October 1, 2024 • 21 mins
Do you ever get to the end of the working day and wonder, ‘What did I actually get done today?'
You’re certainly not alone.
We’re interrupted about every 8 minutes. And it can take up to 20 minutes to get back to what we’re doing. Imagine the impact of that on an 8 hour day.
In a recent Agency Hackers webinar, Harv spoke about productivity – including the flow state, trends that have had a negative influence on our ability to focus, and strategies that have given him and his colleagues a big productivity boost.
We're resharing that content for you here in case you missed the webinar.
You'll learn Harv's advice including:
- Scheduling your day in advance, so you're not staring at your to-do list in despair.
- Using a combination of 'office hours' to reply to messages and DND to minimize distractions.
- Techniques to make your meetings more efficient, your team more focused, and encourage clear communication. (Including meetings that no one actually shows up to)!
View the presentation with visuals on Youtube.
Learn more about Agency Hackers.
Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/
Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.
This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Harv Nagra (00:32):
Hey all, welcome to a special bonus episode of The
Handbook.
A couple of weeks ago, Ipresented a webinar with agency
hackers on workplaceproductivity.
I touched on the idea of theflow state, trends that have had
a negative impact on our abilityto focus, and strategies that
have had a big productivityboosting impact on me and my
(00:53):
colleagues, past and present.
For those of you that weren'table to attend, I thought it
might be nice to share thatcontent here.
There might be things that youhear today that inspire you to
go away and think about issuesimpacting focus and productivity
at your own workplace andimplement some strategies of
your own.
By the way, if you want to seethe presentation with visuals,
which I was presenting at thewebinar, we'll include a link to
(01:15):
that in the episode notes.
Lastly, if you joined thewebinar the other week or if
you're listening for the firsttime today, please share this
episode with a friend orcolleague and ask them to listen
and share their thoughts withyou.
That's how we drive theconversation forward.
I'll leave it there and let youlisten to the presentation and
I'll be back next week with ourregular episode.
Thanks very much Hi everyone,for those of you that don't know
(01:38):
me, my name is Harv Nagra.
Until a few months ago, I wasthe group operations director at
a pan European design andmarketing agency with
headquarters here in London inthe UK and offices in France and
Switzerland.
But I brought in Scoro, anagency work management platform
at my past agency and loved thebenefits it brought, my team
loved it.
And I loved it so much,actually, that I moved away from
(02:00):
that in house Ops Director roleand joined as Head of Brand
Communications, but my head andmy heart are still very firmly
in Agency Ops.
And some of you might know thatI'm the host of The Handbook:
The Agency Operations Podcast,which I'll tell you more about
in a few minutes.
But today, of course, we're hereto talk about productivity and
flow.
So a lot of us probably haveheard of this term, but what you
(02:23):
might not know is that this is aconcept that was put forward by
a Hungarian Americanpsychologist, Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi.
And he calls flow an optimalstate of being.
So, a state in where people areso immersed in an activity that
nothing else matters, and hisresearch showed that the longer,
the more time people spent inflow throughout the week,
(02:45):
whether that was in theirpersonal lives, whether that was
at work, the higher they ratedtheir satisfaction with life.
So that's a pretty powerfulsentiment.
So his flow diagram looks likethis.
So it's got two axes with skillsacross one and challenges on the
other.
And you know, your skills andchallenges go from low to to
(03:05):
high.
So what he says is that when youdon't have the right skills, but
your challenges, your project,whatever you're working on is
too difficult, you live inanxiety.
Okay.
And on the other hand, whenyou've got all the right skills,
but the challenge isn'tchallenging enough, right?
The projects that you're workingon aren't challenging enough,
you live in boredom.
(03:27):
So flow occurs, when you'reworking on a challenging
activity that requires skills.
So in that state, like we'vejust said a moment ago, people
become so involved and soimmersed in what they're doing
that it almost becomesspontaneous and automatic.
Everything else fades away.
So hopefully, like some of youanswered, you get into flow
multiple times a week, thatdefinitely resonates and it
(03:49):
gives us something to aspire toanyway, right?
If our quality of life index isoff the charts when we feel that
way, that's a good thing to aimfor.
But what, the psychologist saysis that, flow requires a
complete focusing of yourattention at the task at hand,
it leaves no room in the mindfor irrelevant information.
(04:09):
And he says that any lapse inconcentration breaks flow.
So I'm looking at that Slacknotification in the corner of
the screen, and that kind ofjust goes to illustrate the
point.
So that leads us back to ourtopic, productivity and our ways
of working.
And I think there's been acouple of trends in the past
couple of years that have had amassive impact on the way that
(04:31):
we work, and sometimes anegative impact.
So let's talk about a couple ofthem.
The first one is remote working.
Right?
I think this has created at somepoint a sense of anxiety for
those of us that work as projectmanagers or even ops, where
we're very deadline driven.
A sense of anxiety about howmuch progress our colleagues
(04:53):
might be making on sharedprojects when we can't see them.
You used to be able to look overat somebody's screen and just
feel confident that they'remaking progress and things are
ticking along.
We can't do that any longer.
So it turned into this thingwhere we started relying on
these communication tools tocheck in more frequently and
make sure people are on trackand things like that.
The other negative consequenceof this is it started to create
(05:15):
an expectation on our parts thatwe're going to get an immediate
response.
And when you don't get that,your anxiety levels increase.
You know, are they having a nap?
Is someone doing their laundry?
Or have they gone shopping?
Things like that.
It's kind of unreasonable, butthat that ends up being the kind
of situation we're in.
Okay.
That's quite related to thesecond trend, which is the
(05:36):
number of platforms we use andthe number of notifications we
get from all of those is now offthe charts.
So the screen says we'reinterrupted every 10 minutes,
but I think the updated stat issomething like every seven to
eight minutes you getinterrupted and research tells
us that when you're interrupted,it takes you about 20 minutes to
get back on schedule on what youwere supposed to be working on.
(05:58):
So if you think about that, weat best, we've got eight hours
in a workday and you'reinterrupted every seven or eight
minutes and it takes you 20minutes to get back on task.
That sounds fairly horrific, Ithink you'd agree.
So as Ops folks, we love talkingabout utilization and
productivity, and I'm talkingabout this aspirational idea of
(06:20):
flow here.
But where do these distractionsleave us?
You know, where does it leaveproductivity and utilization and
quality work?
So in my case, I sometimes usedto feel very dejected at the end
of the day.
You know, I think my colleaguessaw me as someone that got a lot
done, but what I ended upfeeling like was that I was
firefighting and helping peoplethroughout the day.
(06:42):
But the projects I wanted tomake progress on, they would get
shoveled into a smaller andsmaller window at the end of the
week, or out of hours.
And again, the result was that Iwould leave at the end of any
given day, feeling like I am notaccomplishing anything and
feeling bad about myself.
So I don't know if thatresonates with any of you, but
(07:02):
that was certainly the case forme.
So those were some of thechallenges to our productivity,
but you know, I'm going to talkabout three kind of key things
that I've learned over the yearsthat I brought in at my past
agency, that I've learned at myjob in Scoro, that I've learned
from peers in the agency opsspace, that have had a pretty
big impact on me.
(07:23):
So the first thing, it mightsound obvious, but planning your
time.
We spend a lot of time planningthe schedule for the resources
on our teams, the designers, thecopywriters, the developers,
things like that.
So what you're looking at isbasically a screenshot from one
of the designers at my pastagency and it was planned like
this.
So the designers and thedevelopers knew exactly what
(07:44):
they were going to work on onany given day.
So it's great.
You show up on Monday, you know,I'm going to do two hours on
that, three hours on that, andfour hours on that, right?
That's fantastic.
But what that doesn't help ispeople like us.
You know, ops, finance, evenproject managers and account
managers that don't havesomebody telling us,
unfortunately, what we need towork on and when.
So the reality for me was I havethis growing and growing to do
(08:09):
list and I'd show up at work andfeel completely overwhelmed
about what I wanted to focus on,you know, the big, meaty, scary
things I would procrastinate,and then I'd get distracted by
incoming emails or Slacknotifications.
And that's where that wholecycle of firefighting would
begin.
Okay.
So what I ended up starting todo and started encouraging our
(08:31):
colleagues to do that didn'thave their schedule planned for
them was to plot in their time.
So this is something I do nowdaily, as well.
So at 5:15 every day, it's in mycalendar to look at my to do
list, my projects and mypriorities and plan them for the
next day.
So I never show up on a workdayand think like, what do I feel
like working on?
What should I be working on?
(08:52):
I've decided that day before andput all my priorities in, all
around client meetings or,internal meetings and even
having windows to do a bit ofadmin or catch up on messages
and things like that.
So this works really well forpeople that are responsible for
planning their own calendar,like a lot of us on this call, I
think.
but again, you might bethinking, well, I kind of
(09:14):
already do that, but I still endup firefighting.
And that was true for me aswell.
So that leads us to the secondpoint, this idea of"office
hours" and do not disturb.
Okay, so office hours came up atmy past agency because at one
point we had a strategy directorand she was one of one, the only
strategy person in the agency.
(09:35):
So she would get bombarded withrequests from colleagues asking
to help with pitch ideas, tohelp with estimating the
strategy element in a quote, toanswer their project questions
and stuff like that.
So she was just like, well, Ican't spend all day answering
questions and actually do thework for strategy on these
paying client projects, right?
(09:57):
So we decided to try"officehours" with her and it was kind
of like a university lecturerhas windows where students can
go and check in and askquestions.
So she had two slots one wasbefore lunch and one before end
of day where she had 30 minutes.
You could send her questionsthroughout the day but unless
you had a meeting, she wouldn'tjump on a call or respond to you
until that office hour window.
(10:18):
Okay?
So, so that ended up workingreally well, and then we started
encouraging other people thatfelt the same way to do the same
thing.
The other idea is something thatI was exposed to at Scoro.
So, of course we all know thatwhen we're hopping on a call
like this, we put on do notdisturb on our computers and so
on.
But at Scoro, what I wassurprised to learn during
(10:39):
onboarding week, it's basicallya company policy, they don't
police it, but they stronglyencourage it: that you should
have do not disturb on yourpersonal device and your work
computer at all times.
So I was quite shocked by thisand I was like, how does anybody
get anything done if you're notanswering people's questions and
moving things along, right?
It seemed shocking to me, butthe point was that how often do
(11:03):
you get a message from somebodythat is like super urgent and it
needs to be responded to now,right?
That's that's the first thingand again, it goes back to that
valuing your own time and yourprojects.
If we get distracted every sevenor eight minutes, you can just
see without having something inplace to cut that out, that's
(11:23):
where that spiral offirefighting starts and your own
stuff starts getting squeezedinto smaller and smaller
windows.
So that was the first thing thatit probably, whatever it is,
probably doesn't need a responseright now.
The other thing was that you canmake tweaks and exceptions in
your settings, on your computer,on your phone, your Mac or
Android, whatever, where you canmake exemptions for certain
(11:46):
apps.
So my main exemption is for mycalendar, so I see meetings and
don't forget that I need to joinsomething.
And the other is, is kind oflike, phone calls so that if
someone's ringing me, I do knowand basically my doorbell.
So those are my exemptions.
Nothing else gets through.
Okay.
The result of this is that youend up respecting your own time
(12:08):
and focusing on what you'resupposed to be focusing on.
And like the office hours idea,you encourage yourself to have
windows during which to checkyour[messages].
So that might be, you know,beginning of the day, right
before lunch, after lunch, midafternoon, and end of day, or
you could have only smallerwindows like my colleague that
was the strategy director.
(12:28):
You know, again, like I said,this is not policed, it's
strongly encouraged, and most ofmy colleagues here do this, and
I do it now as well.
And, you know, if somebody doeswant to check their messages and
emails more frequently, that'sfine.
But it's just, you're notconstantly seeing these Outlook
or Slack notifications pop upthat you feel like, Oh my God, I
need to look at this right nowand see what it is.
(12:51):
Okay.
And a related bonus tip before Imove on, in Slack, having a
policy encouraging people torespond in threads is just so
effective because probably noteveryone in the channel cares
about that question or commentthat was made.
So by encouraging the commentingor conversations to happen in
those threads means that theperson that asked gets the
(13:12):
notifications and people thatare interested in that question
can go and read up on it, buteveryone else in the company or
in that channel isn't gettingbombarded with extra
information.
So that's something I'd reallyencourage you to do if you're
not already doing that.
And my last kind of main themewas about fixing meetings.
So at my agency, what we didwas, we insisted that whoever
(13:35):
put in a meeting, you would haveto come in with an agenda.
You couldn't just walk in andsay, well, this is a loose
theme.
You had to have some bulletpoints in terms of what you
wanted to get out of the meetingand what your plans were.
Okay.
So this meant we had somethingto focus on rather than going
off script and thinking, okay,we didn't do anything we were
meant to.
And the next tip, is somethingthat I saw again at Scoro when I
(13:56):
joined.
What they did here, and whatI've seen here, is that meetings
were cut down, rather than 30 or60 minute defaults, the policy
is, your meetings need to be 20or 40 minutes.
So instead of 30, 60, it's 20 or40.
The thing is, we get the samevolume of conversations and
(14:16):
ideas done, we just saveourselves 10 minutes and allows
us to start focusing on the nextthing we're supposed to be
working on, rather than makingsure we're there till the full
30 minutes.
So that's really effective.
A related challenge at my pastagency, we started feeling like
there was too many meetings.
And I'm not talking aboutproject related meetings.
It was the cadence of managementmeetings we put in.
(14:39):
We were a multi entity businesswith multiple business units,
digital, strategy, creative andthings like that.
And we had Management meetings,which, it seems like a good idea
and it is, but it did startfeeling really heavy, especially
for those of us in ops or, theMD and the finance director that
would participate in a lot ofthese, it started feeling really
(15:01):
heavy.
So there's something I'vediscovered at Scoro that was,
this idea of asynchronousmeetings and surprisingly, the
people that attend this are allthe VPs and the heads of
departments.
So it's a very senior levelmeeting is what I'm trying to
say, right?
and what happens is it happensevery Monday at 1 pm, but nobody
(15:22):
actually shows up.
So what you're supposed to dobefore Monday at 1 pm, everyone
needs to log their meetingbullet point updates, their
status updates on what they'vebeen doing or what their teams
have been doing and what youneed other departments to know.
So everyone logs their bulletpoints and then one o'clock,
everyone knows that you can signin and read the update.
(15:44):
The entire company, all thesesenior level individuals sharing
their status updates.
So this, for me, was quite mindblowing.
So what could be 10 or 20 peoplejoining for a status update, for
an hour, and you think about thetime and the the financial
implications of that...
This was probably a 15 minutecommitment from all these very
(16:05):
senior level people.
So I think that's really a quitea cool thing to experiment with.
At Scoro, we also have a meetingfree Wednesday.
Okay.
So external meetings are finewith your clients and stuff like
that, but we strongly discourageour colleagues to book us on
that day.
So everyone knows when you'replanning your week or planning
your next day, Wednesday is agood day to put in those kind of
(16:27):
heavy thinking strategy kind ofblocks of time for yourself
because you're not going to haveinternal meetings.
So that's quite useful.
And that doesn't mean I can'tping my colleague to say, Hey, I
could borrow you for fiveminutes to get your opinion on
something.
Will you have five minutes latertoday?
And that does happen, but thepoint is you don't pre book
anyone on that Wednesday.
(16:48):
So with all of this stuff, whatworks for me, what's worked in
my past agency, what works atScoro, and some of these tips
that I've learned from otherpeople in agency ops, it doesn't
necessarily mean it's going towork for you, right?
So you need to go away, sit downwith a few key people in your
teams, and think about ideas.
What are the biggest blockers toproductivity and what could you
experiment with?
(17:09):
It could be ideas like you'veheard today or other people
talking about.
And then communicate that trial,that experiment to your agency,
in your agency all hands.
And of course, tell them whyyou're doing this.
And you know, the, the key pointhere is we're giving everybody
more time to focus.
So it's quite unlikely you getobjections to that because who
(17:29):
wouldn't want less distractions.
Okay, the other thing's, fairlystraightforward, but documenting
your working practices in youragency handbook so they're
codified and everyone knows thisis officially the way we do
things.
Um, including your workingpractices in your new starter
onboarding.
So making sure their first weekschedule has a section where
(17:50):
they do read about that andunderstand.
And of course, practicing whatyou preach, you know, as
operations leaders, as agencyleaders, you have to demonstrate
that you're adhering to thisstuff too.
So everyone knows that it's notjust something we say, it's
something we do.
I've just got a couple moreslides, but I just wanted to
point out a couple of thingsthat my agency, you know, I
(18:10):
mentioned that I work for Scoronow and this platform supports
agencies and bettercollaboration and work
management.
One of the things that designersat our agency, designers and
developers, loved is that basedon the planning we did for the
schedule, it automaticallycompletes their time sheets, so
they don't have to do any manualtime tracking.
Basically what's in your plansis effectively your time sheet.
(18:31):
You just need to tick to saythat's done or make an
adjustment if you worked, youwere planned for three hours,
but you ended up working threeand a half, you would just tweak
that to say 3.5.
So that makes things reallystraightforward.
For the rest of us, the PMs, theAMs, the ops people, finance
people, you know, I talked aboutplanning your own calendar, so
if you're already doing that,you're halfway there.
(18:53):
In Scoro, it syncs with yourcalendar, and you can tag your
calendar entries to a project.
So again, if you've planned outyour full day of calendar
entries, all you need to say is,it's this project and this
deliverable, and boom, yourtimesheets are done as well, if
your internal team tracks time,that's something I do.
And finally, Scoro becomes a bitof your crystal ball for your
(19:15):
agency when you use it to tracktime.
Of course, if people aretracking their time, you can
look back and see how much timethe team is spending on internal
versus external work, billableversus non billable work.
But when you use it to resourceyour projects, you can look
forward.
You can look forward at yourcapacity, like in the screenshot
there, and say that, you know,in two weeks, our team doesn't
(19:36):
have enough work, so weobviously need to dial up our
sales process, or maybe reducesome of our freelancers.
Similarly, if it's completelyovercapacity, then you know that
you need to turn work down, youmight need to negotiate later
deadlines, or bring in freelancesupport.
So it's super helpful in termsof planning your team's
capacity.
And, second to last slide, thebenefits for my team of bringing
(19:58):
all of these functions to oneplatform was the efficiency and
the accuracy and the project andbusiness visibility it gave us.
I kind of see it as like anoperating system for the agency,
a single place to look foreverything you need to see.
And it plugs into your CRMplatform, if you use one, your
HR system like Bamboo HR and,and things like Xero or
QuickBooks or Sage for youraccounting, so your finance
(20:22):
team, your bookkeepers will behappy as well.
And the last thing I wanted tosay is, I do host The Handbook:
The Agency Operations Podcast.
So, hopefully some of you arealready listening to that, so
thank you very much and pleasedo share that with your
colleagues and friends who mightbenefit from it.
Some of the lovely faces you seethere, a lot of them have been
speakers at Agency Hackersevents before, but they've all
(20:43):
been guests on the podcast.
And ops, as you all know, is sobroad, right?
It covers everything, you're abit of HR, a bit of IT, a bit of
process.
So every episode we talk about acompletely different theme and
the challenges around that and,these experts, whether they're
in house ops people orconsultants, give us some ideas
(21:03):
on how we can do things a bitbetter.
So it's a lot of knowledgesharing.
So please do subscribe.
it's on Apple, Spotify, and youcan find the link on Scoro's
website.
And of course I'm on LinkedIn aswell.
So if you ever want to pick mybrain about anything, if you
ever want to speak to me, dropme a note on LinkedIn.
I'd love to chat with you.
And I, I share a lot of theclips and learnings from the
podcast on my LinkedIn as well.
(21:23):
So that's somewhere you can keepup.
And when I post stuff, sharingyour thoughts of what you do
with regards to that topic, I'dlove to see some of that stuff.
I will stop rambling there.
Thank you very much forlistening and I apologize for
speaking so quickly.
Hey all, welcome to a special bonus episode of The
Handbook.
A couple of weeks ago, Ipresented a webinar with agency
hackers on workplaceproductivity.
I touched on the idea of theflow state, trends that have had
a negative impact on our abilityto focus, and strategies that
have had a big productivityboosting impact on me and my
(00:53):
colleagues, past and present.
For those of you that weren'table to attend, I thought it
might be nice to share thatcontent here.
There might be things that youhear today that inspire you to
go away and think about issuesimpacting focus and productivity
at your own workplace andimplement some strategies of
your own.
By the way, if you want to seethe presentation with visuals,
which I was presenting at thewebinar, we'll include a link to
(01:15):
that in the episode notes.
Lastly, if you joined thewebinar the other week or if
you're listening for the firsttime today, please share this
episode with a friend orcolleague and ask them to listen
and share their thoughts withyou.
That's how we drive theconversation forward.
I'll leave it there and let youlisten to the presentation and
I'll be back next week with ourregular episode.
Thanks very much Hi everyone,for those of you that don't know
(01:38):
me, my name is Harv Nagra.
Until a few months ago, I wasthe group operations director at
a pan European design andmarketing agency with
headquarters here in London inthe UK and offices in France and
Switzerland.
But I brought in Scoro, anagency work management platform
at my past agency and loved thebenefits it brought, my team
loved it.
And I loved it so much,actually, that I moved away from
(02:00):
that in house Ops Director roleand joined as Head of Brand
Communications, but my head andmy heart are still very firmly
in Agency Ops.
And some of you might know thatI'm the host of The Handbook:
The Agency Operations Podcast,which I'll tell you more about
in a few minutes.
But today, of course, we're hereto talk about productivity and
flow.
So a lot of us probably haveheard of this term, but what you
(02:23):
might not know is that this is aconcept that was put forward by
a Hungarian Americanpsychologist, Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi.
And he calls flow an optimalstate of being.
So, a state in where people areso immersed in an activity that
nothing else matters, and hisresearch showed that the longer,
the more time people spent inflow throughout the week,
(02:45):
whether that was in theirpersonal lives, whether that was
at work, the higher they ratedtheir satisfaction with life.
So that's a pretty powerfulsentiment.
So his flow diagram looks likethis.
So it's got two axes with skillsacross one and challenges on the
other.
And you know, your skills andchallenges go from low to to
(03:05):
high.
So what he says is that when youdon't have the right skills, but
your challenges, your project,whatever you're working on is
too difficult, you live inanxiety.
Okay.
And on the other hand, whenyou've got all the right skills,
but the challenge isn'tchallenging enough, right?
The projects that you're workingon aren't challenging enough,
you live in boredom.
(03:27):
So flow occurs, when you'reworking on a challenging
activity that requires skills.
So in that state, like we'vejust said a moment ago, people
become so involved and soimmersed in what they're doing
that it almost becomesspontaneous and automatic.
Everything else fades away.
So hopefully, like some of youanswered, you get into flow
multiple times a week, thatdefinitely resonates and it
(03:49):
gives us something to aspire toanyway, right?
If our quality of life index isoff the charts when we feel that
way, that's a good thing to aimfor.
But what, the psychologist saysis that, flow requires a
complete focusing of yourattention at the task at hand,
it leaves no room in the mindfor irrelevant information.
(04:09):
And he says that any lapse inconcentration breaks flow.
So I'm looking at that Slacknotification in the corner of
the screen, and that kind ofjust goes to illustrate the
point.
So that leads us back to ourtopic, productivity and our ways
of working.
And I think there's been acouple of trends in the past
couple of years that have had amassive impact on the way that
(04:31):
we work, and sometimes anegative impact.
So let's talk about a couple ofthem.
The first one is remote working.
Right?
I think this has created at somepoint a sense of anxiety for
those of us that work as projectmanagers or even ops, where
we're very deadline driven.
A sense of anxiety about howmuch progress our colleagues
(04:53):
might be making on sharedprojects when we can't see them.
You used to be able to look overat somebody's screen and just
feel confident that they'remaking progress and things are
ticking along.
We can't do that any longer.
So it turned into this thingwhere we started relying on
these communication tools tocheck in more frequently and
make sure people are on trackand things like that.
The other negative consequenceof this is it started to create
(05:15):
an expectation on our parts thatwe're going to get an immediate
response.
And when you don't get that,your anxiety levels increase.
You know, are they having a nap?
Is someone doing their laundry?
Or have they gone shopping?
Things like that.
It's kind of unreasonable, butthat that ends up being the kind
of situation we're in.
Okay.
That's quite related to thesecond trend, which is the
(05:36):
number of platforms we use andthe number of notifications we
get from all of those is now offthe charts.
So the screen says we'reinterrupted every 10 minutes,
but I think the updated stat issomething like every seven to
eight minutes you getinterrupted and research tells
us that when you're interrupted,it takes you about 20 minutes to
get back on schedule on what youwere supposed to be working on.
(05:58):
So if you think about that, weat best, we've got eight hours
in a workday and you'reinterrupted every seven or eight
minutes and it takes you 20minutes to get back on task.
That sounds fairly horrific, Ithink you'd agree.
So as Ops folks, we love talkingabout utilization and
productivity, and I'm talkingabout this aspirational idea of
(06:20):
flow here.
But where do these distractionsleave us?
You know, where does it leaveproductivity and utilization and
quality work?
So in my case, I sometimes usedto feel very dejected at the end
of the day.
You know, I think my colleaguessaw me as someone that got a lot
done, but what I ended upfeeling like was that I was
firefighting and helping peoplethroughout the day.
(06:42):
But the projects I wanted tomake progress on, they would get
shoveled into a smaller andsmaller window at the end of the
week, or out of hours.
And again, the result was that Iwould leave at the end of any
given day, feeling like I am notaccomplishing anything and
feeling bad about myself.
So I don't know if thatresonates with any of you, but
(07:02):
that was certainly the case forme.
So those were some of thechallenges to our productivity,
but you know, I'm going to talkabout three kind of key things
that I've learned over the yearsthat I brought in at my past
agency, that I've learned at myjob in Scoro, that I've learned
from peers in the agency opsspace, that have had a pretty
big impact on me.
(07:23):
So the first thing, it mightsound obvious, but planning your
time.
We spend a lot of time planningthe schedule for the resources
on our teams, the designers, thecopywriters, the developers,
things like that.
So what you're looking at isbasically a screenshot from one
of the designers at my pastagency and it was planned like
this.
So the designers and thedevelopers knew exactly what
(07:44):
they were going to work on onany given day.
So it's great.
You show up on Monday, you know,I'm going to do two hours on
that, three hours on that, andfour hours on that, right?
That's fantastic.
But what that doesn't help ispeople like us.
You know, ops, finance, evenproject managers and account
managers that don't havesomebody telling us,
unfortunately, what we need towork on and when.
So the reality for me was I havethis growing and growing to do
(08:09):
list and I'd show up at work andfeel completely overwhelmed
about what I wanted to focus on,you know, the big, meaty, scary
things I would procrastinate,and then I'd get distracted by
incoming emails or Slacknotifications.
And that's where that wholecycle of firefighting would
begin.
Okay.
So what I ended up starting todo and started encouraging our
(08:31):
colleagues to do that didn'thave their schedule planned for
them was to plot in their time.
So this is something I do nowdaily, as well.
So at 5:15 every day, it's in mycalendar to look at my to do
list, my projects and mypriorities and plan them for the
next day.
So I never show up on a workdayand think like, what do I feel
like working on?
What should I be working on?
(08:52):
I've decided that day before andput all my priorities in, all
around client meetings or,internal meetings and even
having windows to do a bit ofadmin or catch up on messages
and things like that.
So this works really well forpeople that are responsible for
planning their own calendar,like a lot of us on this call, I
think.
but again, you might bethinking, well, I kind of
(09:14):
already do that, but I still endup firefighting.
And that was true for me aswell.
So that leads us to the secondpoint, this idea of"office
hours" and do not disturb.
Okay, so office hours came up atmy past agency because at one
point we had a strategy directorand she was one of one, the only
strategy person in the agency.
(09:35):
So she would get bombarded withrequests from colleagues asking
to help with pitch ideas, tohelp with estimating the
strategy element in a quote, toanswer their project questions
and stuff like that.
So she was just like, well, Ican't spend all day answering
questions and actually do thework for strategy on these
paying client projects, right?
(09:57):
So we decided to try"officehours" with her and it was kind
of like a university lecturerhas windows where students can
go and check in and askquestions.
So she had two slots one wasbefore lunch and one before end
of day where she had 30 minutes.
You could send her questionsthroughout the day but unless
you had a meeting, she wouldn'tjump on a call or respond to you
until that office hour window.
(10:18):
Okay?
So, so that ended up workingreally well, and then we started
encouraging other people thatfelt the same way to do the same
thing.
The other idea is something thatI was exposed to at Scoro.
So, of course we all know thatwhen we're hopping on a call
like this, we put on do notdisturb on our computers and so
on.
But at Scoro, what I wassurprised to learn during
(10:39):
onboarding week, it's basicallya company policy, they don't
police it, but they stronglyencourage it: that you should
have do not disturb on yourpersonal device and your work
computer at all times.
So I was quite shocked by thisand I was like, how does anybody
get anything done if you're notanswering people's questions and
moving things along, right?
It seemed shocking to me, butthe point was that how often do
(11:03):
you get a message from somebodythat is like super urgent and it
needs to be responded to now,right?
That's that's the first thingand again, it goes back to that
valuing your own time and yourprojects.
If we get distracted every sevenor eight minutes, you can just
see without having something inplace to cut that out, that's
(11:23):
where that spiral offirefighting starts and your own
stuff starts getting squeezedinto smaller and smaller
windows.
So that was the first thing thatit probably, whatever it is,
probably doesn't need a responseright now.
The other thing was that you canmake tweaks and exceptions in
your settings, on your computer,on your phone, your Mac or
Android, whatever, where you canmake exemptions for certain
(11:46):
apps.
So my main exemption is for mycalendar, so I see meetings and
don't forget that I need to joinsomething.
And the other is, is kind oflike, phone calls so that if
someone's ringing me, I do knowand basically my doorbell.
So those are my exemptions.
Nothing else gets through.
Okay.
The result of this is that youend up respecting your own time
(12:08):
and focusing on what you'resupposed to be focusing on.
And like the office hours idea,you encourage yourself to have
windows during which to checkyour[messages].
So that might be, you know,beginning of the day, right
before lunch, after lunch, midafternoon, and end of day, or
you could have only smallerwindows like my colleague that
was the strategy director.
(12:28):
You know, again, like I said,this is not policed, it's
strongly encouraged, and most ofmy colleagues here do this, and
I do it now as well.
And, you know, if somebody doeswant to check their messages and
emails more frequently, that'sfine.
But it's just, you're notconstantly seeing these Outlook
or Slack notifications pop upthat you feel like, Oh my God, I
need to look at this right nowand see what it is.
(12:51):
Okay.
And a related bonus tip before Imove on, in Slack, having a
policy encouraging people torespond in threads is just so
effective because probably noteveryone in the channel cares
about that question or commentthat was made.
So by encouraging the commentingor conversations to happen in
those threads means that theperson that asked gets the
(13:12):
notifications and people thatare interested in that question
can go and read up on it, buteveryone else in the company or
in that channel isn't gettingbombarded with extra
information.
So that's something I'd reallyencourage you to do if you're
not already doing that.
And my last kind of main themewas about fixing meetings.
So at my agency, what we didwas, we insisted that whoever
(13:35):
put in a meeting, you would haveto come in with an agenda.
You couldn't just walk in andsay, well, this is a loose
theme.
You had to have some bulletpoints in terms of what you
wanted to get out of the meetingand what your plans were.
Okay.
So this meant we had somethingto focus on rather than going
off script and thinking, okay,we didn't do anything we were
meant to.
And the next tip, is somethingthat I saw again at Scoro when I
(13:56):
joined.
What they did here, and whatI've seen here, is that meetings
were cut down, rather than 30 or60 minute defaults, the policy
is, your meetings need to be 20or 40 minutes.
So instead of 30, 60, it's 20 or40.
The thing is, we get the samevolume of conversations and
(14:16):
ideas done, we just saveourselves 10 minutes and allows
us to start focusing on the nextthing we're supposed to be
working on, rather than makingsure we're there till the full
30 minutes.
So that's really effective.
A related challenge at my pastagency, we started feeling like
there was too many meetings.
And I'm not talking aboutproject related meetings.
It was the cadence of managementmeetings we put in.
(14:39):
We were a multi entity businesswith multiple business units,
digital, strategy, creative andthings like that.
And we had Management meetings,which, it seems like a good idea
and it is, but it did startfeeling really heavy, especially
for those of us in ops or, theMD and the finance director that
would participate in a lot ofthese, it started feeling really
(15:01):
heavy.
So there's something I'vediscovered at Scoro that was,
this idea of asynchronousmeetings and surprisingly, the
people that attend this are allthe VPs and the heads of
departments.
So it's a very senior levelmeeting is what I'm trying to
say, right?
and what happens is it happensevery Monday at 1 pm, but nobody
(15:22):
actually shows up.
So what you're supposed to dobefore Monday at 1 pm, everyone
needs to log their meetingbullet point updates, their
status updates on what they'vebeen doing or what their teams
have been doing and what youneed other departments to know.
So everyone logs their bulletpoints and then one o'clock,
everyone knows that you can signin and read the update.
(15:44):
The entire company, all thesesenior level individuals sharing
their status updates.
So this, for me, was quite mindblowing.
So what could be 10 or 20 peoplejoining for a status update, for
an hour, and you think about thetime and the the financial
implications of that...
This was probably a 15 minutecommitment from all these very
(16:05):
senior level people.
So I think that's really a quitea cool thing to experiment with.
At Scoro, we also have a meetingfree Wednesday.
Okay.
So external meetings are finewith your clients and stuff like
that, but we strongly discourageour colleagues to book us on
that day.
So everyone knows when you'replanning your week or planning
your next day, Wednesday is agood day to put in those kind of
(16:27):
heavy thinking strategy kind ofblocks of time for yourself
because you're not going to haveinternal meetings.
So that's quite useful.
And that doesn't mean I can'tping my colleague to say, Hey, I
could borrow you for fiveminutes to get your opinion on
something.
Will you have five minutes latertoday?
And that does happen, but thepoint is you don't pre book
anyone on that Wednesday.
(16:48):
So with all of this stuff, whatworks for me, what's worked in
my past agency, what works atScoro, and some of these tips
that I've learned from otherpeople in agency ops, it doesn't
necessarily mean it's going towork for you, right?
So you need to go away, sit downwith a few key people in your
teams, and think about ideas.
What are the biggest blockers toproductivity and what could you
experiment with?
(17:09):
It could be ideas like you'veheard today or other people
talking about.
And then communicate that trial,that experiment to your agency,
in your agency all hands.
And of course, tell them whyyou're doing this.
And you know, the, the key pointhere is we're giving everybody
more time to focus.
So it's quite unlikely you getobjections to that because who
(17:29):
wouldn't want less distractions.
Okay, the other thing's, fairlystraightforward, but documenting
your working practices in youragency handbook so they're
codified and everyone knows thisis officially the way we do
things.
Um, including your workingpractices in your new starter
onboarding.
So making sure their first weekschedule has a section where
(17:50):
they do read about that andunderstand.
And of course, practicing whatyou preach, you know, as
operations leaders, as agencyleaders, you have to demonstrate
that you're adhering to thisstuff too.
So everyone knows that it's notjust something we say, it's
something we do.
I've just got a couple moreslides, but I just wanted to
point out a couple of thingsthat my agency, you know, I
(18:10):
mentioned that I work for Scoronow and this platform supports
agencies and bettercollaboration and work
management.
One of the things that designersat our agency, designers and
developers, loved is that basedon the planning we did for the
schedule, it automaticallycompletes their time sheets, so
they don't have to do any manualtime tracking.
Basically what's in your plansis effectively your time sheet.
(18:31):
You just need to tick to saythat's done or make an
adjustment if you worked, youwere planned for three hours,
but you ended up working threeand a half, you would just tweak
that to say 3.5.
So that makes things reallystraightforward.
For the rest of us, the PMs, theAMs, the ops people, finance
people, you know, I talked aboutplanning your own calendar, so
if you're already doing that,you're halfway there.
(18:53):
In Scoro, it syncs with yourcalendar, and you can tag your
calendar entries to a project.
So again, if you've planned outyour full day of calendar
entries, all you need to say is,it's this project and this
deliverable, and boom, yourtimesheets are done as well, if
your internal team tracks time,that's something I do.
And finally, Scoro becomes a bitof your crystal ball for your
(19:15):
agency when you use it to tracktime.
Of course, if people aretracking their time, you can
look back and see how much timethe team is spending on internal
versus external work, billableversus non billable work.
But when you use it to resourceyour projects, you can look
forward.
You can look forward at yourcapacity, like in the screenshot
there, and say that, you know,in two weeks, our team doesn't
(19:36):
have enough work, so weobviously need to dial up our
sales process, or maybe reducesome of our freelancers.
Similarly, if it's completelyovercapacity, then you know that
you need to turn work down, youmight need to negotiate later
deadlines, or bring in freelancesupport.
So it's super helpful in termsof planning your team's
capacity.
And, second to last slide, thebenefits for my team of bringing
(19:58):
all of these functions to oneplatform was the efficiency and
the accuracy and the project andbusiness visibility it gave us.
I kind of see it as like anoperating system for the agency,
a single place to look foreverything you need to see.
And it plugs into your CRMplatform, if you use one, your
HR system like Bamboo HR and,and things like Xero or
QuickBooks or Sage for youraccounting, so your finance
(20:22):
team, your bookkeepers will behappy as well.
And the last thing I wanted tosay is, I do host The Handbook:
The Agency Operations Podcast.
So, hopefully some of you arealready listening to that, so
thank you very much and pleasedo share that with your
colleagues and friends who mightbenefit from it.
Some of the lovely faces you seethere, a lot of them have been
speakers at Agency Hackersevents before, but they've all
(20:43):
been guests on the podcast.
And ops, as you all know, is sobroad, right?
It covers everything, you're abit of HR, a bit of IT, a bit of
process.
So every episode we talk about acompletely different theme and
the challenges around that and,these experts, whether they're
in house ops people orconsultants, give us some ideas
(21:03):
on how we can do things a bitbetter.
So it's a lot of knowledgesharing.
So please do subscribe.
it's on Apple, Spotify, and youcan find the link on Scoro's
website.
And of course I'm on LinkedIn aswell.
So if you ever want to pick mybrain about anything, if you
ever want to speak to me, dropme a note on LinkedIn.
I'd love to chat with you.
And I, I share a lot of theclips and learnings from the
podcast on my LinkedIn as well.
(21:23):
So that's somewhere you can keepup.
And when I post stuff, sharingyour thoughts of what you do
with regards to that topic, I'dlove to see some of that stuff.
I will stop rambling there.
Thank you very much forlistening and I apologize for
speaking so quickly.
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