How to move from tactical to STRATEGIC ops with WPP's Preston Chandler

Episode Transcript
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Harv (00:00):
Before we get into the interview, as you know, this

(00:02):
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Now, back to the episode.

Harv Nagra (01:19):
Hey all, welcome back to the podcast.
Operations means differentthings to different people.
For those of us in the field, notwo job descriptions or days
look the same.
I'm certain that's the case forall the ops leaders listening to
this.
Early on, when things are inthose chaotic stages, operations
often has to be tactical.
Building structure, creatingconsistency, and moving away

(01:42):
from the reactivity, and themake it up as you go approach
we've spoke about previously.
In fact, when I started gettinginvolved in Ops, it was to
bridge a gap, helping my agencymature by creating the systems
and controls it needed.
But once this is all in a greatplace, our focus was able to
shift to the bigger picture.
Our guest today has a strongpoint of view on this.

(02:03):
That operations needs to movebeyond the tactical and become
strategic.
How do you do that?
He tells me that you should belooking at your agency model,
your governance, your teamstructure and how you do the
work.
Today's guest knows that journeywell.
I'm delighted to be joined byWPP's Global Practice Lead for

(02:24):
Strategic Operations, PrestonChandler.
He's an expert in guidingagencies from chaos to clarity
by fostering a culture ofexperimentation, removing
barriers to creativity anddriving sustainable growth.
In fact, in this role at WPP,he's responsible for advising
agencies in the group on how tooperate in a better, smarter,

(02:46):
and more strategic way.
So whether you're buildingstructure or scaling innovation,
this conversation will challengehow you think about operations,
how your agency is run, and howto take it to the next level.
Let's get into it.
Preston, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for beinghere.

Preston Chandler (03:02):
Thanks for having me, Harv.

Harv Nagra (03:04):
I always start by asking Ops leaders how they
realized this was their callingand maybe a few highlights from
their, from their journey.
What was that path like for you?
Okay.

Well, we gotta backa little ways.
I started off college as a musicmajor.
And in my mind, I mean, I didvocal performance and I was
going to be able to sing and,and everyone was going to love
me.

Harv Nagra (03:25):
Yeah.

while I do have a talent for singing, I
don't have that talent forsinging,

Harv Nagra (03:30):
Okay.

being able to be in front of massive audiences
every single day.
And have people pay for it andpay good money for it.
most people who get paid moneyto, to sing.
To sing, didn't go to school forit.
So, and I realized that, and Ishifted my focus and I had a
very wise dad who said, well,you might as well do math or

(03:51):
something that you can

Harv Nagra (03:52):
Okay, yeah.

I shifted, I have to actually shifted from
music to statistics.
And then my dad also said, well,you know what operations and how
things work and you always likedthat.
So why don't you do operations?
So, all the way back in college,I started recognizing that I

Harv Nagra (04:06):
Wow.

really really enjoyed how do things work?

Harv Nagra (04:09):
Hmm.

How can you work better.
What are like the life hacks forgetting work done?
So I started off my career morein the lean manufacturing side.

Harv Nagra (04:18):
Okay.

shifted over time to, product software
development and marketing.

Harv Nagra (04:22):
Right.

I, I have to say, I love the thought worker
space.

Harv Nagra (04:25):
Hmm.

I love just any work that people have to
work together to get it done.
and that's really intriguing tome and that's what I've, what
I've landed on.
So for me, you know, marketing,the operations of marketing in
agencies, particularly, that'sinteresting.

Harv Nagra (04:41):
hmm.

the projects.
It's how do we get people towork well together?

Harv Nagra (04:44):
Yeah.

and so again, I, I learned early on that
something in this space was whatI loved.
and about a, about a decade ago,I shifted from actually more
than a decade.
I'm getting older.
I shifted from the manufacturingside of it over to the marketing
side of it.
And I haven't really lookedback.

Harv Nagra (05:01):
Wow.
And bridging that frommanufacturing to marketing.
Was that difficult?
Or do you think the same kind ofprinciples were transferable?

Well, think you hit on it.
It's the principles that aretransferable.

Harv Nagra (05:14):
Yeah.

I personally, I'm much more principle based.
I'm always asking, what's theprinciple behind this?
Why am I doing this?
Like, why does this work?
And you find that the samethings apply.
And so in, a marketingenvironment, we might use
something like a design sprint

Harv Nagra (05:29):
Right.

or something like that to come up with great
ideas.
Well, it's the same basicprinciples, the same basic idea
as a Kaizen blitz.

Harv Nagra (05:37):
Yep.

talking about manufacturing,

Harv Nagra (05:39):
Okay.

Same basic thing, you take a week out, you
figure out what the problem is.
You come up with ideas, youimplement it.
That's the same thing.
It's the same principles.

Harv Nagra (05:47):
Right.

Now, if you used exactly the same practices
and tools, then it's not goingto work.

Harv Nagra (05:53):
Right.

So as long as you keep it principle based, and
I think that there's massive,massive overlaps between them.

Harv Nagra (06:01):
I love that.
I love that.
Also that, your journey startedback in college.
Like a lot of people, they kindof stumble into this career and
discover along the way that,Hey, actually I'm really good at
fixing stuff and making it runbetter.
But I love that your dad broughtthat to your awareness and you
started looking at it back then.
That's really cool.
Really interesting.
So when you look at agencies,whether they're inside or

(06:22):
outside WPP, can you tell us abit about what you see and what
you hear, maybe some commonpitfalls that you notice?

I love that.
I I'm going to call them badsmells if

Harv Nagra (06:34):
Okay.
Yeah, right.

Because a bad smell doesn't mean it's actually
wrong, per se, and for someorganizations that might be the
best thing for them to do, butit's a bad smell.
It's like, go investigate that,go look at deeper.
So, a couple of bad smells, oneis there's, there's really a
fragmented nature of, ofagencies and it gets worse, the
larger the organization gets,which is which is to be
expected, but you see it inagencies because agencies work

(06:59):
for clients.
And I think it's curious that,many agencies have a certain way
of working for each client.
They have three major clientsand the agency might operate
like three independentcompanies.
And so it causes a lot of thisfragmentation.
You don't have the samestandards.
You don't have the same ways ofworking across all of them.
You might have some themes, thatgo across as your company,

(07:21):
particularly your companyculture comes to life in those
areas, but usually it's not someclear standards.
So the fragmentation is first.
I think the other one is, weoften fall into this pit of
hierarchy.
Of thinking that hierarchy isimportant, and it's generally
not.
I mean there's plenty ofresearch out there that shows,
that the more approvers you haveon something, the less creative

(07:43):
it is.
The more senior the peopleworking on it, the less creative
it is.
so all of these things we say asan industry that we're all about
creativity, and yet many of thestructures that we put in place
don't don't actually fostercreativity at all.
They do the reverse, they fostermore same.
We think that that droppingpeople from from one project to

(08:05):
the next project and moving themaround a lot, we think that
that's going to fostercreativity.
That is not true.
I'm leaving people on the sameclient for long enough so that
they can become experts and theydeeply understand the problem,
which typically means, you know,a year or two, they need to be
on there to, to start reallygetting that creativity out of
them.
again, it's, I think maybe thebiggest pitfall is, is just that

(08:30):
entrenched mindset.
we haven't really changed how weoperate in the last 30 years.
We're operating about the sameas we did 30 years ago.

Harv Nagra (08:38):
Right.

Um, there's there's another guy.
Maybe you should talk to him.
He's, he's, he's Jack fromAgency Agile.

Harv Nagra (08:44):
Okay.

uh, has a really interesting concept of
the manager to maker ratio.
I think he uses a different wordfor it, but managers to make a
maker.
And he says that on the smallagencies, often one to 10.

Harv Nagra (08:58):
Okay.

one manager and 10 makers.
As the agencies get larger, thelargest agencies are sitting
close to one to one.
So it shifts from a 1-to-10

Harv Nagra (09:06):
Wow.

to a 1 to 1, and there's a reason why those
larger agencies become more andmore expensive.
It's because their manager tomaker ratio is so...
you have one manager to onemaker.
so I think part of that is, ascompanies get larger, they tend
to delegate less.
They, don't have as much of theentrepreneurial spirit.

Harv Nagra (09:25):
Right.

this idea that, Hey, we can risk stuff and
we can, we can try things out.
You don't do that as much justbecause it's a large
organization.
it's not uncommon

Harv Nagra (09:34):
mm hmm.

in large agencies to see these
hierarchies, these reportingstructures where you have one
person reporting to one personreporting to one person
reporting

Harv Nagra (09:43):
Mm.
Yep.

it's a really deep hierarchy without a whole
lot of value there.
And so finding ways to flattenthat, finding ways to delegate
more.
there's, you've seen this aswell as I have.
You go into a meeting and havepeople introduce themselves and
people, while I am the seniorassistant manager, like they
have to say all of their titlebecause we've made it important.

(10:06):
And

Harv Nagra (10:07):
Right.

If we just took a step back and said, I'm,
I'm the designer, like, I don'tcare.
Nobody cares what level ofdesigner you are.
It's good enough to know you'rethe designer, you're the
copywriter, or you're thestrategist, and yet we try to
put all this hierarchy in place.

Harv Nagra (10:21):
Right.
And a lot of times these kind ofideas, they're not interrogated
in the way that you're kind ofpresenting to us, right?
We, we take it as this is theway we've kind of grown through
the agency space throughout ourcareers and what we've seen and
just keep repeating thosepatterns.
So sometimes it takes somebodylike yourself bringing to our
attention that, hey, that, thatdoesn't mean it's the way it

(10:41):
needs to run.
So, you know, when people hearthe name WPP, there's kind of a
sheen associated with that.
So we might think that itbelongs on a pedestal, every
agency in the group.
but this is a huge group withlots of different entities,
branches around the world.
And you don't mandate a singleway of working across the group,

(11:03):
but, I, I guess my firstquestion may be a bit cheeky.
Is there anything that you cansay about that rosy perception?
Is it earned?
Is it fair, or do all agencieshave similar issues?
you're, you're talking aboutfragmentation and stuff like
that.
So my question is, is WPP theexception to the rule because
everyone's running exceptionallywell.

Unfortunately, not.

Harv Nagra (11:25):
Okay.

I'd love to say that we were,

Harv Nagra (11:27):
Yeah.

but, but it's just like most other big
companies.
It's, incredibly large.
I mean,

Harv Nagra (11:33):
Mm hmm.

WPP as a holding company has over 100,
000 employees worldwide.

Harv Nagra (11:37):
Wow.

So you start counting up.
That's a lot of people to try tokeep going all in the same
direction and the nature of aholding company versus operating
company relationship means thatcompanies are going to run their
own direction.

Harv Nagra (11:49):
Right.

And, and just the history of all of these
large agencies predominantlygrowing by acquisition

Harv Nagra (11:55):
Mm hmm.

Means that they have hidden under the hood,
they have hundreds or thousandsof little agencies.
That all have their own historyof how they've worked, of how
they've come together.
So, we certainly see pockets ofbrilliance.
I mean, I'll be honest, just saythat, yeah, we have some amazing
work that we do out of WPP and

Harv Nagra (12:15):
Mm hmm.

it's probably pockets of brilliance.
I mean, you're going to get someof the good and some of the not
as good,

Harv Nagra (12:20):
Absolutely.
Yep.

and our goal, and we talked about this a bit
before, but our goal is toprovide enough guidance to
people.

Harv Nagra (12:27):
Mm.

they can, they can be flexible.
I don't think, again, overacross a hundred thousand
employees, we can't apply acookie cutter approach to this.
Not every client is the same,but you'll get some clients that
are, are massive multinationalconglomerates like Coca Cola is,
is one of the large WPP clients.

Harv Nagra (12:48):
Right.

And they're going to operate very different
than, some, some single nationcompany.

Harv Nagra (12:55):
Mm hmm.

And so I think again, finding ways, what are
the commonalities and we talkedjust just about manufacturing
compared to marketing.

Harv Nagra (13:04):
Mm hmm.

I think that same principle-based approach is
going to be what helps us out.
And so we created a number ofplaybooks that say, here are the
principles that we want tofollow.
here are some of the bad smells,like here's some things to come
and look at.
Here are some of the traditionalapproaches that aren't as good
as you might have traditionallythought.
And I think, I think helpingpeople to disabuse themselves of

(13:26):
those false notions, I thinkthat that goes a long ways.

Harv Nagra (13:30):
That's where your role comes in as well for the
group, isn't it?
Can you tell us what thatentails maybe, and, and how,
how, how you kind of, activatesome of this stuff.

so I have the opportunity to lead what we call
strategic operations across theglobe.
And first I'll just, I'll justdescribe what we mean by
strategic.
So my group is not focused onthe day to day.
We're not focused on the timesheets and, and how you actually
bill for, for work and all thatkind stuff.
We're thinking about the bigpicture.
How do we organize?
What are the ways of working?

Harv Nagra (14:03):
Mm hmm.

What are the basic scoping approaches?
I don't care about the languagein the statement of work.
I care about what type of astatement of work is this?
Is this deliverable based?
Is this more of a retainer?
That's the things that we end upcaring about.
Mm And honestly, that's wherethe big lever is.
There's a lot of little leversthat people pull all the time on
their clients, but the biglevers are, how did we scope it?

(14:26):
What is our fundamental way ofworking here?
Are we working as teams or arewe working as a pool of
resources.
anyway, so, so we focus on thatmore strategic side of it.
And I have the opportunity tokind of bounce between
providing, training and coachingfor particular clients or, more
of an advising role of, Hey,we're struggling with this,

(14:47):
Preston, please come in.
How could we approach thisdifferently?
What direction could we go?
so I ended up coaching a lot ofthe operations leaders across
the network.
To give them some of thatbackground, because honestly,
many of the operations folkscame from the tactical side.
They may not have been exposed,or we get a lot of senior people
who are wearing the operationshat that came from an account

(15:08):
side, and they may not have thefull background.
It doesn't mean they're doing abad job, but they may not have
that full background.
So being able to, to bring tothem, here's some of the
perspectives, here's somedifferent ways to think about
it.

Harv Nagra (15:20):
So, so there is that tactical stuff that is important
to get kind of your structureunder control but, you know, you
bring this kind of strategicpoint of view.
Can you tell us some of thebenefits and why that's so
critical?

for one, I think setting up on a solid
foundation makes a bigdifference.
I'll just use that foundationanalogy for a bit.
if you, if you want to build a20, 000 square foot house and
you have a thousand square footfoundation, it's not going to
work.

Harv Nagra (15:49):
Right.

yet we have, I think we have many people who
try that all the time.
Like they have this smallfoundation and they're trying to
build something massive from it

Harv Nagra (15:56):
Mm hmm.

we just need to make sure that we have the
correct or appropriatefoundation.

Harv Nagra (16:01):
Right.

That's what you want to achieve.
Okay, here, here's thefundamental building blocks that
we have to put in place to makethat happen.
Which could be things again,like, like what is your scoping
approach?
How are we going to scope this?
Does that actually fit with thisclient for what you're trying to
do?

Harv Nagra (16:16):
So you've developed some playbooks or points of
view.
We're going to go through that.
But, you know, if I understandcorrectly, this isn't about
identifying the right model,there is no right model, but
it's kind of, helping someonefigure out how The kind of
agency they want to be and, youmight think that's obvious, but
why is that so important forsomebody to think about?

you mentioned it earlier is that we're not
interrogating this enough, andthat we're often just
implementing what we saw last.
but again, every client is goingto be a little bit different.
We certainly see somesimilarities across clients, but
every, every client needs atailored approach for them.
How's this going to work?
We have clients who who want towork with us, who are going to
be embedded on teams with us,

Harv Nagra (17:00):
Right.

clients who say, you know what?
You're the vendor.
I'm the client.
I don't care if you do it in ablack box.
Those are very different, verydifferent approaches.
We need to look at that verydifferently.
It's not going to be the samefoundation for both of those.
We're building very differentthings.
One's a house and one is awarehouse or

Harv Nagra (17:18):
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think it goes backto what we were saying a few
moments ago, that you have endedup in a certain kind of
circumstance or structure orwhatever, and you do need to
make sure you're making theright decisions for your way
forward.
So, Preston, we're going to gothrough each of these areas that
you've identified.
I, I think it would be great toget a bit of a definition from
you on what that is and maybeeven some examples that come to

(17:39):
mind that can help us illustratewhat falls into those
categories.
The first one we'd spoke aboutwas the agency model.
Can you tell us what that meansand what that kind of looks
like?

this is particularly important for the
larger agencies.
So if, if you're a singleagency, and you don't, you're
not necessarily working withother agencies to help out the
client, then, then this answeris pretty much already made for
you.

Harv Nagra (18:03):
Yeah.

you have one agency,

Harv Nagra (18:05):
Yeah.

But when we're working from a, a holding
company perspective, we need tounderstand how are we organizing
the agencies here?

Harv Nagra (18:12):
Hmm.

Do we have one lead agency who's fully
responsible and they bring insome other people?
Do we have a collection ofagencies that all have to work
together and there's not oneboss and they have to kind of
manage this by committee andjust get along.
we also have some where no oneagency owns it

Harv Nagra (18:30):
hmm.

And it's kind of on demand.
We're just going to go, we'rejust going to pick some, some
people from different agencieswhere we're going to assign a
project to that agency, aproject to that agency.
And then the last one would bemuch more of a bespoke model
where we, we essentially createan agency for that client.

Harv Nagra (18:46):
Right.

we say like this, this agency is going to
operate just for you.
which, which we might do forsomeone like like Ford or Coca
Cola

Harv Nagra (18:55):
Right.

yep, you have your own agency.
they're going to operate prettyindependently just for you.

Harv Nagra (19:01):
That makes sense.
The point here is there's noright model.
It's just to have a sense checkabout how you're structured and
how you wanna operate.

Well, yes and no.

Harv Nagra (19:10):
Okay.
Go on.

There are models that tend to work better.

Harv Nagra (19:12):
tell me about that.

So it's hard to say the right, but, I just
described like this, this ad hocmodel, and we're just going to
pick and choose.
It's not a very efficient model.
Can we make it work?
Certainly.
It's not very efficient.
There's not a whole lot ofcohesion.
You don't have this tribalknowledge built up over time
that people learn how to workwith a certain client.

Harv Nagra (19:29):
Hmm.

So can you be successful?
Certainly we see agencies besuccessful that route.
Would you be more successfulgoing a different route?
Yeah.

Harv Nagra (19:37):
Okay.

If you're looking at more of a federated
model where you have mulitpledifferent agencies, that can
work but management by committeeis tough and it's hard to have a
single vision of where you'regoing.
And so what we often find isjust more silos.
at least the people arededicated to the work longterm,
but there's more silos.
Um, the lead agency can workreally well.

(19:59):
If, the work is predominantlywith one agency and you have
very little need for otheragencies.
but as soon as you start needingother agencies more, this,
disparity in power doesn't tendto work very well.
Having one agency is like, no,no, I set all the rules and you
will do what I tell you.
That doesn't work.

Harv Nagra (20:17):
I've seen that as well.
There's a bit of competition andclashing opinions, and this kind
of ego thing comes into play,doesn't it?

Exactly.
Exactly.
So for, for WPP with largeclients, it generally makes more
sense to have a bespoke model

Harv Nagra (20:34):
Okay.
Yeah.

create a somewhat standalone agency for
them to say, Hey, we're going tohave that, Mm-hmm operate
independently on your behalf.
It generally works the best.
It doesn't mean that there isone right model, but it's pretty
clear that with all the otherbenefits from it, a bespoke
model is generally going to bebetter.

Harv Nagra (20:53):
Question, some of our audience or maybe even a
large proportion of the audiencemight only be in that single
agency model, is there anythingthat you can highlight in that
structure that would be thingsto look out for?

Yeah.
Even in the, in the singleagency model, you can still
suffer from seeing things likesilos.
You probably still have creativedepartments and strategy
departments and, and if theycan't operate together, then you
might as well be a federatedmodel.
You might as well be completelyseparate agencies if that's how
you're operating.

Harv Nagra (21:24):
Good point.

you still need to take care not to fall into
the trap of some of the otherareas.
I would recommend, even ifyou're a small agency, you're
probably better off thinking ofyourself as, I'm creating a mini
agency for that client.

Harv Nagra (21:37):
Right.

So what is my agency for that client with
everybody on the same page?
We have one leader for thatclient instead of having five
different leaders.

Harv Nagra (21:45):
Good advice.
All right, so let's move intothe second area, which was
governance.

So how are you going to, how are you going to
lead it?
And I just, I just touched on ita bit, but are you going to have
one leader for this?
Are you gonna have multipleleaders for this agency model
that you've selected?
How are you going to empowerthat leader?
Do you have a leader who's afigurehead?

Harv Nagra (22:04):
Mm hmm.

yeah, you have a point of contact, but they
can't make really any choices.

Harv Nagra (22:08):
Right.

just a point of contact.
If I need to escalate, I'll goto them, but they don't lead any
strategy or vision, or theydon't say this is where we're
going as a partnership.
So I think the governance isreally important to understand
where are you and where do youwant to be?
again, there's not really oneright answer, but there, there
are some commonly betteranswers.

Harv Nagra (22:29):
Okay.

So, having more of this empowered alignment
is the epitome, to me.
You're empowering people but youstill have this central
structure that providesalignment and we say, yes, we
all are going in the samedirection.
You're empowered over yoursphere or whatever you're
responsible for.
You're empowered to operatethere, but we're all going in

(22:51):
the same direction as opposed tolike a figurehead where there's
there's no empowerment.
Yeah, everybody's going in theirown direction, but it's kind of
almost anarchy chaos.
They're running, there is, thereis no guidance.

Harv Nagra (23:04):
Preston, so my question is like, we're going to
talk about team structure, whichis kind of the next pillar.
But how does this differ fromthat?
Can you just kind of spell thatout for me?
How does governance differ fromteam structure?

the way I would define team is the people
actually doing the work.
So, I think that that's probablythe biggest pitfall that I hear
from people is that theydescribe team and it's like the
leadership.
Or the team is strategy.
Or the team is creative.
And I'm sorry, they can't actlike a team.
That's like saying that you havea team full of quarterbacks.
That's that's not a team.
That's a bunch of quarterbacks.
let's let's assume that you havetwo or three teams.

(23:37):
The governance is how do youlead those teams?
Not how do the teams operate inthemselves?

Harv Nagra (23:42):
Let's go into team structure then, talk us through
that and what you've seen workwell and not so well?
what are the problems that, itmight be quite easy to spell out
some of the problems that yousee.

well, so I think just reiterating on the
point I made earlier is that theteam is the people doing the
work.
And it's all the people neededto do that work.
Typically that means you havefive to nine people.
I mean, there's, there's, a lotof human psychology behind that.
We really only connect withabout seven people at once.
So keep the teams to about sevenpeople.

Harv Nagra (24:10):
Right.

And and then the tough thing is making sure
that those seven people have allthe skills necessary to do the
work.

Harv Nagra (24:16):
Mhm.

So if you're doing a traditional, doing a
traditional campaign,

Harv Nagra (24:20):
Mhm.

to need strategy and design and copy

Harv Nagra (24:23):
Yep.

potentially media

Harv Nagra (24:25):
Mhm.

same team.
Well, that's four people andmaybe some of those roles are
doubled up.
and maybe you need a productionor, or, or project manager with
that, but that becomes your teamand it's best to have that team
be fully empowered to make thedecisions.
In fact, I recommend putting theclient on the team.

(24:46):
if you, if you are working witha client and they have a
marketer that you're workingwith, pull them onto the team.
Don't treat them as someoneoutside the team.
Show them the dirty laundry.
Show them how the sausage ismade.
Have them be part of that.
Include them in ideationsessions and talk to them every
single day.
Yep.
That's a very different type ofexperience.
Than what we often seetraditionally when traditionally

(25:08):
the team talks to the accountperson.
The account person then conveysit over to the client.
The client conveys it back tothe account.
It's a telephone game and it'sso much easier if you just say
no.
We're 1 team.
We're operating together.
So that, dedicated crossfunctional team is the ideal
team structure again It's notthe only answer or always the

(25:29):
right answer, but generallythat's the better answer.
Some other ways that I see thisis we do have project teams
where a project comes up this isthe most common I think, a
project comes up and I go andfind people to fill the project.
That feels very common andnormal for agency folks.
If you want to be almost twiceas productive, don't do that.

(25:50):
So that's really wasteful in thelong run.

Harv Nagra (25:53):
Why do you think that is?

Well, for one, you have to spend all that time
and effort staffing up for aproject.
Now, what if you had a team andyou just happened to assign
projects to the team?
Team already exists.
They already know how to worktogether.
Again, studies show that ittakes about three to six months
for a team to figure out how towork together.
To go through the, forming,storming, norming, performing,
that takes three to six months.
The average length of an agencyproject, three to six

Harv Nagra (26:18):
Three to six months.
Yeah.

by the time that they figure out how to work
with each other,

Harv Nagra (26:22):
Yeah.
You dissolve it and yeah,dissolving it and starting over
ends up being very inefficient,doesn't it?

Yeah.
So one, resourcing becomes mucheasier when you don't have to do
staffing all the time.
And then two people are so muchmore efficient when they are
working together long term and Iget to figure out how you, Harv,
work.
And what makes you tick, and I'mlike, oh, I don't actually have
to overexplain this all.
We don't need all of thesemeetings because I can just, I
can just send a note to Harv andhe gets it.

(26:50):
But early on, if you don't havethat long lived team, if you
haven't worked for them withthem for three to six months,
you're going to have to overcommunicate to make things
happen.

Harv Nagra (27:00):
So it's creating kind of a pod structure then in,
in your agency, right?
so that you can just feed themprojects and they're a little
bit more autonomous and you'renot doing this kind of entity
level resourcing.
You're doing it on a pod basisis, is that about right?

Absolutely.
And we might describe them aspods or teams or squads.
Again, I care about theprinciple that they're cross
functional, that they'retogether.
The name that you use for them,use whatever you want.

Harv Nagra (27:27):
Okay.

Several years ago, I was responsible for the
staffing and resourcing fortechnology.
And when I got in, 10 of thetechnologists were on one team
or one project and 90 of themwere on multiple.
projects And and we werespending so much time every
week, just trying to figure outwhat is the staffing and
resourcing and oh, we need threemore hours over here with this

(27:50):
person and 10 hours with thisperson.
And it was, was like 40 hours aweek.
Every week of some seniorpeople's time, like, this is
like CTO level that you have toinvolve their time multiple
hours a week, trying to figureout resourcing over a couple of
months.
And we just, we justrationalized where all the

(28:11):
resources going and we said,we're going to prioritize a
person having one client, aperson being a hundred percent
dedicated to something, and weprioritized that.
And over the course of just acouple of months, we inverted
the statistic.
We had 90 percent of the peopleworking on a single client or
project

Harv Nagra (28:29):
Right.

And 10 percent of the people floating.
And it became so easy to manage.
We stopped all of thoseresourcing meetings; just
disappeared.
We

Harv Nagra (28:36):
Interesting.

didn't need them anymore.
And we said, hey, individualmanagers, you only have a couple
of people to resource for.

Harv Nagra (28:43):
Mm-hmm

only have 10 percent of the people to
resource for you guys can figureit out.
And so we didn't have to do allthat big management anymore.
It was not as much of aheadache.
And it really wasn't as hard aspeople put it out to be.
We just had to make thatpriority and say, you know what
we value fully dedicated overfully utilized.
People were looking way too muchabout, you know, billability is

(29:05):
this person a hundred percentbillable.
And that's what they wereconcerned about.
And that actually wasted a wholelot more money for us as an
organization.

Harv Nagra (29:12):
Super interesting.
In terms of kind of who heads upthese kind of pods, is there any
good answers there?
Is it a creative director orcreative lead or an account
lead?
Any kind of advice there?

Commonly, again, there's not one right
answer, but commonly we see thisbe either account for project
management.
That's the most common.
it doesn't have to be.
One of my favorite pods ever.
The junior creative was thelead.
It was, it was fantastic.
We went through training and intraining, we played a game and,
and it really started to showwhat is the mindset that people

(29:46):
have.
And this, this one guy, hismindset was, he kept asking the
group,"let's go back to thebasics.
And what did we say we weregoing to do?
How did we say we were going tooperate?
We should probably do that.
Let's be wise about this." Andhe constantly said that he was
the junior person, Mm.
but he was constantly, this is,this is just how he thought.
And we get towards the end ofthe training.
And, and I the team had account,the project management.

(30:09):
And I went to them and said,Hey, at this guy, his name's
Scott, by the way.
So I was like look at Scott, seehow he's behaving.
That's exactly what we want froma team lead.
Are you okay empowering him tobe the team lead?
At first there was a bit of Idon't know about that.
Like, he's the creative, likecreatives don't do that.
And eventually he said, okay,Preston, we'll trust you.
We'll try this out.

(30:30):
And he was just fantastic.
And he could be the team lead.
The team lead is a hat to wear.
It's not a title.
It's just a hat to wear.
What was really cool though wasthat his boss was also on the
team.
And so I I put just as muchpraise on his boss for being
willing to, to act as the teammember and not try to take

(30:52):
charge.

Harv Nagra (30:52):
I love that.

And it, it was just amazing.
And he was an art director,designer, he could do the work.
So for me, again, this is muchmore about looking at who has
that aptitude.
You'll find project managers oraccount people who don't have
that aptitude.
Mm So don't try to force them todo it.
someone who has the aptitude forit because all they have do is

(31:13):
focus on the team, and make surethat the team has regular
meetings.
And, they might do a little bitof facilitating and making sure
that people are talking andlooking at the big picture.
But it's not, it's not a hugeeffort.
You just have to have somebodywho does it.

Harv Nagra (31:27):
And it goes back to your point earlier about
hierarchy as well.
We get too caught up in that andjob titles and get too rigid
rather than recognizing that,hey, this could work really well
if that person that's showingthat aptitude and enthusiasm is
willing to do it, right?
Yeah.

it, it, it honestly forces us to be so much
more human centered.
Who is the human?
What does this group of peopleneed?
If you create a team with sevenpeople, no two groups of seven
people are going to be the same.

Harv Nagra (31:53):
Absolutely.

They're all going to be a bit different.
And so you need to interrogate.
For this group, what makes themost sense?
I will say on a group of 10 or agroup of seven, as the teams
mature, I rarely see both adedicated account and a
dedicated project manager.
Usually you end up getting oneof them dedicated and the other
is like floating across multipleteams.

(32:14):
And I've seen both situations.
I've seen where the projectmanager is dedicated and kind of
runs the team and the accountperson is, is floating.
I've also seen where the accountperson is dedicated and runs the
team and the project manager isfloating.
I don't see those as being muchbetter than each other.
They're both just fine.
Yeah.
But I think it's interestingthat, that as teams improve and

(32:36):
evolve, they shift toward this,it's about one to seven manager
to maker ratio.
That tends to be about, about agood balance.

Harv Nagra (32:44):
Okay, Excellent.
So we're moving into the finalarea, which is, how you do the
work.
I suppose the capabilities andthe outputs that you're
producing.
So tell us about that, what tolook for and pitfalls and all
that kind of stuff.

Yeah.
we often talk about this as waysof working, what is the way you
get the work done, and I mean,my background comes from, from
lean and agile and all this kindof stuff.
And so I just assumed that youdo either lean or agile.
but as I started to put togethersome, some of these playbooks
and I said, you know what, I'mreally going to go and look, I'm
going to make sure that there'snot other options out there.

(33:21):
And guess what, there aren'tother options.
You can either do ad hoc, whichmeans it's chaos.
You just do whatever.
You can purposely do somethingthat's more waterfall, meaning
it's very, very stage gate.
And I have to do all of thisstage before I can move to the
next stage.

Harv Nagra (33:37):
Yeah.

or you can do lean, or you can do agile.
And those are it.
Everything else kind of fallsunder those Mm umbrellas.
And, and honestly, if you wantto be effective, efficient, then
you need to be agile and orlean.
That's that's it.
That's it, that's the onlythings you can do.
if you are more productionoriented if it's if you're in a
situation where there's justlots of small things that you're

(34:00):
working through.

Harv Nagra (34:00):
Mm hmm.

You should probably do more lean.
And if you're in an area whereyou're doing lots of lots of
projects and it requires lots ofcross functional work and stuff,
you should be more agile.

Harv Nagra (34:09):
Mm hmm.

And, you know, there's different tools and
practices can use from each areaYou But, you would be better off
going in one of those areas thansticking with the tried and
true, waterfall agency approach.

Harv Nagra (34:22):
Excellent.
So let's say we have gonethrough this exercise, to
identify who we are in each ofthese areas and what feels or is
going to be best for ourorganization.
I mean, with that information inhand, where do you go from
there?
Like, what do you do with that?

Then comes the comes the hard part.
Of actually doing it.
And so uh, my work is usuallysplit in two ways one is
educating people on what are theoptions?
What are the, what are thedifferent levers that you can
pull?
Oh, you want it to be this typeof an agency?
Yeah.
I think that'll fit you well.
You want to have this type ofways of working?
Yeah.
Okay.
and then actually bringing it tolife is hard, it's tough, and

(35:01):
that requires change.
And, um, I think that we havedone ourselves a disservice over
the last 30 years from a changemanagement perspective, because
we've allowed people to startthinking that change management
is about putting together apresentation deck.
If I put a presentation decktogether, if I do a couple of
emails, if I have a town hall,I'm good to go.
We've managed the change.

(35:22):
That's not true.
That's not how humans change.
so what I find is much moreeffective is by having the
embedded coaches.
And you, you mentioned thisearlier is having those coaches,
having much more of a mentoringbehavior.
I find that it's pretty easy tohelp a team change Mm if we will
first do a little bit oftraining.
So depending on how big thechange is, we might need more or

(35:43):
less training.
But at most we typically need,if a team wants to go from
traditional approaches to avery, you know, cross functional
team, empowered agile approach.
It usually takes about two daysof training.
So you do the training, then themost important part is the
coaching.
And so for the next severalweeks, actually being with the
team and saying, okay, you usedto have status meetings.

(36:05):
We're not doing that anymore.
We're doing something different.
We're going to have a standupmeeting.
And this is what a standupmeeting is.
This is how it's different fromwhat you're used to.
And showing them, this is howit's different.
And then letting them do itwhile, while I watch and I'm
able to say, you did this thing,but here, let me let me maybe
tweak that a little bit.
Let's let's shift some of yourbehaviors to be more aligned

(36:28):
with where we want to go.

Harv Nagra (36:28):
Mm.

So that that coaching becomes really really
important.
It has to be one on one or oneto one, I should say.
It can be, it can be one coach,the team, but it has to have
that relationship.
You can't, you can't make itwork by putting it all in the
presentation deck and handing itto somebody and saying, go.

Harv Nagra (36:45):
Absolutely, yeah.

That's not very successful.

Harv Nagra (36:47):
And so we've done all this work to identify who we
want to be, but we don'tmagically become that thing by
just identifying it, right.
There's, there's a whole lot ofwork that unpacks that you need
to tackle systematically to makeall of that realistic and embed
it into your team and your waysof working.

Yeah.
And as much as possible, youneed to, if you're, if you're
doing the change management,like my role, it's not to define
everything for the people,because if you do that, it's
going to fail long term.
They might adopt it for themoment, but as soon as some
obstacle comes up, Yeah.
then they'll say, we're going togo back to the old way of
working so that the betterapproach is to teach them the
right principles.
So here's all the principles.

(37:25):
And then together, let's figureout how do we bring this to
life.
Mm So it becomes their solution,it's not Preston's solution
anymore.
In fact, I hate hearing that.
I'm like, if I hear that, oh,this is Preston's process.
I'm like, I failed.

Harv Nagra (37:36):
Yeah.

failed.
Let's go back to the drawingboard.
I failed.
needs to be their process.
They need to own it.
I should be able to come back toa team six months later and see
the things that they've improvedthat I never taught them.
Like they should be empoweredand coming up with ideas all on
their own.

Harv Nagra (37:54):
so, people can go and find coaches and so on.
What else can you do to figuresome of this stuff out.
I suppose you could go read abook or, or watch stuff on
YouTube.
Like, do you have any advice onother areas people can kind of
learn and start embedding thisstuff?

well, even if you don't want to, the best
option is a coach.

Harv Nagra (38:14):
Okay.
It's just the most efficient inyour point of view.

most efficient, most, the best.

Harv Nagra (38:18):
Okay.

Part of the problem with having the book, so
there's plenty of books to read.

Harv Nagra (38:21):
Yeah.
I've got a pile on my shelf backthere that I've either yet to
read or yet to figure out how toimplement.

The most effective is going to be a
coach, particularly somebodywho's seen a lot of different
situations.
And so they can, they can tellyou, Oh, this is what I've seen
in other teams.
Because, like, like I saidmultiple times today, it's not a
cookie cutter approach.

Harv Nagra (38:41):
Mm hmm.

So you need a coach who's seen more of those
things.
then, yeah, I do think there'splenty of opportunity.
Just stay curious.
Go research.
Go and, go and ask what somebodyelse has done.
Don't fall into the pit of doingit just because you read it in a
book.
That's, that's a bad approach.
Learn from the book.
Ask what principles are they,are they using.
And then the last recommendationI have is to hold

(39:03):
retrospectives.
So a retrospective is an agileterm.
It just means to reflect onbehavior.
I recommend a team reflectsevery two weeks and says, what's
something we could do different.
And with that reflection, with alittle bit of that curiosity,
you will find that six months, ayear later, your team is very
different.
And you've actually owned.

(39:24):
all the change.
And you're learning more throughthat than you ever could through
books.
So, so just make some changes,ask some people, try some stuff
out.

Harv Nagra (39:34):
Absolutely, and I think that retrospective idea is
so important because, if you'renot doing that, you're just
continuing to run on the hamsterwheel without fixing anything,
and then a year goes by andnothing's actually changed, and
you're just identifying that theproblems are getting bigger and
bigger.
So that's really good advice andreally easy to implement as
well, right?
Cause it's not this monumentalexercise you're having to

(39:55):
undertake.
It's just constantly checking inand iterating, which is, which
is quite agile.

Yup, and it can be, it can be like 15
minutes, it's not a formalmeeting, just pause and say, as
a team, what's one thing we canwork on?
What do we wanna improve thisweek?

Harv Nagra (40:10):
Definitely good advice.
So, with all this work, we've,we've gone through this exercise
and we've identified all thesekinds of sub projects that we
need to undertake.
Somebody might, say, well, howdo I put my, business as usual
on hold to go through thisamount of work?
It sounds really overwhelming.
I suppose, the coach comes inhandy because then they can

(40:32):
nudge you along.
But what would you say tosomebody that's feeling a bit
overwhelmed by that kind ofdaunting undertaking?

I often say don't boil the ocean.
At the same time, though, Yeah.
the best way to approach changeis to jump in feet first.
Like, like just go in all theway, just putting your toe in,
trying to do a little bit at atime.
That's, that's more prone tofailure.
You don't reap the rewardsnearly as fast and it's easy to
back out and be like, I don'treally want to.
If you're already jumped in,you're done.

Harv Nagra (41:01):
Yeah.

So if you want to make the change, my
recommendation is to just bitethe bullet.
Take a couple of days.

Harv Nagra (41:07):
Yeah.

This doesn't need to be months, you can do
amazing stuff in just a coupleof days.

Harv Nagra (41:11):
That's fair, yeah.

Take a days with your team, do a little bit
of training, coaching.
Say we have the old world frombefore this, and we have the new
world after this.
What are we going to do in thenew world?
Let's change as many processesas possible.
Let's make sure they're allaligned and then let's, let's
move forward.
and then yeah, you might lose acouple of days, in my
experience, you gain that backwithin weeks.

(41:32):
But you invested two days withina couple of weeks, you will have
gained that back.
pretty much every team that I'veever coached in the marketing
space for, for ways of working,agile, cross functional team,
all that kind of stuff.
They, all of them have become atleast 2x as productive.
So they're doing twice as muchwork with the same number of
people.
It pays itself back fast.

(41:52):
So, so look at it as aninvestment.
Don't look at it like, I have totake time off.
No, this is an investment.
You're sharpening the axe sothat you can cut more trees.

Harv Nagra (42:00):
what I loved about what you said is a nice reminder
that this doesn't mean it'sthree or six months of full time
focus.
This is a couple of days of youclearing your schedule to do
some meaningful thinking andplanning, right?

Yeah.
Yeah.
one thing I like to say is, youknow, when's the best time to
plant a tree?
Well, it was 20 years ago.
The second best time to plant atree is today.
Just go and do it.
Don't keep putting it off.
I get a lot of people who say,well, Preston, it's, it's not
the best time at the moment.
Let's put that off for a coupleof months.
And business as usual is rough.
Business as usual is alwaysgoing to be rough.

(42:35):
Like there's always going to beexcuses.
Just make the investment today.
So that you have freed up timein the future.

Harv Nagra (42:42):
Really good advice.
So, Preston, when is a good timefor an agency to undertake this
process?
Is it everything someone shoulddo, well, as soon as they hear
this podcast is one example, butat a certain interval, or is it
triggered by growing pains?
What's your point of view onthis?

it must be constant.
Maybe 30 years ago.
You could do it every couple ofyears, but the rate of change
has just increased in the world.
You You can't afford to ever bestagnant ever again.
I think it's not so much aboutchange and thinking that this is
a project that will be done.
It's, this is, this is, we'rebeginning a journey.

(43:19):
And the journey has no end insight because I don't know when
and where it's going to end.
It'll probably end when thecompany dies.
Like that's it.
So you got to keep moving.
It's, it's shifting to have aculture of continuous change and
improvement and that theretrospectives are ideal for
that.
It's like, we're just going tohave retrospectives.
We're always going to come upwith new things to change, new

(43:41):
ways to improve.

Harv Nagra (43:43):
That's really interesting.
I wasn't expecting you to saycontinuously but it makes so
much sense now that I thinkabout it.
so we're coming to the end ofour chat.
I just wondered if you have anypredictions for where you think
that agency space is gonna go,which is a nice kind of,
extension of the last question.

Well, I think probably on top of most people's
minds is AI.
And I think that AI will be amassive disruptor for good and
for bad.
There's going to be someagencies that, that, adapt and
adopt and move forward, andthere's going to be some
agencies that just can't figureit out.
I think that, that we will startseeing a bunch of smaller

(44:21):
agencies who figure it out allof a sudden explode, they're
going to grow rapidly becausethey figure out that they can
grow faster with AI supportingthem and they don't have to have
the same infrastructure.
They don't have to have all thesame hiring practices to be able
to ramp up for clients.
So I really think we're going tosee that.

(44:42):
we're probably going to see thebig players continue on this
steady adoption curve ofadopting more and more AI.
They can't move as fast as someof the small players, but some
of the small players just don'thave the resources needed.
So it'll be an interesting gameto see played out, to see how
people move and, and, andchange, but it will absolutely

(45:05):
bring change.
I believe that if we do it well,or the agencies that do it well
are going to be more and moreagile.
They're going to realize that,that AI, for instance, allows
them to move much quickly.
It allows them to reduce silos,and to bring people together.
And the agencies that figurethat out, the agencies that are

(45:25):
like, yep, we're going to have across functional team.
We're not going to worry aboutprojects.
We're just going to have theteam and the team is going to
work on projects.
Those are the agencies that aregoing to.
They're going to spring forward.

Harv Nagra (45:36):
I love that.
Thank you for that.
so Preston, the kind of coachingand advising you do internally,
is that also something that yousupport other organizations
with?

Yeah, yeah.
I, my, my partner and I have aconsulting firm on the side.
and we do coaching for otherorganizations.
There's some conflict ofinterest.
So, sometimes I can't directlycoach you and my, my partner
does because there's a conflictof interest.
But, but in general, yeah, happyto, to help and coach.
my partner and I love runningworkshops.
We love helping organizationsfigure out what direction

(46:08):
they're going and doing coachingand training.
that's, that's what we're herefor.

Harv Nagra (46:12):
Excellent.
So where can people go find outmore information about you and
your business then?

you can look me up on LinkedIn.
So Preston Chandler on LinkedIn.
You can also check us out onCentered.work.
www.centered.work.
and we are just launching oursecond book.
So if you want the first book,you, you can find that it's
called the Agile Code.

Harv Nagra (46:34):
Yes.

Shameless plug.
That's the Agile Code.
our second book that just barelylaunched on Amazon like last
Friday, is BreakthroughInnovation.
And so the agile code focusesmuch more on, on team ways of
working, like how to lead teams,all their ways of working and
then breakthrough innovation is,is more from an organizational

(46:55):
perspective.
how do you approach that?
how do you structure anorganization so that you get
innovation?

Harv Nagra (47:01):
Excellent.
I'm looking forward to that.
We'll put a link to all of theabove in our episode notes so
everyone can find that.
Preston, it's been an absolutepleasure having you here today.
Thank you so much for your time.

Happy to help.
Thanks for having me.

Harv Nagra (47:14):
Hey all, I think Preston brought up a really
great point.
As organizations, we've ended upwherever we are today, and we
don't often take the time tothink about whether we've ended
up at the right place for whowe're striving to be, and
whether there could be moreoptimal ways of structuring our
businesses that could paydividends.
A nd as operations folks, wemight find ourselves too often

(47:36):
getting pulled into the weedswhen we're optimizing processes
and solving problems thanlooking at the big picture.
Preston's point was that weabsolutely need to get out of
the weeds and be strategic.
Maybe naive of me, but I reallydidn't expect Preston to say
that we should be looking atthis as a continual process.
I was expecting him to say, doit now, and then do it annually.

(47:59):
But I realize how much morevalue it opens up if we're
constantly testing, monitoring,and iterating.
To recap, the areas that Prestonrecommends that we look at to
see if they're fit for purposein our agencies are your agency
structure, governance, teamstructure, and ways of working.

(48:19):
Then once you've identified whoyou want to be in each of these
areas, doing the hard work toget there.
That being said, I was reassuredto be reminded that none of this
means putting your life on holdfor months while you work
through all of this.
Clear out a couple of days torun some strategy workshops and
do some thinking, and all ofthis towards becoming a better
run organization that's able tobe more efficient and

(48:42):
profitable.
So, if you want a cheat sheet ofPreston's advice, then you'll
know that you can sign up forthe handbook, operations
newsletter, so you never miss anepisode, or the key action
points each of our guests has toshare.
Sign up at scoro.com/podcast andscroll down to find the sign up
form.
And if you've loved this episodeand enjoy this podcast, there's

(49:03):
loads of things you can be doingto share your love.
For example, share the episodewith co workers and friends who
would appreciate the content andask them to subscribe.
You can become part of theconversation by commenting on
the posts that I share onLinkedIn about the episode with
your point of view and what youappreciated from the
conversation.
Or you can rate the podcast onApple or Spotify.

(49:26):
That's it for me.
I'll be back with the nextepisode soon.

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