November 19, 2024 • 22 mins
Are you battling with inconsistent processes, bad practice and poor staff training?
In this episode, Harv Nagra explains the benefits of documenting and embedding best practices – to take your agency one big leap forward in operational maturity.
Harv shares his best tips on:
- Creating an agency handbook – to create a single source of truth for your business, and help your team work consistently
- Choosing the right documentation tools – specific tools that are helpful in documenting and communicating workflows
- Creating a team of best practice champions – by providing learning resources that let them build confidence from day one
Ready to future-proof your agency? Join Harv in this episode as he explains how to take your agency to the next level.
Harv's preferred tools mentioned in the episode:
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 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to The Handbook
(00:02):
Operations podcast.
This podcast is brought to youby Scoro.
So how's a platform like Scorodifferent from project
management tools like Asana,click up and monday.com?
Those platforms can be usefulproject management tools, but
what they don't do is cover theend to end agency workflow.
What I mean is that they're notdesigned to create your quotes,
resource your projects, monitoryour budget and financial
(00:24):
performance, invoice what you'vedone and report on your
business.
That's the difference between aPM tool and a PSA, Professional
Services Automation tool.
I think of it like an operatingsystem for your agency that
brings together all thesefunctions and interlinks
everything so you're not leftwith data in silos and having to
copy information from one placeto another.
(00:46):
Scoro stood out amongst thecompetition when I was looking
for a new platform at my agency.
That's why I brought it in.
Sign up for a free trial atScoro.com or if you arrange a
demo call, tell them Harv sentyou.
Now back to the episode.
(01:32):
Hey all, welcome back to thehandbook.
Previously, we had an episodeunder The Big Agency Club theme
with Sarah Brougham.
She had some fantastic examplesof how she learned to hire the
right people, how to onboardthem efficiently and effectively
to give them the bestopportunity to flourish in the
role, and how to look atoffboarding beyond just
contracts and systems, but addsteps that consider whether or
(01:56):
not you want to retain theindividual so you're prepared to
have those conversations ratherthan handling it on the fly.
All really good advice.
Today we're gonna be building onthat mature agency theme by
talking about centralizing andcodifying your agency's
knowledge, which tools you canuse for this, as well as
embedding best practice in youragency in terms of your systems
(02:17):
and workflows.
Who are we talking to?
Well, today, you're stuck withme.
There are occasions when there'sa topic that I'd love to share
my thoughts with yourselves.
So that's what we're going to dothis week.
In the coming weeks on thepodcast, we are working on
episodes around businessmaturity, as well as speaking to
an agency that is at that higherlevel of maturity, which will
hopefully serve as inspirationfor us.
(02:37):
So that's something to lookforward to coming up.
Now, let's get started with thisepisode.
Alright, with regards tobusiness maturity, we can look
at this as a scale.
On one end, we've got chaos andmaking things up as we go.
On the other end, you're datadriven, innovating and miles
ahead of the competition.
The biggest initial milestone,in my view, is right in the
(02:59):
middle.
Level 3 of 5.
Why?
This is where your agencyfinally has documented best
practice, and linked to thatgreat training practices.
You're no longer making thingsup on the fly, but have a
carefully considered way ofdoing things consistently.
This stage is also a milestonebecause this is when you start
generating good data.
(03:20):
This might have come throughlessons learned.
In the earlier stages ofmaturity, it's quite likely that
finances and metrics were superhigh level, hoping that the
revenue you have coming in isgreater than your expenses.
That might be okay when you'rejust getting started or you have
just a handful of people in thebusiness.
But there will come a point whenyou're just too large to operate
that way.
When the cash situation ismaking you uncomfortable, or
(03:42):
maybe the volume and complexityof projects is now at a point
where you need to carefullystart planning who's going to be
working on what.
No matter the reason though,there's typically been a pain
that's been experienced thatleads to recognition that more
mature tools are required.
This tends to be where agenciesstart bringing in a PSA or
professional services automationplatform that joins up large
parts of this workflow so thatyou have greater visibility in
(04:05):
what you're doing and how you'redoing it.
I've gone on a bit of a tangenthere talking about Level 3, this
milestone in maturity, but aquick recap.
We've got documented bestpractice, better tools in play,
which enable us to generate gooddata.
Okay?
So let's get back todocumentation.
A handbook.
The handbook.
Your agency operations handbook.
At one point when I was new inthe ops role and the business I
(04:27):
was working for wasn't operatingat a particularly mature level,
we brought in a new COO, who Iwas reporting to, who asked me
to start creating an agencyhandbook.
Years before that I'd createdand launched our agency
Intranet.
The reason I did that was thatwe had multiple entities,
offices in different countries,and I felt that we weren't
communicating enough and sharingour work.
(04:48):
So it was a way to startcreating that sense of community
and connection beyond the annualChristmas party or whatever.
So I have to admit, at the stageof maturity where we were, when
my boss asked me to create thishandbook, I, I despaired.
Looking around and looking atthe way we operated, I think it
was probably that level two.
We had pockets of best practice,but It was very reactive, we
(05:09):
were very inconsistent.
I didn't have a lot of hope.
I remember starting to createthis resource, this handbook,
and feeling super dejected,Thinking that I was wasting my
time and i'd be creating thisdocument for myself and nobody
else was going to be looking atit.
The good news?
I was proven way wrong.
So, why is codifying your waysof work important?
(05:30):
You know, part of maturity, partof that maturity model is
operating consistently, havingbest practice.
Having that single source oftruth, not just rumors and
interpretations of how thingsare done.
A single place where everyone inyour agency can reference to
find the right answer is soimportant.
Before we had this documentedresource, New Starter onboarding
(05:50):
was completely organic.
You'd come in on your first dayand hope there was a plan for
being onboarded.
The truth is, it was mostly madeup on the fly.
Somebody might have thoughtabout it the day before, but the
point is, it wasn't repeatablebecause it wasn't documented.
It had to be reinvented everytime, and in all honesty, it
probably wasn't very thorough.
From the perspective of the newstarter, they'd likely be left
(06:11):
hoping that their new colleagueswould have time And show them
what they needed to know.
I don't know about you, but I amvery stressed on my first day,
first week, first month, maybeeven the entire probation period
of a new job.
So put yourself in the shoes ofsomeone that's just come in and
is having to absorb informationin drips and who's quite likely
learning the new ways of doingthings from the person sitting
next to them, picking up alltheir bad habits rather than
(06:34):
learning the best way to getthat thing done.
I mean, it's probably not thathard to imagine because I'm
fairly confident that each of uslistening to this has probably
gone through that in theircareers multiple times.
So hopefully you have recognizedhow important this is to set up
and get right.
So with this agency handbook,what you're creating is the
official way to do things andthe official place to go and
(06:55):
look.
You're letting everyone knowthere's a single place to
reference before they comeasking for questions on their
particular nuance.
In a nutshell, you're movingaway from being reactive to
being proactive.
You've learned what works welland you've put it down.
All right, so let's talk abouttools.
With regards to the tools thatyou can use to create your
handbook, there's loads outthere.
(07:16):
There's general documentcollaboration tools like Google
Docs, Notion, Confluence.
There's specialty knowledge baseor handbook tools like
Blissbook, Guru, Trainual,Slight, Slab.
I'm sure there's loads more thatI've missed.
I'm not going to go into thepros and cons of each of them,
but a few personal opinions.
Google Docs, in my view, it's aneasy place to start.
(07:39):
But it can get messy anddifficult to keep organized.
So I'd personally steer clear ofthat one.
I kind of like having a handbookthat's its distinct place.
So, rather than referring toGoogle Docs, which is just
jumbled in with everything elseyou have, I would prefer a
separate resource with its ownURL.
That kind of thing.
Alright?
That brings us to Confluence, adocumentation platform.
(08:01):
And now this is my personalbiased speaking, okay?
I like a good interface, and Ifind Confluence bit ugly.
The parent company, Atlassian,they've got multiple products,
and I find the backendpermissions a bit of a jumble,
and I've never enjoyed using it,so I just find it unnecessarily
complex in the backend, and Ifind the frontend interface a
(08:22):
bit uninspiring, and notsomewhere I want to spend most
of my day.
It's possible the interface hasmoved on, on the backend
permissions and all that, but Iam not a fan, so I would skip
that one.
The specialty knowledge basedtools, they're great.
Some of those, like I'vementioned above Trainual,
Slight, Blissbook and the like,some of them even have AI
functionality built in to helpyou find the answers so that
(08:44):
people don't have to go andsearch for that particular
article, but they just type intheir query and it answers it.
That's pretty cool.
But it's up to you to look thoseup and see if they're what you
actually need.
And also decide if you do need aspecialty tool, or if you're
just looking to get started insomething simpler, and document
management, is fine.
That's what I've done in thepast, just stuck to the
documentation tool.
(09:05):
If somebody asked me to create anew handbook from scratch, I
might have a look at the pricingand functionality of the
specialty tools and see what'sevolved.
But if you're just looking toget started or reboot what you
have, I don't think it'sessential.
It's a nice to have.
So in the list above that Ishared, that leaves Notion.
I mean, Notion is a great tool,and it's very flexible.
We've probably seen their cuteads on public transport.
(09:26):
You might even have an accountfor your personal life.
If you're already using it inyour agency and have all the
accounts already, it's a nobrainer.
You know, use Notion.
But my agency was not usingNotion, so I'll tell you why I
didn't end up selecting When Iwas creating my agency handbook,
I was trying to do itefficiently and not add a huge
new subscription cost into themix.
(09:47):
So, what did I use?
I used a platform called Coda.
And, why?
As a platform, it's very similarto Notion.
It looks and feels like Notion.
In terms of functionality, it'sas capable.
In fact, I have read articlesthat it's considered actually
more capable of more advancedfunctionality, like managing
databases and running formulas.
(10:08):
But, you know, we don't reallyneed that at this point.
We're creating documentation forour handbook, right?
So it allows you to createnested articles.
You can format them how youlike.
You can add nice header images,branded header images if you
want.
And you can use anchor links inyour articles so it's easy for
people to use an index andscroll down.
You can embed videos.
You can create tables and doloads more.
(10:30):
As a bonus, it also works withGoogle or Microsoft SSO by
default, so your team can usethose to log in so they don't
have to remember or create a newlogin for that platform as well.
But what I really loved aboutCoda was the price.
You only have to pay fordocument creators.
So if you're starting out yournew handbook, then at first, you
might be the only one that'screating new documents or new
(10:52):
pages.
All the editors are free, allthe viewers are free.
And eventually, if you delegateownership of sections to
department heads and want themto be able to create new pages
in their own sections, thenyou'll only need to pay for
them.
So if you're looking to controlcosts, it's probably the single
most cost effective platform inthe list.
You only need to pay fordocument creators, if that's
(11:13):
just one person, that's allyou'll have to pay.
It's only$10 per DocMaker permonth on the annual plan, so
that's super cheap.
All right, so we've selected aplatform, but what do you
actually start to document?
I'd start by creating a table ofcontents of what you think
should be included.
As an example, my handbook hadthree main subsections: the
(11:34):
employee handbook, The softwareand tech handbook, and the
delivery handbook.
I'll tell you more about each ofthose.
In the employee handbook, Iincluded things like mission,
vision, and values.
I included a section on peopleand teams there.
I had policies there.
Then in the software and techhandbook, I included a page here
for all the tools the team wouldbe using, including a short
(11:57):
summary of what it was for,which teams it was relevant to,
and how they could request alogin if it was required.
You might think this isoverkill, but I even included a
one hour Mac induction in thissection to get people orientated
to shortcuts on their Mac.
I was finding that too manypeople didn't know a lot of
shortcuts.
So they'd spend a lot of time ondoing way too many clicks or
(12:19):
mouse pointing at things whenthey could do things really
easily with a few swipes oftheir trackpad or shortcuts with
their keyboard.
So the whole point of that wasto say, Hey, these are some of
the things that you can do onyour Mac to speed up your
workflow.
Also in this software and techhandbook were the two most
important sections in my view.
The induction to Dropbox forBusiness and our professional
(12:39):
service automation platform orPSA, which was Scoro.
I'll come back to this later.
Finally, let's move on to thedelivery handbook.
In this section, I included allthe delivery related items from
the overall project methodologyto the pitch qualification
process, to how to find stockcontent, how to license fonts,
the AI guidelines, how to writehandovers, how we handle the
(13:01):
resourcing, how NDAs werecreated, et cetera, et cetera.
Another section that could havebeen quite useful is to consider
having a sales and marketinghandbook where you outline all
your processes around marketing,social media, and sales.
So what you include in yourhandbook is completely up to you
and what's relevant to yourbusiness.
Again, I'd start with just thattable of contents.
You'll likely already have a lotof this content floating around
(13:23):
in different places in youragency.
So the point is to startcentralizing it so that people
don't have to hunt for it andthere's no excuse to say that
they didn't know where to findit.
Alright guys, let's talk aboutbest practice.
When I think about best practicein an agency, a couple of things
come to mind.
Things like how we handleclients and client comms, how we
handle pitching and sales, howwe deliver work efficiently, and
(13:48):
how we run our projects.
I personally tend to use theword process interchangeably
with best practice.
But I know some people have astrong reaction to the P word
because they take it as somekind of inflexible set of steps.
That's not what I'm talkingabout.
I am talking about bestpractice, which is a framework
of the best way to do things.
The point of best practice is tocommunicate to everyone the
(14:08):
standard way things are donebased on prior experience and
learnings.
That doesn't mean it's set instone.
Things change, clients change,tools change, and you might
discover more efficient ways todo things.
So your best practice needs tochange as well.
Now when it comes to embeddingbest practice as an ops
director, something that wasimportant to me and the head of
finance was to ensure that wewere delivering work profitably.
(14:32):
We had a PSA platform, and so itwas very important to us that we
were using it to controlprojects, but also to see how
our business was performing.
That required people to use thetool in the right way.
It wasn't about rigidity.
It was about knowing how thingsare done and ensuring that their
projects and information are upto date and that the data being
produced is accurate.
(14:53):
I sometimes hear peoplewondering or worrying about
training around platforms likethis.
Whether they're using a PSAplatform or not.
Wondering how they can geteveryone up to speed and working
in the same way.
Using the systems consistentlyand how to handle new starters
that come into the business aswell.
I'll tell you what I did.
When we first rolled out our newPSA at the agency, we had a
(15:14):
company wide training session.
There was one one hour trainingsession for the individual
contributors, the designers, thedevelopers, the strategists, to
understand how they could seetheir schedules and how they
would confirm the time for whatthey were booked on and how they
could manually look up a projectand add time to things that they
had to work on which wereunplanned.
(15:34):
That recording session wasrecorded.
Then, we had two two-hourtraining sessions for the
account managers, projectmanagers, finance, operations,
and upper management.
We told everyone that theyabsolutely did not need to take
notes.
That all these sessions were forwas to show them how the system
worked and how work flowedthrough it from the incoming
(15:54):
lead through to a quote, projectdelivery, invoicing, payment,
and close.
So those two training sessionswere recorded as well.
Now with those recordings, Iused them for new starter
onboardings for the platform,and the same rules applied.
No notes, just watch andunderstand how it works.
Alright, so people have satthrough the exposure to the
(16:15):
system.
How are they expected toremember any of this when it
comes to their actual projects?
Well, in the handbook, in thesoftware and tech section, under
the Scoro page, I created anindex of short videos that were
just a couple of minutes inlength each.
I think I started with somethinglike 15 items when we launched
the platform, And at some pointit was up to 40 with the various
(16:35):
FAQs and edge cases that hadcome up and we documented.
But this index and these videoscovered everything an account
manager or project manager mightbe expected to do in the system.
You know, creating that newquote, creating a new client or
supplier, turning it into aproject, raising the invoice,
creating a PO, tracking theirproject budget, etc, etc.
The point was, when it came togetting used to the platform and
(16:58):
understanding best practice,whether this was an existing
employee that was transitioningto the new system, or a new
employee doing their onboarding,they had an index of how to
videos they could reference thatexplained what to do and how to
do it by following along.
This meant that I didn't expectpeople to watch that four hours
of training videos and try tofind the right point where their
(17:20):
question would be answered.
They didn't need to ask theircolleague and get questionable
advice on how to do that thing.
And they didn't need to ask meor the head of finance on how to
do it the right way.
If they came to me with aquestion, the first thing I'd
say is, Did you watch that videonumber 12 in that index.
It shows you how to do that.
Watch that first, and if youstill have questions, or if your
situation is different, comespeak to me after you've had a
(17:42):
look.
That worked really, really well.
I also made a point of saying topeople that in their first
several weeks of getting used tothe new system, I didn't want
them to go based on memory.
That I preferred that they watchthat mini video before they took
the next big step in theirproject, so that they'd get the
definitive advice again andagain, until it became second
nature.
(18:04):
Now, of course, every project isunique, so they were able to
tailor what they did to suittheir requirements.
But what this meant is thatfinance and ops didn't need to
spend a huge amount of time eachmonth retroactively fixing
invoices and POs and having tofix data and troubleshoot and so
on.
It meant that people got it.
And as a result of that, we gotaccurate data coming in and out
(18:26):
of the system.
And for new starters, dependingon the role, I also created
practice cases for them to walkthrough creating that quote,
looking up a client, raisingthat PO and invoice, closing the
project and so on.
This meant that before theystarted running their own
projects, the week after theystarted onboarding, they'd gone
through it once before andtherefore they had a good idea
how things work.
(18:46):
This made them feel so much moreconfident.
By the way, another reasoncreating this kind of resource
is so important is that when yougo live with a new system, of
course People are going to beanxious and stressed.
So by being able to say, Hey,we've thought about all your use
cases.
We've created this really easyto use index for you to
reference that you can followalong and it's going to answer
all of your questions is soreassuring.
(19:09):
It really, really helps easethat kind of stress and that
transition.
Okay, so we've embedded thatbest practice.
I just wanted to talk about afew other of my favorite tools
for documentation.
So I already spoke about usingCoda for the handbook in
general.
That's what I preferred.
But for those how to videos, Iabsolutely loved using Loom.
(19:29):
It's so easy to use.
It sits in your menu bar as anicon on your Mac.
And when you're ready, you justhit record and it just records
what you're doing on screen witha voiceover and a little video
thumbnail if you want.
And as soon as you stoprecording, it uploads it to the
cloud immediately.
And then you can edit outanything you don't want right on
their website.
And then it's ready to go.
(19:51):
Whether you're linking people tothat resource on loom or you're
embedding a link to that videoin your handbook.
Another great tool that you canuse is called scribe.
So what you do with this tool isthat once you hit record, you
just go through the steps tocomplete the operation, whatever
it is.
And once you're done, it createsa step by step guide, which you
can embed in your handbook.
(20:11):
So another really great one.
Now I have to be honest, forreally short, simple things, I
think a few written instructionsare fine.
Step one, step two, step three.
For something that requires afew more clicks, Scribe can work
really well.
It just adds that screenshotelement and makes it really easy
for people to follow along.
But my favourite really is usingLoom for video.
(20:31):
I just love that you can givethe person listening a lot of
context really quickly, as wellas show them how to do the thing
they need to do.
So I'm a big fan of video forthe more complex stuff that
requires the most context sothat people aren't left having
to read a huge paragraph andloads of steps or scrolling down
through endless screenshots.
So I really love video for thatreason.
(20:53):
Alright guys, so that brings usto the end of our episode today.
We've covered a lot.
We've talked about why creatinga single source of truth via
your agency handbook is soimportant in your journey to
maturity.
Tools you can use to create thehandbook.
What you should document.
How to embed best practice inyour agency.
The tools you can use in yourhandbook to create how to
(21:14):
guides.
Creating this resource is amajor milestone that takes your
agency from level one chaos orlevel two reactivity towards
level three in maturity.
Even if you already had that inplace, hopefully there were some
ideas here that I've shared thatyou can use to augment your own
handbook.
And if I've missed anything thatyou do that works really well,
I'd love for you to share thatwith me on LinkedIn when you see
(21:37):
me post about this episode.
I know there was a lot ofinformation here.
So if you want a cheat sheetwith the summary of this
episode, sign up for thehandbook newsletter at
scoro.com/podcast.
You can scroll down on that pageand there's a place where you
can enter your email.
And lastly, have you told yourfriends and colleagues about
this podcast?
Please share this episode withsomeone you think that would
(21:58):
benefit and tell them that theyshould subscribe.
Thank you so much for listeningand we'll be back with the next
episode soon.
Thanks for listening to The Handbook
(00:02):
Operations podcast.
This podcast is brought to youby Scoro.
So how's a platform like Scorodifferent from project
management tools like Asana,click up and monday.com?
Those platforms can be usefulproject management tools, but
what they don't do is cover theend to end agency workflow.
What I mean is that they're notdesigned to create your quotes,
resource your projects, monitoryour budget and financial
(00:24):
performance, invoice what you'vedone and report on your
business.
That's the difference between aPM tool and a PSA, Professional
Services Automation tool.
I think of it like an operatingsystem for your agency that
brings together all thesefunctions and interlinks
everything so you're not leftwith data in silos and having to
copy information from one placeto another.
(00:46):
Scoro stood out amongst thecompetition when I was looking
for a new platform at my agency.
That's why I brought it in.
Sign up for a free trial atScoro.com or if you arrange a
demo call, tell them Harv sentyou.
Now back to the episode.
(01:32):
Hey all, welcome back to thehandbook.
Previously, we had an episodeunder The Big Agency Club theme
with Sarah Brougham.
She had some fantastic examplesof how she learned to hire the
right people, how to onboardthem efficiently and effectively
to give them the bestopportunity to flourish in the
role, and how to look atoffboarding beyond just
contracts and systems, but addsteps that consider whether or
(01:56):
not you want to retain theindividual so you're prepared to
have those conversations ratherthan handling it on the fly.
All really good advice.
Today we're gonna be building onthat mature agency theme by
talking about centralizing andcodifying your agency's
knowledge, which tools you canuse for this, as well as
embedding best practice in youragency in terms of your systems
(02:17):
and workflows.
Who are we talking to?
Well, today, you're stuck withme.
There are occasions when there'sa topic that I'd love to share
my thoughts with yourselves.
So that's what we're going to dothis week.
In the coming weeks on thepodcast, we are working on
episodes around businessmaturity, as well as speaking to
an agency that is at that higherlevel of maturity, which will
hopefully serve as inspirationfor us.
(02:37):
So that's something to lookforward to coming up.
Now, let's get started with thisepisode.
Alright, with regards tobusiness maturity, we can look
at this as a scale.
On one end, we've got chaos andmaking things up as we go.
On the other end, you're datadriven, innovating and miles
ahead of the competition.
The biggest initial milestone,in my view, is right in the
(02:59):
middle.
Level 3 of 5.
Why?
This is where your agencyfinally has documented best
practice, and linked to thatgreat training practices.
You're no longer making thingsup on the fly, but have a
carefully considered way ofdoing things consistently.
This stage is also a milestonebecause this is when you start
generating good data.
(03:20):
This might have come throughlessons learned.
In the earlier stages ofmaturity, it's quite likely that
finances and metrics were superhigh level, hoping that the
revenue you have coming in isgreater than your expenses.
That might be okay when you'rejust getting started or you have
just a handful of people in thebusiness.
But there will come a point whenyou're just too large to operate
that way.
When the cash situation ismaking you uncomfortable, or
(03:42):
maybe the volume and complexityof projects is now at a point
where you need to carefullystart planning who's going to be
working on what.
No matter the reason though,there's typically been a pain
that's been experienced thatleads to recognition that more
mature tools are required.
This tends to be where agenciesstart bringing in a PSA or
professional services automationplatform that joins up large
parts of this workflow so thatyou have greater visibility in
(04:05):
what you're doing and how you'redoing it.
I've gone on a bit of a tangenthere talking about Level 3, this
milestone in maturity, but aquick recap.
We've got documented bestpractice, better tools in play,
which enable us to generate gooddata.
Okay?
So let's get back todocumentation.
A handbook.
The handbook.
Your agency operations handbook.
At one point when I was new inthe ops role and the business I
(04:27):
was working for wasn't operatingat a particularly mature level,
we brought in a new COO, who Iwas reporting to, who asked me
to start creating an agencyhandbook.
Years before that I'd createdand launched our agency
Intranet.
The reason I did that was thatwe had multiple entities,
offices in different countries,and I felt that we weren't
communicating enough and sharingour work.
(04:48):
So it was a way to startcreating that sense of community
and connection beyond the annualChristmas party or whatever.
So I have to admit, at the stageof maturity where we were, when
my boss asked me to create thishandbook, I, I despaired.
Looking around and looking atthe way we operated, I think it
was probably that level two.
We had pockets of best practice,but It was very reactive, we
(05:09):
were very inconsistent.
I didn't have a lot of hope.
I remember starting to createthis resource, this handbook,
and feeling super dejected,Thinking that I was wasting my
time and i'd be creating thisdocument for myself and nobody
else was going to be looking atit.
The good news?
I was proven way wrong.
So, why is codifying your waysof work important?
(05:30):
You know, part of maturity, partof that maturity model is
operating consistently, havingbest practice.
Having that single source oftruth, not just rumors and
interpretations of how thingsare done.
A single place where everyone inyour agency can reference to
find the right answer is soimportant.
Before we had this documentedresource, New Starter onboarding
(05:50):
was completely organic.
You'd come in on your first dayand hope there was a plan for
being onboarded.
The truth is, it was mostly madeup on the fly.
Somebody might have thoughtabout it the day before, but the
point is, it wasn't repeatablebecause it wasn't documented.
It had to be reinvented everytime, and in all honesty, it
probably wasn't very thorough.
From the perspective of the newstarter, they'd likely be left
(06:11):
hoping that their new colleagueswould have time And show them
what they needed to know.
I don't know about you, but I amvery stressed on my first day,
first week, first month, maybeeven the entire probation period
of a new job.
So put yourself in the shoes ofsomeone that's just come in and
is having to absorb informationin drips and who's quite likely
learning the new ways of doingthings from the person sitting
next to them, picking up alltheir bad habits rather than
(06:34):
learning the best way to getthat thing done.
I mean, it's probably not thathard to imagine because I'm
fairly confident that each of uslistening to this has probably
gone through that in theircareers multiple times.
So hopefully you have recognizedhow important this is to set up
and get right.
So with this agency handbook,what you're creating is the
official way to do things andthe official place to go and
(06:55):
look.
You're letting everyone knowthere's a single place to
reference before they comeasking for questions on their
particular nuance.
In a nutshell, you're movingaway from being reactive to
being proactive.
You've learned what works welland you've put it down.
All right, so let's talk abouttools.
With regards to the tools thatyou can use to create your
handbook, there's loads outthere.
(07:16):
There's general documentcollaboration tools like Google
Docs, Notion, Confluence.
There's specialty knowledge baseor handbook tools like
Blissbook, Guru, Trainual,Slight, Slab.
I'm sure there's loads more thatI've missed.
I'm not going to go into thepros and cons of each of them,
but a few personal opinions.
Google Docs, in my view, it's aneasy place to start.
(07:39):
But it can get messy anddifficult to keep organized.
So I'd personally steer clear ofthat one.
I kind of like having a handbookthat's its distinct place.
So, rather than referring toGoogle Docs, which is just
jumbled in with everything elseyou have, I would prefer a
separate resource with its ownURL.
That kind of thing.
Alright?
That brings us to Confluence, adocumentation platform.
(08:01):
And now this is my personalbiased speaking, okay?
I like a good interface, and Ifind Confluence bit ugly.
The parent company, Atlassian,they've got multiple products,
and I find the backendpermissions a bit of a jumble,
and I've never enjoyed using it,so I just find it unnecessarily
complex in the backend, and Ifind the frontend interface a
(08:22):
bit uninspiring, and notsomewhere I want to spend most
of my day.
It's possible the interface hasmoved on, on the backend
permissions and all that, but Iam not a fan, so I would skip
that one.
The specialty knowledge basedtools, they're great.
Some of those, like I'vementioned above Trainual,
Slight, Blissbook and the like,some of them even have AI
functionality built in to helpyou find the answers so that
(08:44):
people don't have to go andsearch for that particular
article, but they just type intheir query and it answers it.
That's pretty cool.
But it's up to you to look thoseup and see if they're what you
actually need.
And also decide if you do need aspecialty tool, or if you're
just looking to get started insomething simpler, and document
management, is fine.
That's what I've done in thepast, just stuck to the
documentation tool.
(09:05):
If somebody asked me to create anew handbook from scratch, I
might have a look at the pricingand functionality of the
specialty tools and see what'sevolved.
But if you're just looking toget started or reboot what you
have, I don't think it'sessential.
It's a nice to have.
So in the list above that Ishared, that leaves Notion.
I mean, Notion is a great tool,and it's very flexible.
We've probably seen their cuteads on public transport.
(09:26):
You might even have an accountfor your personal life.
If you're already using it inyour agency and have all the
accounts already, it's a nobrainer.
You know, use Notion.
But my agency was not usingNotion, so I'll tell you why I
didn't end up selecting When Iwas creating my agency handbook,
I was trying to do itefficiently and not add a huge
new subscription cost into themix.
(09:47):
So, what did I use?
I used a platform called Coda.
And, why?
As a platform, it's very similarto Notion.
It looks and feels like Notion.
In terms of functionality, it'sas capable.
In fact, I have read articlesthat it's considered actually
more capable of more advancedfunctionality, like managing
databases and running formulas.
(10:08):
But, you know, we don't reallyneed that at this point.
We're creating documentation forour handbook, right?
So it allows you to createnested articles.
You can format them how youlike.
You can add nice header images,branded header images if you
want.
And you can use anchor links inyour articles so it's easy for
people to use an index andscroll down.
You can embed videos.
You can create tables and doloads more.
(10:30):
As a bonus, it also works withGoogle or Microsoft SSO by
default, so your team can usethose to log in so they don't
have to remember or create a newlogin for that platform as well.
But what I really loved aboutCoda was the price.
You only have to pay fordocument creators.
So if you're starting out yournew handbook, then at first, you
might be the only one that'screating new documents or new
(10:52):
pages.
All the editors are free, allthe viewers are free.
And eventually, if you delegateownership of sections to
department heads and want themto be able to create new pages
in their own sections, thenyou'll only need to pay for
them.
So if you're looking to controlcosts, it's probably the single
most cost effective platform inthe list.
You only need to pay fordocument creators, if that's
(11:13):
just one person, that's allyou'll have to pay.
It's only$10 per DocMaker permonth on the annual plan, so
that's super cheap.
All right, so we've selected aplatform, but what do you
actually start to document?
I'd start by creating a table ofcontents of what you think
should be included.
As an example, my handbook hadthree main subsections: the
(11:34):
employee handbook, The softwareand tech handbook, and the
delivery handbook.
I'll tell you more about each ofthose.
In the employee handbook, Iincluded things like mission,
vision, and values.
I included a section on peopleand teams there.
I had policies there.
Then in the software and techhandbook, I included a page here
for all the tools the team wouldbe using, including a short
(11:57):
summary of what it was for,which teams it was relevant to,
and how they could request alogin if it was required.
You might think this isoverkill, but I even included a
one hour Mac induction in thissection to get people orientated
to shortcuts on their Mac.
I was finding that too manypeople didn't know a lot of
shortcuts.
So they'd spend a lot of time ondoing way too many clicks or
(12:19):
mouse pointing at things whenthey could do things really
easily with a few swipes oftheir trackpad or shortcuts with
their keyboard.
So the whole point of that wasto say, Hey, these are some of
the things that you can do onyour Mac to speed up your
workflow.
Also in this software and techhandbook were the two most
important sections in my view.
The induction to Dropbox forBusiness and our professional
(12:39):
service automation platform orPSA, which was Scoro.
I'll come back to this later.
Finally, let's move on to thedelivery handbook.
In this section, I included allthe delivery related items from
the overall project methodologyto the pitch qualification
process, to how to find stockcontent, how to license fonts,
the AI guidelines, how to writehandovers, how we handle the
(13:01):
resourcing, how NDAs werecreated, et cetera, et cetera.
Another section that could havebeen quite useful is to consider
having a sales and marketinghandbook where you outline all
your processes around marketing,social media, and sales.
So what you include in yourhandbook is completely up to you
and what's relevant to yourbusiness.
Again, I'd start with just thattable of contents.
You'll likely already have a lotof this content floating around
(13:23):
in different places in youragency.
So the point is to startcentralizing it so that people
don't have to hunt for it andthere's no excuse to say that
they didn't know where to findit.
Alright guys, let's talk aboutbest practice.
When I think about best practicein an agency, a couple of things
come to mind.
Things like how we handleclients and client comms, how we
handle pitching and sales, howwe deliver work efficiently, and
(13:48):
how we run our projects.
I personally tend to use theword process interchangeably
with best practice.
But I know some people have astrong reaction to the P word
because they take it as somekind of inflexible set of steps.
That's not what I'm talkingabout.
I am talking about bestpractice, which is a framework
of the best way to do things.
The point of best practice is tocommunicate to everyone the
(14:08):
standard way things are donebased on prior experience and
learnings.
That doesn't mean it's set instone.
Things change, clients change,tools change, and you might
discover more efficient ways todo things.
So your best practice needs tochange as well.
Now when it comes to embeddingbest practice as an ops
director, something that wasimportant to me and the head of
finance was to ensure that wewere delivering work profitably.
(14:32):
We had a PSA platform, and so itwas very important to us that we
were using it to controlprojects, but also to see how
our business was performing.
That required people to use thetool in the right way.
It wasn't about rigidity.
It was about knowing how thingsare done and ensuring that their
projects and information are upto date and that the data being
produced is accurate.
(14:53):
I sometimes hear peoplewondering or worrying about
training around platforms likethis.
Whether they're using a PSAplatform or not.
Wondering how they can geteveryone up to speed and working
in the same way.
Using the systems consistentlyand how to handle new starters
that come into the business aswell.
I'll tell you what I did.
When we first rolled out our newPSA at the agency, we had a
(15:14):
company wide training session.
There was one one hour trainingsession for the individual
contributors, the designers, thedevelopers, the strategists, to
understand how they could seetheir schedules and how they
would confirm the time for whatthey were booked on and how they
could manually look up a projectand add time to things that they
had to work on which wereunplanned.
(15:34):
That recording session wasrecorded.
Then, we had two two-hourtraining sessions for the
account managers, projectmanagers, finance, operations,
and upper management.
We told everyone that theyabsolutely did not need to take
notes.
That all these sessions were forwas to show them how the system
worked and how work flowedthrough it from the incoming
(15:54):
lead through to a quote, projectdelivery, invoicing, payment,
and close.
So those two training sessionswere recorded as well.
Now with those recordings, Iused them for new starter
onboardings for the platform,and the same rules applied.
No notes, just watch andunderstand how it works.
Alright, so people have satthrough the exposure to the
(16:15):
system.
How are they expected toremember any of this when it
comes to their actual projects?
Well, in the handbook, in thesoftware and tech section, under
the Scoro page, I created anindex of short videos that were
just a couple of minutes inlength each.
I think I started with somethinglike 15 items when we launched
the platform, And at some pointit was up to 40 with the various
(16:35):
FAQs and edge cases that hadcome up and we documented.
But this index and these videoscovered everything an account
manager or project manager mightbe expected to do in the system.
You know, creating that newquote, creating a new client or
supplier, turning it into aproject, raising the invoice,
creating a PO, tracking theirproject budget, etc, etc.
The point was, when it came togetting used to the platform and
(16:58):
understanding best practice,whether this was an existing
employee that was transitioningto the new system, or a new
employee doing their onboarding,they had an index of how to
videos they could reference thatexplained what to do and how to
do it by following along.
This meant that I didn't expectpeople to watch that four hours
of training videos and try tofind the right point where their
(17:20):
question would be answered.
They didn't need to ask theircolleague and get questionable
advice on how to do that thing.
And they didn't need to ask meor the head of finance on how to
do it the right way.
If they came to me with aquestion, the first thing I'd
say is, Did you watch that videonumber 12 in that index.
It shows you how to do that.
Watch that first, and if youstill have questions, or if your
situation is different, comespeak to me after you've had a
(17:42):
look.
That worked really, really well.
I also made a point of saying topeople that in their first
several weeks of getting used tothe new system, I didn't want
them to go based on memory.
That I preferred that they watchthat mini video before they took
the next big step in theirproject, so that they'd get the
definitive advice again andagain, until it became second
nature.
(18:04):
Now, of course, every project isunique, so they were able to
tailor what they did to suittheir requirements.
But what this meant is thatfinance and ops didn't need to
spend a huge amount of time eachmonth retroactively fixing
invoices and POs and having tofix data and troubleshoot and so
on.
It meant that people got it.
And as a result of that, we gotaccurate data coming in and out
(18:26):
of the system.
And for new starters, dependingon the role, I also created
practice cases for them to walkthrough creating that quote,
looking up a client, raisingthat PO and invoice, closing the
project and so on.
This meant that before theystarted running their own
projects, the week after theystarted onboarding, they'd gone
through it once before andtherefore they had a good idea
how things work.
(18:46):
This made them feel so much moreconfident.
By the way, another reasoncreating this kind of resource
is so important is that when yougo live with a new system, of
course People are going to beanxious and stressed.
So by being able to say, Hey,we've thought about all your use
cases.
We've created this really easyto use index for you to
reference that you can followalong and it's going to answer
all of your questions is soreassuring.
(19:09):
It really, really helps easethat kind of stress and that
transition.
Okay, so we've embedded thatbest practice.
I just wanted to talk about afew other of my favorite tools
for documentation.
So I already spoke about usingCoda for the handbook in
general.
That's what I preferred.
But for those how to videos, Iabsolutely loved using Loom.
(19:29):
It's so easy to use.
It sits in your menu bar as anicon on your Mac.
And when you're ready, you justhit record and it just records
what you're doing on screen witha voiceover and a little video
thumbnail if you want.
And as soon as you stoprecording, it uploads it to the
cloud immediately.
And then you can edit outanything you don't want right on
their website.
And then it's ready to go.
(19:51):
Whether you're linking people tothat resource on loom or you're
embedding a link to that videoin your handbook.
Another great tool that you canuse is called scribe.
So what you do with this tool isthat once you hit record, you
just go through the steps tocomplete the operation, whatever
it is.
And once you're done, it createsa step by step guide, which you
can embed in your handbook.
(20:11):
So another really great one.
Now I have to be honest, forreally short, simple things, I
think a few written instructionsare fine.
Step one, step two, step three.
For something that requires afew more clicks, Scribe can work
really well.
It just adds that screenshotelement and makes it really easy
for people to follow along.
But my favourite really is usingLoom for video.
(20:31):
I just love that you can givethe person listening a lot of
context really quickly, as wellas show them how to do the thing
they need to do.
So I'm a big fan of video forthe more complex stuff that
requires the most context sothat people aren't left having
to read a huge paragraph andloads of steps or scrolling down
through endless screenshots.
So I really love video for thatreason.
(20:53):
Alright guys, so that brings usto the end of our episode today.
We've covered a lot.
We've talked about why creatinga single source of truth via
your agency handbook is soimportant in your journey to
maturity.
Tools you can use to create thehandbook.
What you should document.
How to embed best practice inyour agency.
The tools you can use in yourhandbook to create how to
(21:14):
guides.
Creating this resource is amajor milestone that takes your
agency from level one chaos orlevel two reactivity towards
level three in maturity.
Even if you already had that inplace, hopefully there were some
ideas here that I've shared thatyou can use to augment your own
handbook.
And if I've missed anything thatyou do that works really well,
I'd love for you to share thatwith me on LinkedIn when you see
(21:37):
me post about this episode.
I know there was a lot ofinformation here.
So if you want a cheat sheetwith the summary of this
episode, sign up for thehandbook newsletter at
scoro.com/podcast.
You can scroll down on that pageand there's a place where you
can enter your email.
And lastly, have you told yourfriends and colleagues about
this podcast?
Please share this episode withsomeone you think that would
(21:58):
benefit and tell them that theyshould subscribe.
Thank you so much for listeningand we'll be back with the next
episode soon.
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