindsay McCleary are heads of department at US-based Brilliant Ink. They joined me to talk through their years of experience running this model.
This episode could be interesting for you, if you’re an account manager doing both project management and account management and you’re curious to see how an agency separates them. It could be that you’re a head of department and thinking about setting up this model to work for your agency and you want to know the nitty-gritty, because Lindsay and Sara really share all the details.
They share:
- why they did this in the first place
- how it was working before
- how it’s working now
- who manages the client relationship and what does each role do
If you’re interested in finding out about account management training, I’ve just updated my website with all my courses and prices.
I’m also launching a new training course, ‘Managing Difficult Client Conversations’. If you’d like to get onto the waitlist to be notified as soon as we go live, please use this link to register your interest.
Transcript:
Jenny Plant 00:00
So today I’m delighted to be chatting to the lovely Sara and Lindsay from internal communications agency Brilliant Ink. Now Brilliant Ink call their account management team strategists. So Sara is head of strategy. And Lindsay is head of operations. Lindsay and Sara, a very warm welcome.
Sara 00:24
Thank you. Thank you happy to be here.
Jenny Plant 00:26
Honestly, it’s such a pleasure to have you here. So thank you for taking the time. Would you mind first of all, both of you just explaining what your roles are at Brilliant Ink. So, Lindsay, do you want to go first?
Lindsay 00:39
Sure, yes, I will go first. So I am Head of Operations. As you mentioned, I’ve been at Brilliant Ink for five and a half years, which is very exciting, and I was actually the first project manager ever hired at Brilliant Ink which was an amazing opportunity at the time, I had the chance to build something that didn’t exist from scratch, and provide some support to Sara and her team, which was really cool. So now I am on the leadership team, and I oversee all of the back of house operational functions, so people operations, technical operations, financial operations, as well as our project management office or PMO. So delightful to be here. Thank you
Jenny Plant 01:24
Honestly, your experience is, and I’m just going to be ready to fire loads of questions at you. So that is incredible. Sara, what about you?
Sara 01:32
Yes. So I have fewer jobs than Lindsay, which is pretty easy. I am the Head of Strategy, I’ve been with Brilliant Ink, for about eight years. So I can, as we get into this conversation, I can talk to you a little bit about life before Lindsay, and all the work that she did, and then life after Lindsay, which was significantly better. But I lead all our team of internal communicators, as they produce all of our client work and make our clients happy.
Jenny Plant 02:01
Incredible. And I’m actually going to go straight there actually, Sara, because there are a lot of agency owners listening to this, who are deciding whether they are going to have, effectively an account management team in a project management team. And it’s something Lindsay alluded to the last time we spoke, you know, I’ll have to explain the history of why we separated the roles. So would you together tell the story of originally what the evolution of your business model has been?
Sara 02:34
Lindsay, did you want me to talk a little bit about life before you? So it was dark. It was a sad time. No, it was, we were a smaller agency, and so like many agencies, we were doing everything, our team of internal communicators, which were a version of a strategist, we were doing really three jobs. We were doing project management as best as we could. We were doing account management in the best way we could and I’m also really focused on delivering client work. So we do internal communications work, of course, we work with creatives and designers and videographers and people who are generating some of those things, but our team of strategists is really responsible for doing the content development, helping advise clients on the strategy, all the billable work. So we were doing this account management and project management on the side. So it wasn’t even a hybrid world, it was really three different roles and as you might imagine, it’s tricky, right? It’s tricky to balance all of those hats, because they come from very different perspectives. If you have your agency management or account management hat on, you’re thinking about growth and long term success and keeping your client really happy and anticipating what they might need next. That does not always lend itself well to delivering your work on time and on budget. And so it was really difficult to balance all of those priorities. But we were doing it. You know, we are a much smaller team, like I said, and we had fewer accounts that we were managing, and so we were okay. When I came on, I had spent maybe six months in project management, so I had a little bit and I introduced Brilliant Ink into Smartsheet, which we love so much, but that was sort of where my skill set ended. That was the best I could do. Lindsay I’ll let you take it from there.
Lindsay 02:34
Sara, I don’t think I knew, I just learned something. I don’t think I knew that you are the Smartsheet originator to the business. That’s really fascinating, because boy, do we, I mean, this is not a Smartsheet promotion. We are not paid by them by any stretch, but we love it. Now we use it a lot. Dashboards are the buzz word of 2023 Everyone’s getting a very visual dashboard nowadays. Oh, how fun. Good for you, Sara!
Jenny Plant 04:30
Well done, Sara, I will have to dive into dashboards a little bit later because that there’s tonnes on that.
Lindsay 05:10
So yes it’s really interesting when I think back to how things started and Sara’s ‘hat’ visual is really helpful. Because I think that
when I joined the team, some people gave me their project management hat with open arms, and it was a thank goodness, you’re here, I would love to not do three jobs anymore. And some people held on to their hats a little bit more closely. And it kind of felt like something was maybe being taken away, or they weren’t really sure, or the impetus of it. And so I think that’s something I think a lot about, as maybe agency owners or leadership are wondering how this transformation could take place. And what might the reactions be of people – to bring on a new function like this? Those were the two different reactions
that I would say, people fell into, one or the other of that and that was really interesting to think back to how we navigated that and dealt with those different reactions, if that makes sense.
Jenny Plant 06:08
Can I pause you there? Because I’ve had this conversation just recently with an agency that has absolutely gone through that, and so I will be interested to see how you did navigate those two scenarios.
Lindsay 06:21
Yes, I mean, the one was easy, the people who just gave me their hat, it was lovely, and I took it and ran with it and developed project plans and timelines and processes, right along with them. Others who maybe were a little bit more resistant, or maybe enjoyed the project management work and enjoyed using three different parts of their brain to do three different jobs. It was just more of a let’s figure out how to do this together. I think the nice part about our business is that we have a variety of clients and we have a variety of project work. So we were able to customise the approach to project management based on how things were already set up. Some it was a little bit heavier handed, others with a little bit later with a longer lead time. Both ended up working really, really well. It was a matter of just getting in there showing how we could work together, showing how PMS can make strategists lives easier and can be true partners throughout it versus you know, taking something away. It’s an additive.
Jenny Plant 07:25
Okay, so actually, there might be agencies listening that think, right, we’re ready to do this. But we’ve got these existing clients that have been used to having an account manager only doing everything, how do we introduce the concept of saying, actually, there’s going to be two people working on your account? How do you sell that to the client?
Sara 07:47
Yes- I can speak to that and it comes up from time to time. Even still, it was something that we talked about in the early days of Lindsay building the PMO and joining the team, but it still can come up from time to time. And it’s funny, it seems like the client, who may need project managers the most, may have the most questions about project management support, which is probably no surprise to anyone. But when we talk about how we support our clients, we say that we support you as a team. We don’t want our clients to only have one person and only have one person’s brain that they can leverage. And so we bring in experts, it’s very similar because our work is internal communication. It covers a lot of different things all the way from recruiting all the way through exit and retirement and all the touch points in between and that has huge variability in the work that we are doing. And often that means we pull in people who really understand diversity, equity and inclusion. We pull in people who understand intranet, we understand, we pull in, people who better understand some of the technical aspects of working in internal communications. That is very similar to project managers. I always kind of joke like, trust me, you don’t want the creatives to manage the timeline. Everyone laughs and then we just move right on, and it’s fine. If we do get pressed on it, we just say look, a project manager’s whole job is to make sure that we are on time and on budget They are extremely efficient with their time and we will make sure that no one is over servicing or over billing your account and that has really addressed any concern that’s come up.
Jenny Plant 09:31
Great. So Lindsay, I’m an account manager. You have just arrived at Brilliant Ink and I’m thinking oh, I don’t know if I want to let anything go. Because what if it all falls through the cracks? What would you expect me to pass over to you from what I was doing as a hybrid account manager? What are the things that you are going to take on that are going to alleviate me?
Lindsay 09:53
Yes, I mean, I’m thinking about the things that might be most attractive for that account manager, is it handling scope changes or requests. So I think the easiest thing to do is provide that clarity of roles and responsibilities with the client, boundaries really, this is who you go to for this type of request, and this is who you go to for that. So having the project manager handle budget conversations, is this in scope? Is this not in scope? Can you do this by x date? Can you not? That’s where I think that division starts. And I also think there has not been and I think it’s one of the more attractive pieces of it as well. The account manager, the strategist continues to be the person that “wows” and says, yes, it does all this great work. And then you hand over maybe what might be perceived as some of the harder or more administrative conversations about scope, timing and budget, to the project manager to deal with. That is a nice division that provides clarity, and also alleviates some of the pressure of, well, I want to deliver this great piece, but I don’t know if I can do it in the time that they wanted. And it provides those two different paths to go down if that makes sense.
Jenny Plant 11:05
It does. Absolutely. So you have both obviously seen, before we get into the nitty gritty of how you work together on a project. And we’ll get a bit granular. I’d love for you both, because you’ve been with the agency for so long, and seen this big change, what has been the overall impact of splitting the roles on the business and the staff.
Sara 11:31
We have been extremely more profitable, and been able to expand so many more accounts, thanks to our project managers. So that’s first and foremost for me. And, hopefully Lindsay agrees, when I was one of the people in the camp of yes, please help come do these things for me, yes, keep an eye on these things. Because, for me, it is no greater gift than for me to come up with an idea that will help our client and for my project manager to go, Sara, you know, that’s out of scope. Let’s do a change order and bring in some more money for that. That’s a huge gift and a huge benefit to the agency and to my own success in helping our clients. And there were many times where I just would not think of it and to be honest and completely vulnerable about why – it was because of a lack of confidence in my own work that I deserved to ask for more for this effort is sometimes a hard concept when you’re in the weeds and you want to make your clients happy. And we, within internal communication, you know, I would not say we’re a mission driven organisation, but we care very deeply for the people that we’re supporting, the employees at the end of the line who are getting these communications. So sometimes it can feel a little bit tricky to then say, well, we’d love to do this for you, but we need to process a change order and expand our contract, expand our timeline, expand our work. In the past, I would just do extra stuff for free within the timeline that was already set. None of that makes any sense. And none of that builds any clout with the client either. So for me, throughout my career, brilliant, that’s been the hugest benefit.
Jenny Plant 13:24
And just so you don’t feel alone, Sara, that is very common. Okay. It’s actually the premise behind why David Baker started also looking at disc profiling, because he noticed since 2008, since he’s developed over 22,000 profiles of agency people, that there was this definite pattern with account management roles, that particular profile, once they are good at the client relationship. Of course, what you have just described, is totally understandable, because it is jarring. It is tricky. No one wants to break that rapport by having this really serious conversation. So it’s totally normal. So it’s brilliant. I think any agency owner listening will think well, yes, more profitable and expanding accounts. It’s just a win win. Okay. So what about from your perspective Lindsay? you obviously were in the weeds, you had some resistance, but eventually you have created your own team, and it’s working like clockwork now. But have you seen anything else that’s been good for the agency?
Lindsay 14:36
I wonder, as I was listening to Sara’s response, because I was also going to say more profitable and I was also wondering about, and I don’t want to say eliminating, but reducing burnout and stress across the team as well. I think that’s been really huge, just having more support, as Sara mentioned earlier, not having single individuals working with clients, but having a team of people who are supporting together. I think some of the non-monetary, I guess benefits, is having another thought partner on call that’s living, breathing, paying attention and knows our business as well as the strategist does to bounce ideas off, things like, I heard this, what did you think? or that sounded like a risk to me? Did you hear that too? This one was an opportunity. And having that team, I think is a huge benefit. That works across all of our accounts. I also think with adding project management as a function to the agency came a lot of tools and processes. And so having at the leadership level now the type of visibility we have into capacity across the agency, and the way that we look at forecasting into the future, what are our staffing needs going to be? Do we need to ramp up or down? That was immensely helpful two years ago, when we saw a really big spike in growth to kind of understand what type of resources are we going to need? And how quickly? And what type of new skill sets are we going to need? We just have a lot more visibility into that and able to make proactive decisions.
Jenny Plant 16:17
It’s spot on, I can see that makes total sense. With the tools and processes you refer to, are you happy to share the tools that perhaps you’re using initially and maybe if you have evolved those tools or systems that you’re using? Do you use any kind of project management tools, specifically, that you would recommend or not recommend?
Lindsay 16:41
Yeah, I think it is so tricky, because I think there are so many great tools out there. And now there’s a lot of customising that you can do to kind of make it work for you, as Sara mentioned, we are using Smartsheet. But that’s more of the timeline, visualising data type of tool for us. So we don’t have one single tool that is the, you know, golden ticket, we use a tool that is actually now owned by Smartsheet, called Resource Management. And we’ve been with them for years now. And from a time checking perspective, it’s great information. And from a forecasting perspective, when used properly provides a lot of really good data and information as well. But we also try to stay flexible with what our clients want. And how we are, we just try to stay agile, and we use other tools as well. So our stack of tools is probably larger than maybe some might think is efficient. But it works for us, given our business, we have some people that just love Trello, they think it’s beautiful because it is and it’s easy to use. And so some folks use that. And we leave that up to project teams to kind of lean on different tools based on you know, what’s available, and what’s going to make it the easiest with our clients.
Jenny Plant 17:58
Sounds great, rather than force feeding, like one tool to everybody and making them all use it.
Lindsay 18:03
Exactly!
Sara 18:05
Can I add to that? Yes, of course. Okay. I’ll just add that part of the reason it’s so smart to have access to so many tools is that many of our clients, not all, we work with HR folks, we work with business unit leaders, we work with a lot of different people, but most of our clients are internal communicators, and they love when we help organise their own work. So not only are our project managers helping to keep our projects on time and on budget and managing our contracts and managing our vendors and doing all of these really important things. But they are also helping our clients often organise their work and their workflows. And so part of the reason why we need to have access to so many tools and be really proficient in them, I am saying we, but it is our project managers that need to be really proficient in them because often we will get those requests from our clients, they might say, gosh, we really need an intake process or we are getting so many requests from our own business partners and we need a tool, we need a process to be able to capture those things. We will, of course, want to give our agency insight into that, but we need help to manage it on our own. Our project managers will come in and do that billable work for our clients as well, to help organise their work, help make their lives better and more efficient. Sometimes that might be in Trello. Sometimes that might be in Smartsheet, it could be in a lot of different tools. But that’s been a really huge benefit as well. Our project management is not only behind the scenes, they are often doing billable work for our clients and sometimes those project management deliverables really are deliverables in our SOW’s so that’s part of the reason as well,
Jenny Plant 19:45
What a great idea to actually package that up and sell it to clients as a service. You know, you are so proficient with it yourselves that you’re now offering it to your clients. I love it. So would you mind both sort of talking me through the actual dance between a strategist and a project manager from the beginning of the project, when you have just closed the deal, and talk to me about that process. Of them working together through the life of a client project, or if it’s a retainer, the life of the relationship. Yeah, do you want me to start?
Lindsay 20:25
Yeah,
Sara 20:26
We will see what I say, and then you can correct it. I think part of the benefit of having project managers, and our hybrid which is an account manager, and someone delivering billable work, is that we’re getting different perspectives. So within that you are getting, well, two people can be on a call with a client and hear slightly different things. You can have different takeaways, you can have different perspectives. Through really open communication, which we are always trying to encourage on our team, you might have some healthy debate. And that’s the point. We want our teams to have that discussion, have a debate, sort of figure out the best path, incorporating all of these points of view, and being really inclusive of the different perspectives in the room. And so I think, we always, – Lindsay and I joke that we just wish our teams would fight more. And we don’t really mean more courage, but that healthy debate, that discussion, to make sure our decisions are planned, our passwords are very well rounded. So that comes to mind first. Lindsay, do you want to share anything on that?
Lindsay 20:29
Yes, cool. Yes, what you were saying about having multiple people listening and hearing different perspectives just made me think of how, at the beginning, the two roles worked so closely around stakeholder management and understanding what the different people within the project team might want and need and starting to anticipate those. Sometimes, folks will say something like, okay, this person is going to want a lot of written communication from us as it relates to project status. So what does that look like? Let’s start thinking about a weekly status update, a weekly round up at the end of the week that lets them know, this is what we did, this is what we’re looking for, or someone else might want that higher level view. And that’s when we are like, okay, we want something visual, a dashboard that they can check in on so that they get the full picture. And so I think at the beginning, that’s a lot of what the project manager is thinking of and partnering with the account manager on is, who are these individuals? How are we going to be able to best work with them? And how can we customise our collective approach to do that through communication and visualising information? Very clever. And that is done at the kickoff call? Is it when you are meeting the stakeholders? Are you referring to client stakeholders? Or just the whole team stakeholders? I was referring to clients, stakeholders, specifically.
Jenny Plant 23:05
I think that is just such a gem of a recommendation, because this is what it’s all about, isn’t it? We are not in the mass market business. We are a consultancy business working with really a handful of clients, you know, 25 or 30 clients maximum. And actually, why wouldn’t we have a slightly different view and bespoke approach to the client management? So that’s a really good tip. Okay, so, talk me through the process. You have just won the deal and the account manager and the project manager are being lined up to take over the relationship.
Sara 23:43
Yep. So Jenny, this is something we’re continuing to refine. And we will continue to, probably till the end of time. But, yes, so we won the business, we are putting our team together, we have a very cross functional team that decides who is staffing accounts, so that we can make sure we are not overloading anyone. Making sure that we are distributing work in a smart way and that people’s skill sets are being used appropriately. But they also get development opportunities. So weighing all of those things in those staffing decisions. We actually have meetings every Monday, to talk about the work coming in, or the work that’s ready to launch and make sure we are making the right decisions. We also allow our teams to raise their hand for projects that they might be interested in. We have a really cool process that Lindsay created. Do you want to talk about this Lindsay?
Lindsay 24:36
Oh, yes, so our company’s name is Brilliant Ink. We refer to our people as “Inkies” and so the process is “I need an Inky” and we use Slack heavily and it is the Slack channel where our sales team is able to post new opportunities that are coming in and kind of put out a request for who’s interested, who has the background, who has the skill set, and people can raise their hands right in the channel and let them know what their experience is and what their interest is, and then put their hat in the ring really to be considered for that opportunity. That’s been in place for probably about 18 months, maybe two years now and it’s been really transformative to communicate out what’s coming in and what’s available and give people flexibility to have a little bit more say in the type of work that comes across their plate.
Jenny Plant 25:25
Wow. And you find there’s a mixture of people that want different things, you don’t get the oh, we know this is going to be a popular project, put it up and it gets snapped up.
Sara 25:35
Yeah, I can speak to that. So it’s something that we often find, look, our strategists often have a quite full plate and so they might be a little strategic about what they raise their hand for, knowing the time commitment as well. I think that one of the more interesting aspects of it is designers and the projects that they may or may not take on, we have a brilliant team of designers who are so talented. But depending on what’s going on with their clients, they might say, look, I really want to be on a retainer type project, I want some regular cadence, or they might say, nope, I don’t want that. I don’t want to be on regular status calls, I only want one-off projects. So whenever those come up, I’m going to raise my hand for those. So we have learned a lot about our team. Our team of employees and our team of extended folks that we work with as well about what they might like what might be of interest to them. But the brilliance of it is that while we’re aware of it, and we track it, because we want everyone that works with Brilliant Ink to have really good experience, we also don’t have to carry all that knowledge and be the sole keepers of it, right? They’re able to raise their hand or say, yep, this works for me now. Their needs are going to change over time, we have a lot of working parents, so over the summer, they may have more or less time. That allows them to really raise their hand for the type of work that they want in that moment, and it’s been really successful, it has also added a lot of transparency to our work and to our processes. So people don’t feel like they’re being talked to sort of behind the scenes or in the dark about being selected for something. It just has brought some of our processes into the light, which I think has been really helpful for everyone’s understanding of how things are working and what’s coming up.
Jenny Plant 27:22
I mean, this is totally you lot really, because I love working with you, we have worked together and the autonomy and transparency. I don’t think I’ve met any other agency that has this level of engagement throughout the whole team. So the way you manage everything, I think a lot of people could learn some lessons from that. So that’s a brilliant idea. I love that thought. Okay, so the team have been…
Sara 27:48
Keep going!
Jenny Plant 27:49
Yeah! So they put up their hand and said, I want to work on that one. And they are assigned. Do you assign an account manager? Sorry, a strategist and a project manager for every project, retainer or project by project?
Sara 28:03
Typically?
Lindsay 28:05
Yeah,
Sara 28:05
Well, there’s like, options, right?
Lindsay 28:08
Yeah, yeah.
Sara 28:09
But they’re on our risk register. And we are watching them
Lindsay 28:12
Yeah that’s right!
Sara 28:14
Teeny tiny budgets and doing a couple of workshops with some clients, where they’ve asked us to come in and host a workshop for their team. One’s about data visualisation. We have really skilled teams running those, who know this material inside and out. And so we haven’t assigned a project manager to those. But that’s the only exception. And with the next workshop, we might change our mind and put a project manager back on. But yes, so we always, except for those assign a project manager, we always have a strategist on our projects. They are the scale of how much account management versus content creation and strategies development they’re doing can depend. Because we have such a strong design and creative team. Some of our projects are primarily creative base, we’re doing internal branding for our clients, things like that. And so our strategist might have a really light lift in terms of the deliverables that they’re actually producing. But their focus would then be on account management, and helping support the PM, and partner with them and work with our design folks as well. So it depends, that’s the tricky answer in terms of how and who we staff on projects and what the configuration is. But there’s always a PM, there’s always a strategist, and then the rest, we sort of figured out depending on the work itself and the client’s needs.
Jenny Plant 29:35
Great. And Lindsay, perhaps you could speak to, the scoping stage, because I know you are head of that, aren’t you? If you win a deal, or you close a deal, then it comes down to developing the contract which you call a scope of work. You ensure that your project manager and the strategist get input on that, is that right?
Lindsay 29:57
Yes. It’s a step in our process that I don’t think we ever skip. I’m pausing for a moment to make sure that’s a true statement. And
it’s called our proposal, the SOW process or statement of work. That is the first time that the sales team and myself and likely the project manager, as you mentioned, and the account manager are going to sit down and look and see this is exactly what was pitched, this is what was proposed, this is what the client wants. Now, let’s turn that into a contract that we can follow and we can manage. And it’s that first opportunity for the people who are going to be leading and driving the work forward to understand what we are all agreeing to and get on the same page. We implemented that process probably four years ago now and I feel like that was one of the first game changers of making sure that folks had clear expectations on what we were delivering at the very beginning. And so that is never skipped. Always a meeting, I just had one this morning for 30 minutes. And I’m always a little bit surprised when something new comes up that we want to add to our scope or assumptions or dependencies. But once you get those people talking, you really start to think ahead and you start to think about risks.
As Sara mentioned, we are starting to track risks so much more closely now and talking about them a lot more openly, not just at the project level, also at the account level, and the agency level, to be more proactive about what might happen and think about those things and get them in writing so that it’s clear, not just for our internal team, but for the engagement that we’re getting into with our clients so that everyone’s on the same page.
Jenny Plant 31:41
Yes, that’s another benefit. So as you said before about having a few people working on the account, and watching the types of risks. When you’re on your own. You’ve got one thousand and one things to think about and that goes to the backburner, doesn’t it? Okay, so they’ve been assigned, they’ve worked on this scope, the proposal to the scope of work, they have inputted and said, Oh, hang on a minute, what’s out of scope? Have we made these assumptions? And really what you’re doing there, which I think is really super clever, is that they are assuming the responsibility at that stage, aren’t they? It’s like you give them the opportunity to input so that they can feel some ownership from that point?
Lindsay 32:23
For sure.
Jenny Plant 32:24
Then what’s the next step? How do we assign roles and responsibilities? Who’s going to manage the client? Are we both going to be on the status calls? How do you work out the nuts and bolts of it? particularly the client contact?
Sara 32:42
Yep. So again, this is all subject to change, we might evolve this at some point, we were listening to the other account manager and project manager podcast episode that you had Jenny and they had a really interesting process. What happens for us right now is that we go through the sales process, we go through the PDF, or the SOW meeting where we take that brilliant proposal and actually turn it into contractual terms that everyone can agree to, then we move into an internal pickoff. So that’s just what the Brilliant Ink team that’s pulling together, anyone who maybe hadn’t been assigned to the project, by the time we did the PDF or SOW meeting, pulling everyone together. And talking through roles and responsibilities, we talk through client history, what we know about them, a huge amount of our work is through relationships that we already have, either expanded work, or a client that we’ve worked with somewhere else that has gone to a new company that we followed along. We tend to have a good history to talk through. And we want to make sure that everyone on the project team understands that history, understands how to work best with this client, with the stakeholders that are at play any politics on the background, anything that might be going on. So we talk through all of that. And like I said, and then
we go through a pretty robust process of talking through roles and responsibilities. And that gets into we are going to have this SME join the project, they’re going to be on two calls with the client, but we want to make sure we’re incorporating their perspective. But the bulk of the discussion is around, you know, what is the strategist doing? How many strategists do we have on it? Do we have two do we have one? How are we dividing up responsibilities between those folks? And then what is the project managers responsibilities as it relates to this project, specifically. Project managers sometimes scale or support up and down? Lindsay talked about that before, as it’s appropriate for the project. And with strategists, we do a similar thing, but typically it’s around do we have one person or two. If it’s a smaller project with a really defined scope, where everyone’s on the same page and makes a lot of sense, then we might just have one strategist, if we have a huge retainer, and we know there’s some really big deliverables coming up and it’s going to be too much volume for one strategist to handle then we might bring in a second. The second is typically responsible for developing a lot of the content. And then what we typically call the lead strategists, they are a little bit more focused on the account development and account management tasks.
And so we’ll talk through all of that. And again, it’s all subject to change. So as we go on through the life of the project, we might say, we need a little different support from the project manager, we need a little different support from our SME, or our strategists, depending on what we’ve learned and how the project’s evolved. Like I said earlier, project managers have benefited Brilliant Ink tremendously in our ability to do change orders and expand our agreements and what we’re doing with them. But the nature of that, of course, it brings in more revenue for the agency, which is awesome. But it also changes the work, right? And then we need to rethink. Okay, so now we’re adding six months to this timeline, we are adding new stakeholders, we are adding new responsibilities and so how does our team need to shift and change. So all of that gets talked through as much as we know in the internal kickoff, and then we revisit that as we need.
Jenny Plant 36:07
Amazing.
Lindsay 36:07
I think, let’s add to that, if I may,
Jenny Plant 36:10
Yes go on Lindsay
Lindsay 36:11
So everything she was discussing just there is very detailed. And so while those conversations are happening, what we’re doing in the background is configuring our systems to match that. So we’ve identified that one person is going to be the lead, one person that’s going to support and the SME that is going to come in later in the project. All of those things start to form the sequence of events, the timeline, and when different resources are going to be allocated to the work itself. So while the team is wrapping their arms around that piece of it, we’re also configuring the tools so that that feeds into our forecasting that I mentioned earlier. So we can start seeing, okay, our research lead needs to be here at this time, they’re also on these five projects at this time, and we can start seeing if conflicts are going to exist. If capacity is going to get tight, it all feeds into that larger system.
Jenny Plant 37:02
That’s really clever. So another reason why you want a dedicated project management team who is all over this, because everyone is being utilised in the right way, not overloading people, to see if they have got too much capacity. Just as you said if all the systems are working in unison, then you have all of a sudden a very efficient, well oiled machine. Now both of you have referred to SMEs, I just wanted to make sure everybody listening to this understands that that’s a subject matter expert. So you’re pulling in subject matter experts, which could vary depending on the nature of the project. Okay, carry on. You’ve assigned roles and responsibilities, you’ve had the internal kickoff, and then what happens?
Sara 37:47
Yep, then we’re normally waiting on the paperwork being signed. And as soon as we get to celebrate that in Slack, which we do loudly, with lots of emojis, then we move into an external kickoff. So that is with the client, we have a beautiful template that we use, but of course customised because we can’t help ourselves, nor would we limit ourselves to, depending on that one template. But then we do an external kickoff. And so we pull the full team together with our client with important stakeholders and talk through everything that we know about the project, everything we’ve heard so far, reconfirm their priorities reconfirm what’s happening with them within their own company and their own political environment. And then make some next steps and some plans for how we’re going to get started. That’s where we might confirm how often we’re going to meet with the client, we might confirm our assumption about the type of reporting they might like to see, we confirm what our first priorities are and how we’re going to be able to tackle those. And it’s a conversation right? We would be foolish to think that nothing has changed from the time that we agreed on a proposal to when we kicked off with the client. Sometimes that can be a couple of weeks, sometimes it can be a month or two depending on procurement, and how quickly people can get the paperwork processed. But that gap in time can be a space where a lot of change happens. Different things can happen within the client, so we want to be really responsive, we want to make sure we’re double checking our assumption, and that we have a really good plan in place going forward. So it’s an external kickoff that we have with the client to confirm all that and sort of then hit the ground running from there. And our project managers helped make sure that anything our strategists have rambled off, because it made sense in the moment that we’re actually able to deliver on it. And that’s part of the challenge of our project managers, strategists are brilliant, our team is so skilled and we suffer from ideas. We have ideas and ideas and ideas about how we can help our clients, how they can do really great work for their team and how they can deliver for employees, and without our project manager keeping it together, documenting it, making sure it is in scope, we would be in some trouble. So that’s what happens we do an external kickoff.
Jenny Plant 40:11
Fantastic. Anything to add there Lindsay?
Lindsay 40:14
Yes, you know, Sara said a couple times very casually, and I love how this is so ingrained in her process and in her brain now, but something I’m thinking about other agency leaders might have picked up on is that we don’t start work until paperwork is signed. And I don’t want to breeze over that, because that is something that I think was another game changer years ago that we stopped doing. I mean, project managers are basically brilliant, beautiful boundary setters is what they’re really doing. And I know it’s tempting, I know, when you sell something, you’re excited, you have a lot of energy, you just want to dive in and get started. And as she mentioned, that process from when they say yes to the proposal to when their procurement team is able to give us a contract that we can execute. It can be weeks, it can be upwards of months at times. And that’s a really painful period. But that gap in time is where we saw the over budget start, that’s where we saw the over servicing, it was at the very beginning, it was reviewing things beforehand, having conversations beforehand. And in my opinion, it just used to set off the relationship, just not on a very clear footing, if that makes sense. And because we don’t do that now, even if folks really are anxious, I think they tend to respect the fact that we need to make sure everything’s in place before we dive in. And that’s something we started doing years ago that now we clearly don’t look back on. But I think it’s really important. I think the other thing, culturally that has shifted in our own language when talking about project management work is change orders. I’ve heard other project managers or folks that work in agencies think of change orders is almost a dirty word, that it’s something that’s a sign of like, we did something wrong, and we need a change order. And that is not the case at all. And it’s because of everything else we’ve already talked about. It’s because of how diligent we are with setting up the contract and turning that proposal into a contract that we can execute. With really clear expectations. The change order comes not because we mismanaged time or budget or worked on things that were out of scope, it’s the exact opposite of that it’s coming because we are providing great service to our clients and they want more. And we all know that it’s not part of this contract, it’s just very clear. And the change order is the tool in which we are able to expand that work. And it’s a very positive experience. And so just in case it’s still a dirty word for others listening, I want to work on changing that.
Jenny Plant 42:50
I think the two points you’ve made are very apt. And I remember that you shared I mean, when we met, we met at David Baker’s Mind Your Own Business Conference, you were telling me that you were networking with other agency owners and having this discussion. And you were quite surprised because your way of working is we’re not going to start working until we have that PO, which absolutely the expert the way of working. But you were surprised at how many other agency leaders etc. saying we just start. And the observation you’ve made is so apt for what we’re talking about. That’s where the scope creep starts. So lovely point. And like you said, a change order is just an opportunity to expand the account. So making that kind of shift in thinking about I think, two points very well made. So let’s talk about the kickoff has happened with the client, and we’re into the daily rhythm. How do the team keep in contact and keep each other updated? Who leads who takes the call from the client? Like how do you work it out?
Sara 43:54
Yep. I’m so glad Lindsay that you think I’ve learned my lesson because before you came on board, I mean, it was that – it was completely that Jenny, we would start work right away. And then they would take stuff out of the contract. And they’re like, Well, we did it. So I’m glad I’ve reformed and changed my ways. I mean, I think point too about PMs being boundary coaches is really true in our work and our personal lives for Lindsay has a lot to deal with up here. But yeah, so how does the day to day work? It depends. We collaborate as much as we can we use Slack heavily. So there’s a lot of conversation we have often account channels, sometimes even project specific channels if we have really distinct work happening at different places with an account on it. So there’s a lot of conversation there. Depending on the type of work we’re doing. The stakeholders we are supporting, we might have internal check-ins which is a really quick 15 or 30 minute call with our internal team to make sure we’re all on the same page. But that might happen weekly, it might happen bi-weekly or it might happen monthly, it depends on what’s happening with the client. We at Brilliant Ink have been remote for, I used to say five years, probably close to six now. It’s been a very long time with us working remote, it was far before COVID and so we have some ways of working that have really supported us through this increased remote time. And that’s jumping on Zooms, it’s jumping on the phone, it’s having Slack conversations, being really open and available to get on the phone and talk through anything that might come up. But that’s what it typically looks like. We have regular internal syncs and often we have syncs with our clients as well, our project managers typically join those calls, it’s very rare for them not to. And part of that is so that we have all those different perspectives, hearing what our clients are sharing. But we also tried to be really efficient with their time and not have 15 people on a call and I’ll bill the client for the time. So it’s just always a balance of how can we be the most efficient and do the smartest work for you. Sometimes that means having people in the room and instead of having one call with one person, and then that person has to go and have 15 conversations with 15 different people that’s actually not efficient. So it’s typically through Slack, and through internal and client check-ins that we manage the work on an ongoing basis.
Jenny Plant 46:33
And do you always make sure that everyone has a role to play in that meeting? or would there be a scenario where the project manager maybe is sitting there listening? Do you have that? Or do you make sure that everyone has an active role so that the client sees that everyone’s engaged?
Sara 46:50
Yes, we make sure that everyone has a role. Often the project manager will be the one who has helped us schedule the meeting, will send notes as a follow up and action items, any update to the project plan. So while they may, and of course, we always ask their opinion, as we’re talking through timelines, and making sure we’re not getting ourselves into trouble by over committing. That’s sort of their role on the call, they also have a huge role to play in the follow up after the call. But yes, I mean, we want to make sure that anyone who has joined has a question or two has a role to play has something to contribute to the conversation, so that the client actually does feel like they’re being supported by a team, not just one person with a bunch of people watching it.
Jenny Plant 47:35
Right. And so Lindsay, from your perspective, does the project manager take ownership of the action items, for example, that’s coming out of a meeting to make sure that everything gets followed up on and the account manager doesn’t forget about something or not? Because when I started years ago, and I’m a dinosaur, we had a very rigid process, to have a contact report that had to go out within 24 hours of any client meeting, no matter what was said on that meeting. And it was a very rigid process. So after a client call what does everyone do? Does everyone understand what everyone has to do after that?
Lindsay 48:19
So I would say that we have a more flexible process than what you just described. I would also say that the word we often hear if there’s ever a description of how we work is collaborative. So when that client call is done, the project manager will likely take the lead to draft what they’ve captured and heard in by way of key decisions, action items, and who they believe is taking the lead on those action items. And because we have a lot of clarity around roles and responsibilities, I would say that the project manager oversees that those things get done. But we have a lot of accountability for the folks and the different positions, that they drive their own actions and next steps forward. And so as Sara mentioned, we use Slack. It’s organised by different client channels, and by different project streams. We have a lot of Slack advocates that help us use threads and pinning and saved items to keep everything really well organised. And we use that tool to collaborate. What does this follow up look like? The long one? Is it a short one? Is it you know, heavily detailed? Is it going to include deliverables that they need to review? Is it going to include questions that we need them to respond on that sort of thing, and that is a team effort to get that out before the project manager likely sometimes the account lead sends that over?
Jenny Plant 49:39
Right, so they’re not chivvying people along this is everyone takes accountability, they oversee the capturing of the notes as soon as everyone’s assumed their responsibility for taking an action, then it’s up to the individual to take those actions. Essentially.
Lindsay 49:55
You got it.
Jenny Plant 49:56
Right. Okay. Let’s say you’re working on a longer term basis, a retainer basis and the client has an additional project they want to bring in. The briefing process, does the PM and the AM always attend every briefing call?
Sara 50:15
No, it depends, we might pull in it depends on the nature of the work and who is able to best speak to that. Sometimes the project manager may join, sometimes, it may be pulling the sales team back in or an expert, maybe it’s a research project. And so we pull in someone from our research team, so that we can really identify what’s happening. We would be more likely to include the lead strategist that’s on it. So the person who’s responsible for the account management to make sure that they’re hearing everything. But then as the work progresses, we would pull the project manager in and as it sort of solidifies as an opportunity, we would we would pull them in and ask their opinion too as to how do you feel about adding this to our current scope? Should we have a distinct SOW? while we have this long standing retainer shouldn’t this be a project? and a fixed fee project that we handle differently with its separate budget and a separate timeline? So the project manager would be looped in then to help us with those decisions?
Jenny Plant 51:17
Right. So they’ve really involved in pricing. I’ve just looked at the time, time girls, and I cannot believe the time has just gone like this. I want to be respectful of your time. But I’m also conscious, I’ve got to ask you both a final question. Because I know there’s going to be both account managers, project managers, agency owners listening to this waiting for your advice, because you’ve been doing this for so long. What would your advice be for an agency that’s considering moving from a hybrid account manager to separating these teams?
Lindsay 51:51
You mean outside of” do it”? Or outside of “make the change”?
Jenny Plant 51:58
Just repeat that, you just speak from the heart Lindsay because you said. something amazing.
Lindsay 52:05
So I think my advice would be to start slow. As I was thinking about talking to you and Sara, today, I was thinking about our evolution over the past five and a half years since I’ve been here. And I was the first part time project manager when I joined. And now we have several full time and an entire consultant group that supports us. So we have multiple people within our PMO. But that took time that didn’t happen overnight. And for all the things we mentioned earlier, culturally, it is a shift, you add a new function, you add a new support group, and that takes time to get used to. So slowly add them to your team. Pick the right projects that need the most support. So you can start really realising the benefit and seeing the results and then build from there. If you don’t have them right now, let’s not rush into it. Let’s just take it slow is my advice.
Jenny Plant 53:07
Great advice. What about you, Sara?
Sara 53:11
I would say that the benefit of freeing up brain space can’t be underestimated. I’m sure someone could do at all, of course. But they can’t do it all at the same level. And not everyone has the same skill set. And so I think having the humility to understand where your time is best used, and to really understand where you might be okay at something but someone else can do it at a whole other level and welcoming that collaboration is really freeing. So from me, as someone who’s really focused on account management, and delivering awesome work, I need the space, I need the mental space to be able to focus on those tasks with my clients. And that’s enough, that’s a lot. I can’t be in the weeds, managing timelines, managing scope, managing contracts, delivering all this billable work. And also thinking about building a long term relationship and taking the time to go to lunch with my client and doing all of these things that take a considerable amount of time, checking in on their kids, seeing what’s happening with them personally, those things that really build strong relationships. I can’t do it all. And so that has been a huge benefit to our agency. It is just breaking up those tasks so that people can have a little bit of mental space to do the work that they’re really good at really well.
Jenny Plant 54:39
Very well said, very well said and obviously spoken from the heart. So thank you so much. And in fact, thank you both so so much because you’ve really shared some gems today. Honestly, I have taken loads of notes, and I’m sure people listening will have too. So thank you both for joining me. This has been an absolute pleasure. And we’re just on the hour so that’s in an hour in total so thank you so much
