December 3, 2024 • 38 mins
How do you create a highly efficient agency without losing flexibility or quality?
In this episode, Harv Nagra sits down with Jinny Mitchell-Kent, Joint Managing Director at Great State. With nearly 20 years of experience at agencies big and small—including global powerhouse AKQA—Jinny shares how she’s applying lessons from her big-agency days to a 100-person team.
Here’s what you’ll hear:
- How moving from COO to MD changed her focus from internal projects to building client relationships, while maintaining her focus on performance and excellence.
- The strategies Great State uses to compete with much larger agencies by staying lean and adaptable – from scaling up the team quickly when required, to creating a flexible delivery framework.
- Practical tips on managing costs, tracking profitability, and keeping teams running smoothly.
- How Jinny is championing inclusivity with initiatives like the Great Women’s Network.
If you want to learn how to streamline your operations and scale smarter, this episode is packed with insights you can put to work right away. Give it a listen!
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Episode Transcript
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Harv Nagra (00:00):
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Now, back to the episode.
(01:28):
Hi all, welcome back to thepodcast.
We all work for agencies ofdifferent sizes, each of which
has unique challenges based onsize and maturity.
While I've worked for globalbusinesses in the past, I
haven't worked for a agency withthousands of employees and
dozens of offices around theworld.
What would we learn from someonewith that that kind of
experience that we could applyat our own organizations.
(01:50):
Well, I've got someone on thepodcast today with exactly that
kind of experience.
And she'll be telling us howshe's taken what she's learned
and applied it at her currentagency, which is about a hundred
people.
Our guest today is JinnyMitchell Kent.
Jinny joined Great State, adigital product and service
design agency as COO four yearsago, and today is in the role of
(02:12):
Joint Managing Director.
Prior to Great State, Jinny wasworking at a global design and
innovation agency, a name manyof you might recognize, AKQA.
Jinny has over 19 years ofexperience in digital agencies,
working with global brands suchas Dyson, Fiat, Rolls Royce,
Bupa, and more.
She also has a long history ofworking with government and
(02:32):
defense clients.
With that vast experience, I'mso excited to see what we can
learn from Jinny.
So let's get into it.
Jinny, welcome to the podcast.
Let's start with your agencybackground.
In your case, you've gone fromOps a MD role, which is really
interesting and I think could bereally inspiring for some of our
audience.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (02:49):
Yeah, sure.
so my experience is all indigital agencies.
I started sort of straight outof university, in project
management.
So I joined what was then E3Media in Bristol, as a
production coordinator when theagency was around 30 people.
and I guess my progression hasbeen through account management
and project management.
Account management was the rolethat my production coordinator
(03:13):
turned into, which was sort ofhybrid projects and account
management.
And I was at, E3 Media for aboutthree and a half years before I
moved to London and went to,AKQA as a project manager,
which, you know, the size andscale was very, very different.
And it's, it was an incredibleplace to work.
I learned a huge amount, but Ireally had, very good grounding
(03:34):
in E3 Media and all the kind ofthings that I learned there.
At AKQA, I worked my way upthrough the sort of project
management and programmanagement roles.
So from project manager tosenior, then associate program
director, program director.
Then I looked after a group,increasingly sort of large and
complex programs of work andbigger teams.
(03:55):
And by the time I left AKQA, Iwas head of delivery and
operations for London.
So I think operations was reallyquite a natural progression from
delivery.
There are quite a lot ofoverlaps in terms of things like
monitoring, reporting,resourcing, identifying and
developing processes andgenerally just organizing stuff.
(04:15):
and I think the more senior Ibecame, the more operational
management I was gettinginvolved in naturally.
And I was really interested inprocess development and how to
improve ways of working and lookat things like profitability.
And that was really what led meback then to what is now Great
State.
I had been commuting to Londonfor a while.
(04:36):
After my second maternity leave,I decided to freelance a bit and
see what my options were closerto home in Bristol.
So I joined Great State as anoperations consultant to help
with some efficiency andprofitability challenges that
they had at the time.
So that was a sort of eightmonth or eight to nine month
stint as a, on a freelancebasis.
And then I became the permanentCOO.
(04:58):
So that role was incrediblybroad.
I think operations generally canbe very, very broad.
and it meant that I was gettinginvolved in a lot of the
leadership and management of thebusiness more generally.
and so then that became quite anatural shift.
Into the joint managing directorrole.
and it's been really great to dothat with my MD partner, David.
(05:19):
but yeah, it hasn't felt sort ofthis seismic shift, I suppose.
it's been kind of quite organic.
Harv Nagra (05:25):
I love that whole story but I do wonder have your
priorities and focus shiftedfrom the COO to the MD or co MD
role.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (05:33):
Yeah, it definitely has, potentially I
was slightly naive in, in mythinking that this was just
going to be, you know, fairlysimple change.
It's definitely been a learningcurve.
And I think, I think I am quitethe natural introvert, and a lot
of my time in my previous roleespecially was spent looking at
internal processes and workingwith the internal team with more
(05:57):
sporadic client and new businessinvolvement and things like
that.
So the shift to MD has been muchmore externally focused.
Harv Nagra (06:05):
Right.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (06:05):
and I'm having to spend more time
looking outwards and, you know,networking and events and
spending time with clients andthings.
And while I can do that well, Ido find I need some like
recharge, recharge time.
and I think it's also, I foundit a little difficult to move
away from some of theoperational things I was doing
previously just because that's,you know, where I'm very
comfortable.
(06:26):
but our priorities really aremore around the direction the
business is going, focusing onmaking sure we have a really
solid business plan with cleardirection for the internal team,
and then, a clearer externallyfacing business proposition.
So those things are what we'refocusing on at the moment and
things that are in development.
Harv Nagra (06:47):
it's quite interesting.
You know, a couple of the placesthat you've worked there was
AKQA, which is on a vastlydifferent scale from Great
State, can you remind us whatthe size difference is between
those two businesses?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (06:58):
Yeah, sure.
so when I joined AKQA London, itwas around 350 people.
and over time, it actuallyscaled up to around about 500,
but it's also a globalorganization.
So we, had access to peopleacross multiple countries as
well.
So there's actually thousands ofpeople that work for AKQA as a
whole.
whereas Great State is a, UKbased, independent agency of
(07:20):
around, about 70 perm staff andthen between 20 and 30
freelancers at any one time.
So kind of around the hundredmark, most of the time.
Harv Nagra (07:30):
I think there's some great learnings to be had there
in terms of, what you learned atAKQA and how you've applied that
and what we can learn from you,therefore, and take it to our
own agencies.
So let's let's dig into thestory a little bit more.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (07:44):
Okay.
Harv Nagra (07:45):
you tell us kind of the changes that you saw over
your time there, as the agencygrew.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (07:49):
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I was there quite a longtime, so I, think I saw a fair
amount of change in, inleadership, in ways of working
and in the clients that we had,in the types of work that we
were doing.
I was there between, 2008 and2018, or just the start of 2019.
So, So much changed in the worldin that time in terms of
(08:11):
technology and stuff, there wasa lot of things happening, which
I guess probably influenced someof the changes that happen
within the agency.
But, one change, was as we weregrowing at one point, we split
the business into some clientgroups that operated in slightly
different ways.
So sort of to operate a bit moreas independent pods.
Harv Nagra (08:30):
Okay.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (08:30):
if that Google method of like an agency
within an agency sort of idea, Ithink the idea was ultimately to
give some autonomy, moreautonomy to the, to the separate
groups and to help with scalingeven further.
and some of that was, was reallypositive, but I think ultimately
increased Operational overheadstoo much, uh, because obviously
(08:51):
lots of people doing things indifferent ways and we needed a
little bit more consistency.
so that did revert back after awhile.
another one is probably about,commercial changes, over the
years as the market sort ofchanged, there was a shift, I
suppose, from having some nicebig retainers, and clear spend
(09:13):
of, work that we were going tobe doing on a longer term to, to
shift to a bit more of acompetitive and challenging
environment where budgets were abit more project by project.
And that's definitely continuedin, in the market over recent
years.
And I think that that's notnecessarily more challenging for
a bigger business.
big and small, it's challenging.
I think it comes down to, youknow, how well you can build
(09:35):
your client relationships andwork closely with them and get
as much visibility of the workthat they're wanting to do and
help them to do that.
So that it's a bit more stablefor you as the agency as well.
Harv Nagra (09:46):
Absolutely.
Another interesting thing aboutAKQA is at some point they were
acquired by the WPP group.
many of our listeners might nothave gone through an acquisition
like that, myself included.
So I just wanted to hear fromyou about your experience in
terms of how that impactedprocesses, tools, and people.
(10:06):
Did those change after theacquisition in any way?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (10:09):
Not really, to be honest.
And I think especially at thelevel I was at at the time,
because it was around 2012 2014,I was probably slightly more
removed from business levelreporting at that point.
I think what I noticed was,largely, they seemed to let us
get on with things as we, as wehad been.
there was you know, Some morefocus on financial reporting, as
(10:30):
you'd probably expect.
Harv Nagra (10:31):
Mm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (10:32):
and I, but I think the exec management team
at that point would have beenthe ones that kind of had more
of that impact in terms of whatreporting they needed to do.
It certainly didn't feel like itfiltered down to, to our level.
Harv Nagra (10:42):
And, and so in terms of the tools and systems that
you needed to use, did thosestay relatively consistent as
well?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (10:48):
I mean, there was some sort of, agency
wide training and process sortof compliance that was was
introduced at one point, whichjust brought a level of
robustness I think.
There was sort of more,compliance things that we we
needed to adhere to, which were,which was fine.
It didn't really cause anyoverhead, and we had access then
to some other things, likeadditional training materials
(11:11):
and training courses that werekind of WPP group wide.
so we got some benefits there,but in terms of the actual
tooling, we did change ouragency management tool, but I
can't honestly remember whetherthat was as a result of the
acquisition or just a globalimplementation that we were
doing, we needed to do anywayacross our, our markets.
And it was quite necessarybecause our systems were a bit,
(11:33):
some of them, not, not that fitfor purpose.
I think a bit clunky and notjoined up.
So, a new system wasimplemented.
Harv Nagra (11:40):
Super interesting.
So some ways it sounds not asdisruptive as somebody might
think.
And I, I wonder if that doescome down to the size of the
organization because it was abig machine.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (11:50):
I mean, certainly my perspective, I
think that it didn't feel likeit had a massive impact on the
day to day.
But, I think, one of the reasonsthat WPP acquired AKQA at the
time was down to the reputationof the business, the quality of
the work that we were doing.
And so it did seem like for themost part, They were letting us
get on with what we were good atand not trying to, you know,
(12:13):
change how things were, wereworking.
That's certainly how I felt.
And I know that's not the casein some acquisitions.
So we were maybe, you know,somewhat lucky in that, but, it
definitely didn't seem to have anegative, or particularly
disruptive impact on the, theday to day team.
Harv Nagra (12:31):
That's, that's really good to hear actually.
Something you mentioned therewas kind of systems and of
course you had one there.
It sounds like in place, butmaybe it was a bit creaking.
And then a new tool was broughtin.
Can you, can you just expand onthat a little bit?
You mentioned that it was an allin one system.
Is that the case?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (12:48):
Yeah, pretty much.
Yes.
It was the system that we usedto sort of set up our projects
in the first place and thenmanage our resourcing in as
well.
That definitely had its benefitsfor sure, because there was sort
of less manual effort involvedin monitoring things like burn
against a project and,financially, are we where we
need to be, predicting whetherwe're going to overrun or not,
(13:10):
profitability, managingutilization of the team and
there were a lot of good reportsset up that, you know, you could
really quickly see the data thatyou needed to see.
Harv Nagra (13:21):
so in an organization like that, how
robust is the reporting andforecasting?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (13:27):
Some was, was better than others, we had
pretty solid processes aroundrevenue forecasting, how to
forecast revenue when it, youknow, at what point in the month
it should stop changing, um,
Harv Nagra (13:39):
Mm
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (13:40):
sort of thing.
And we tried to, there wasreally clear structure around
reforecasting after each quarterfor the rest of the year, you'd
have your kind of year budget oryear forecast, and then you'd
reforecast every quarter,ideally it's going up, sometimes
it's not, and sort of settingyour targets throughout that
process.
(14:00):
What became, as I said, youknow, talking about commercial
challenges or changes in themarket, when we had a lot of
kind of long term retainers andthings that sort of forecasting
process was prettystraightforward.
Once you get into the realms of,not knowing where the That
revenue is coming from andhaving to kind of fight a lot
harder for it, that just becomesa harder process, but having
(14:23):
that rigor around it.
So there's the very clear on howwe're doing it and when we're
doing it meant that, you know,it was just difficult to know
quite how solid the numberswere, but you were going through
the right processes.
We had resource management teamas well.
So, they had a lot ofresponsibility for resource
forecasting in line with therevenue forecast.
(14:43):
So looking, you know, three, sixmonths ahead at a type of
resources we're going to need,are we the right shape?
Do we need to bring in moreskill sets?
Like what, what are the thingsthat are coming up that we might
need to plan for?
That also becomes moredifficult, obviously, when
you've got less visibility, butwe were still trying to get a
decent enough view of a roadmap.
(15:05):
I think the one that wasslightly more difficult and the
one that you sort of look atafter the fact is around
profitability.
So you need to kind of, you cando it to a certain extent as you
go, because you can predictwhere you're going to end up
Harv Nagra (15:20):
Mm hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (15:21):
monitoring your burn, which absolutely you
should do, proactively managingthat.
But sort of at the end of apiece of work or a period of
time, you get the actualinformation of what's happened.
And sometimes it's difficult todo stuff with that information
and make a change for the nextquarter or six months, whatever.
(15:42):
I don't necessarily think it's abig agency thing.
It's just busy agency thing.
You know, you're just moving onto the next thing.
So, um, you're not necessarilypaying as much attention to that
as you could.
Harv Nagra (15:53):
That's always a challenge.
It's a bit of a lag from takingthose learnings or actually even
taking the time to process thoselearnings and apply them to what
you're doing right when,
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:02):
Yeah.
Harv Nagra (16:02):
there's so many moving parts.
That's really interesting, youwent from this global agency,
huge size to Great State, whichI'd still say that's fairly
large, about a hundred peopleyou said with the freelancers
but you've come into this from areally kind of broad experience
where you've seen how that bigmachine works.
So
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:17):
Yeah.
Harv Nagra (16:18):
talk about the things that you took from your
prior experience that you'veapplied to Great State?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:23):
I'd say one of the biggest things is my
focus on quality, I think.
So that was ingrained ineverything we did at AKQA.
It's like one of the fundamentalvalues.
and everybody kind of lives bythat and operates in that way,
Harv Nagra (16:40):
Hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:41):
thinking about how to deliver the
absolute best quality.
and it's really great because myMD partner is very similar, also
having come from a big kind ofglobal agency that had that kind
of ethos and way of working.
So we both have, pretty highexpectations.
We want to deliver high qualitywork.
We're ambitious, but I thinkit's nice for us now in a, in a
(17:02):
slightly smaller agency that wecan operate like that and
compete with, with biggeragencies, but, we're just a bit,
maybe a bit more lean and a bitmore nimble.
Harv Nagra (17:11):
In your day to day, how does that manifest or how is
that demonstrated?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (17:16):
we're really irritating, just always
telling people how it could bebetter.
No, I think a lot of it comesdown to just being clear about
expectations and standards asmuch as you can to try and set
direction for what great lookslike, what are we aiming for?
so in everything we do with theteam is trying to, to make it
(17:38):
clear what we think is going toseparate us and, make this the
best possible thing we candeliver for the client.
so in some very specificexamples, we've been very
heavily involved in new businessand over the last sort of six
months or so.
And so we've been able to reallyset the standard for what we
(17:59):
think our new business responsesneed to be, for, for the future.
and so being really clear aboutthat.
it's stuff like that.
I think as much as possiblesetting clear standards and
expectations of where we'retrying to get to.
Harv Nagra (18:11):
So is that yourself and your partner just sharing
your feedback or, or do you haveany kind of processes built in
across the organization thatalso serve as these checks?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (18:22):
so there are Some of it is the former, so
we are involved in things andwe'll get, you know, give our
opinions and feedback and getsort of a little bit involved in
working sessions or we actuallycreate some of the outputs for
new business so that we can sortof set those standards.
And yeah, there are other kindof processes in place where we
(18:42):
have the quality reviews, maybenot us solely, but our sort of
heads of department fordifferent, for our different
disciplines, so that we can feelconfident that, you know, the
creative outputs we'redelivering have been quality
reviewed and
Harv Nagra (18:56):
Mm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (18:56):
they're going to be, you know, meeting
our standards.
So, yeah, there's definitelythat.
There's more that we want to doreally, because I think,
although we've been in the, inthe post for a year.
It's not very long when youactually get, get going.
and a lot of the sort of firstpart of that was pulling
together a business plan andbeing clear about objectives
and, and targets and things.
And now the last sort of, Fourto six months, we've been, as I
(19:19):
said, quite focused on newbusiness and setting some
standards and things there.
There's more that we want to donow, I think, in terms of
internal processes and ways ofworking that we'll have a bit
more, direction for the team.
Harv Nagra (19:31):
So coming back to the question we were talking
about what you've taken fromyour kind of prior experience
and applied it to Great State.
So the first thing you'vebrought up is quality.
So what else is there?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (19:41):
Yeah, so, I think some some more rigor
around processes and costmanagement specifically.
So, some of those processesthat, that we used in AKQA just
introduced some of those into,into Great State and none of
them are really, sort of have tobe specific to big agency.
Harv Nagra (19:59):
Mm
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (20:00):
they're kind of just sensible things
that it would be good for peopleto monitor and be on top of, you
know, it is sometimes importantto check all your subscriptions
are necessary and go through allthe costs in the business.
and save, you know, even if it'sa few hundred pounds a month
overall, you just need to beoperating really efficiently.
(20:22):
So it's just things like that.
yeah, having a bit of a closerview on, is each project
profitable?
Is each client accountprofitable?
as a business, yourprofitability is managed
slightly differently, but if youare operating efficiently with
all of your project delivery,then that will have an impact on
overall business profitabilityas well.
Yeah.
So that there was a, there wasand is a agency management
(20:46):
system in place, that is not aspreadsheet.
Harv Nagra (20:49):
Mm-Hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (20:50):
so we, you know, we have systems in place
already for, The, the sort ofproject setup, invoicing,
forecasting and a separate onefor resource management.
So that's the only thing thatwe, in an ideal world, we would
make a change on is to bringthose things together.
Because we have to do somemanual effort to then tie the
data together from those twosystems.
(21:11):
So it is something that we'relooking at to, to replace or
change anyway, the way that we,that we, the tools that we use
so that we can have it slightlymore joined up.
Harv Nagra (21:22):
Right.
And, you've been talking aboutkind of, the rigor around
process and cost management andgiven us a few examples.
Are there any kind of metrics,if you put on your COO hat, what
kinds of things do you look atand what you kind of expect your
team to be on top of?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (21:36):
Yeah.
So I guess from a, from adelivery and client services
perspective, delivery areslightly more responsible for
profitability, client services,a bit more for revenue and
hitting revenue targets, butthey are very closely aligned.
You don't want loads ofunprofitable revenue.
and, So those those two teamsworking very closely together
(21:58):
and sort of monitoring andmanaging those two things
together is very important sothey need to be on top of burn
reporting and, risk managementand those sorts of things.
I think It's really importantfor both of those teams also to
care about the impact of whatwe're delivering.
So that comes down to KPIs andsuccess metrics around the
(22:20):
actual work.
and so making sure that we havethose things set at the start of
a project so that we can comeback and look at whether this
project actually was successfuland we delivered good outcomes
for our clients.
from an operational perspective,we will review and monitor
utilization.
So that is one that you can onlyreally look at after the fact,
(22:41):
but then trying to use thatinformation to improve things in
the future.
So looking at, how much timewe're spending on internal work
or unbuild work and why and isit valuable use of time?
What what more could we bedoing?
is it progressing us in some wayor is it just Spending too long
on admin or whatever.
So, we have people who will kindof delve into that a little bit
(23:04):
more and try and improve,improve that.
We look at I guess from afinancial perspective, we will
gross profit, our staff to GPratio and, you know, that
ultimately leads down to, tooverall profit.
So, we will review that on amonthly basis and, make sure
that where we have flex, oroptions to be flexible in our
(23:27):
costs and when we need to, thenwe can make those changes.
We obviously have somewhat fixedoverheads, but then some things
are variable like our marketingspend or, or our freelance
spend, for example.
So looking at where we mightneed to flex costs, on a monthly
basis.
but then I'll be looking at, youknow, the quarter, ahead,
rolling quarter,
Harv Nagra (23:46):
hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (23:46):
you know, the next half of the year.
We're just doing H2 forecasting,planning.
We're just finishing it now, sothat we can have a good view of
where we're going to end up atthe end of the financial year.
Harv Nagra (23:56):
Excellent.
That's, that's really useful forus to know and then kind of
benchmark ourselves against.
So, so those are two examples.
wondering if there's another oneor
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (24:04):
no, yeah, I have another one.
I implemented, something calledthe Great Women's Network.
it's similar to something I didat AKQA.
so this was initially, this wasaround the time of International
Women's Day a few Maybe four orthree years ago, and we didn't
want to do a kind of, here's asocial post of our women who are
great, obviously, but
Harv Nagra (24:25):
hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (24:25):
we wanted to do something that felt a
little bit more fundamental tous as a business and something
that would live on.
So we set up this, this network,which basically is, a forum for
the women in the agency to cometogether, to talk about
experiences, to try and sort ofgrow and develop.
So we bring in, externalspeakers or go to, you know,
(24:45):
events or do some specifictraining or, sort of webinars,
seminars around, women in techor what have you?
and I had done a similar thingat AKQA and started this kind of
program of, of activities.
but it was kind of towards theend of my, of my time there
before I went on maternity leaveagain.
But, I think, Diversity andinclusion and specifically
(25:09):
gender equality in, in theindustry has always always been
really important to methroughout my career.
I think I didn't really noticeso much when I was younger and
in my first agency in Bristol.
And then, it sort of becamesomething I became aware of
over, over my career and justbeing in rooms with men all the
(25:29):
time.
It was great, I think, once Iwas in a position to maybe
influence things a bit more andcreate those kinds of
environments and forums for, forthe women in the, in the
companies.
That's been something I'm reallykind of keen to do and proud to
do.
and David, the, the other MD aswell, is, is really passionate
about diversity and inclusionand, you know, creating a really
(25:53):
positive and inclusiveenvironment.
So we have been able toimplement some new policies in
the business, we've implementeda menstruation and menopause
policy and, you know, we havequite a lot of options around
flexible working and things likethat.
So, Yeah, it's really great tobe able to work with somebody
who also shares that, thatpassion so that we can create, a
(26:14):
really balanced environment.
It's, yeah, been really good.
Harv Nagra (26:18):
That's excellent.
And, and, you know, a, hugeboost to your company culture,
I'm sure, but also great foremployer branding and, and very
inspiring.
So those are some really greatexamples.
so we're, we're going tocontinue talking about Great
State and from that kind ofoperational perspective want to
hear from you about what thingsthat you do really well, again,
that hopefully we can beinspired by and apply it our own
(26:41):
places of work.
So tell us about Great State andone of those things that's
really great.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (26:47):
Okay.
I think one of the things we'rereally good at, and that people
are often surprised by, I think,is the variety or the range of
work that we do.
For the types and scale ofclients that we have given our
size.
we have some really notableclients, and do everything
really from strategy to verycreative solutions to user
(27:09):
research to large scale militarylevel security type platform
builds.
and so our processes andstructure have to be flexible
enough, I guess, to respond toall of that at any one time, as
well as being robust enough tomeet the needs of the clients
(27:30):
and brands of that sort of scalewhich often you only really see
possible in, in bigger agencies.
So, we have been in positionswhere we can compete with those
bigger agencies, which is oftensurprising, I think, to, to
people.
and I think we've found reallygood approaches to scaling, as
well.
And we have to do that sometimeswith SC cleared resources
(27:52):
because of our client base.
and we've built some really goodrelationships with, recruitment
partners and other agencies todo that really well, because
sometimes you have to do thatreally quickly,
Harv Nagra (28:03):
hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (28:03):
need, you need to already have those
relationships in place to, beable to do that.
we also have nearshore partnersin place for our non MOD
Clients, and that's been reallyinstrumental in our approach to
scaling at short notice as well.
so some of that is just makingsure you have the right
processes in place to do that.
Some of it is the relationshipswe're building with those
(28:25):
partners.
but I think, we have been verygood at that.
Harv Nagra (28:29):
Excellent.
I want to go back to, we'll comeback to nearshoring, which I
think is really interesting aswell.
But I want to go back to thatkind of comment you made first,
which was around process andstructure that's allowed you to
kind of win these reallyimpressive clients and compete
with much larger organizationsor agencies.
So what, what have you donearound your processes or a
structure to allow you to dothat?
(28:50):
If you can give us some examplesof what you have in place at
Great State that enables thiskind of work.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (28:55):
Yeah, sure.
So we are structured in clientgroups.
So So we align clients to clientpartners and Delivery Leads.
So they are responsible forlooking after that group of
accounts.
and within that, then we willalign, discipline leads to
specific client work so thatthey build up a certain amount
of knowledge and understandingof the, of the client, the
(29:17):
technology that they use, youknow, their requirements and
potential strategic objectivesor whatever, so that, you can
maintain some level ofconsistency, but then you are
sharing resources across thoseclient groups, so it's not
completely managed sort ofseparately.
I think our processes are, Imean, we have a kind of delivery
(29:39):
framework that we work to, whichis founded in Agile principles.
Because we work with a lot ofgovernment clients, it also
aligns very well to thegovernment digital standards way
of working.
Plus it's also very flexible,very adaptable.
As anyone who works in an agencyknows, it's unlikely that every
client is going to work in thesame way.
(30:01):
So you have to build your, yourframeworks and your processes in
a way that are, able to beflexed and adapted.
So, you know, making sure ourteams know what are the non
negotiable things that we haveto do, like what are the
business critical reporting,things that we need.
but then what can flex because aclient needs to work in a
slightly different way.
So some of our government or MODclients need different
(30:23):
reporting, and we have toprovide things in a different
cadence or, they need moreinformation than some of our,
you know, corporate clientsmight need.
So there are things that we haveto put in place for the specific
client groups that don't existin every area of the business,
but it's just having thefundamentals there so you have
enough kind of rigor and processand structure to be able to
(30:44):
deliver well, but the, theknowledge of which things can be
more flexible so that it adaptsto, to the needs of that
specific client.
Harv Nagra (30:53):
Great answer.
before we move on, I wanted tojust touch on something.
You know, you've got these kindof client groups here.
there was this, earlier exampleyou gave of these pods at AKQA
that kind of failed.
And, and they resulted in maybe,you know, too much overhead or,
or redundancy in terms of, rolesor, or, or things like that.
So what's the difference?
(31:14):
Why does it work at Great State,but it didn't work there?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (31:17):
so, um, actually, when I first came back
to to Great State, they had alsoimplemented a similar thing.
and, again, I think it it didn'twork for a different reason, or
similar, but slightly differentreason at Great States.
Partly the problem when it wasimplemented here was that, we're
a bit too small to allocatespecific resources only to one
(31:40):
Client group.
so you know, there'd be thisamazing technical architect that
everyone wants, but they can'tdo it.
they can't go and work on thisother client because they're
over here in this, in this team.
so that became very challengingalongside the operational
overheads, which obviously whenI came back in, I was like, that
is probably going to bedifficult for you guys because
(32:00):
you're all doing things indifferent ways
Harv Nagra (32:02):
Hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (32:03):
we're too small to do that, I think.
that's when we shifted it toclient groups.
So the difference in that isthat there is much more flex and
movement in the rest of theresources.
So instead of each one operatingalmost like an agency within an
agency and having to keep all ofthose people busy all of the
time, generally client servicesand delivery stay fixed in those
(32:25):
teams and then you might have,say that we have a group with
four accounts in it, thetechnical lead might only work
on two of those accounts andthen another one in a different
group,
Harv Nagra (32:38):
I
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (32:38):
um, based on their expertise, their
technical experience, whateverit might be.
So it just allows, one, itallows some variety, but it also
just allows that flexibilitythat, you know, one team is not
having to sort of keep a setnumber of people busy all the
time.
It allows you to just adapt andscale up and down as you need
to.
Harv Nagra (32:58):
That makes sense.
It sounds like resourcing isjust much more stable as a
result of that just because youcan share that resource and it
doesn't become kind of locked inas
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (33:08):
There's certainly less of an overhead
associated with, you know, orjust not, it also just minimizes
wasted time, because if you'relike, I need to keep this person
busy, but I've got no billablework for them, what can I get
them to do?
it makes people become a littlebit kind of territorial and
protective about stuff whenactually this project over here
could really benefit from theirfree time right now.
(33:31):
so it's just makes it, makeeveryone have a better use of
time and, it not be quite sosort of siloed.
Harv Nagra (33:38):
Makes sense.
that leads nicely into thatother example you gave about
nearshoring, which is somethingthat you do really well at Great
State.
So tell us about that.
How does that work?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (33:47):
Yeah, so, we've worked with a couple over
the time that I've been here andit's been for various different
things and, generally it justprovides us some really good
scaling options quickly, I wouldsay the majority of the, the
time we use it for developmentresource, just to scale up
bigger teams, more quickly.
And the company that wegenerally work with are, very
(34:12):
responsive.
They're very flexible, movepeople around their side and
provide us lots of differentoptions.
And they have similar skill setsto ours in terms of the
technologies we use.
but also offer some other thingsthat we don't, have in house or
don't do so much of in housebecause you can't, as much as we
aim to be, you know, technologyagnostic, there are some
(34:33):
platforms that you just can'tbuild up that much knowledge in
house across all of them, at oursort of size.
So it allows us to sort of bringin additional skill sets when we
need to.
This is a little bit like anearshore recruiter, except they
do actually work for the companythat we partner with.
it gives us basically access to,thousands of developers, in lots
(34:57):
of different skill sets, andsome other resources now that
they are starting to introduce.
So, some sort of more UXproduction, some, project
management, although We have avery, large project management
team.
So we don't need to do thatcurrently, but, yeah, they're
starting to sort of bring inother, other roles, but we've
(35:18):
predominantly used it fordevelopment.
Harv Nagra (35:20):
Okay.
Really, really useful.
Thank you for that.
We're we're coming to the kindof the end of our conversation.
so Jinny, where can people goand learn more about you and
Great State?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (35:30):
cool.
Okay.
So we were in the process ofredeveloping our website right
now.
So that's Going live at the endof November.
So that would be a good place toto sort of find out about us as
a business.
we're quite active on LinkedIn,and Instagram.
So that's quite a good startingpoint.
We often run sort of webinarsand events and things that we
share on, on LinkedIn.
We have some blogs that talkabout me specifically
Harv Nagra (35:53):
Okay.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (35:54):
Or things if anybody actually cares about
that, but yeah, that that'sprobably a good start.
Harv Nagra (35:59):
Excellent.
We'll put a link to that in ourepisode notes.
And I just want to thank youbefore we go once again for
joining us today.
I think you've given us somereally nice examples of what
works well.
And I think your credit toyourself and Great State about
setting a benchmark in terms ofwhat we should be aspiring for.
So I really appreciate
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (36:17):
Oh, well, thank you very much.
That's high praise.
it was lovely to talk to you.
Harv Nagra (36:21):
Thank you so much.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (36:22):
All right.
Thanks.
Harv Nagra (36:23):
I found that really interesting.
Firstly, hearing about theworkings of such a large agency.
I was also a bit surprised thatthe acquisition by WPP didn't
have more of a dramatic impactat AKQA.
But like we said in theconversation, that may have been
due to the size of the businessbeing a force in itself.
Given her experience, the formerCOO title, and that she's
(36:44):
currently joint MD, What I'm notsurprised by is how impressive
an organization Jinny seems tobe running now.
It definitely sounds like theprocesses, systems, and controls
they have in place are at leastwhat I would call level four in
terms of business maturity,meaning they're data driven.
But if I was really able to takea closer look at their offer and
client experience, it's quitepossible they're at a level
(37:06):
five, which is where they'rereally able to lean into
innovation.
It's difficult and rare to getto either of those stages.
So hats off to Jinny and theteam at Great State.
Now, if you have any feedback onthe show or have any topic you'd
like us to cover, send me a DMon LinkedIn.
And if you're enjoying theconversations we have on the
podcast and think they'revaluable, please share the
(37:27):
podcast with your agency friendsor help me get the word out even
further and post about the showor an episode you loved on
LinkedIn saying what you lovedabout it.
I'll be back here with the nextepisode soon.
Thank you so much for listening.
Thanks for listening to The Handbook
(00:01):
Operations podcast.
This podcast is brought to youby Scoro.
If you're a regular listener,you know that I love talking
about business maturity levels.
Level one is where you're justmaking things up as you go.
Level two is where you havepockets of best practice in your
agency.
The real milestone is levelthree.
This is where you really grow upand centralize and codify your
(00:23):
best practice and have best inclass tools in place, and this
is usually where agenciesrealize they need a consolidated
tool to run their business.
A platform like Scoro.
From there, you can move on tolevel four, where you become a
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So where are you at?
(00:44):
Is it time for you to move on tothe next maturity level?
Sign up for a free trial atScoro.
com.
Or, if you arrange a demo call,tell them Harv sent you.
Now, back to the episode.
(01:28):
Hi all, welcome back to thepodcast.
We all work for agencies ofdifferent sizes, each of which
has unique challenges based onsize and maturity.
While I've worked for globalbusinesses in the past, I
haven't worked for a agency withthousands of employees and
dozens of offices around theworld.
What would we learn from someonewith that that kind of
experience that we could applyat our own organizations.
(01:50):
Well, I've got someone on thepodcast today with exactly that
kind of experience.
And she'll be telling us howshe's taken what she's learned
and applied it at her currentagency, which is about a hundred
people.
Our guest today is JinnyMitchell Kent.
Jinny joined Great State, adigital product and service
design agency as COO four yearsago, and today is in the role of
(02:12):
Joint Managing Director.
Prior to Great State, Jinny wasworking at a global design and
innovation agency, a name manyof you might recognize, AKQA.
Jinny has over 19 years ofexperience in digital agencies,
working with global brands suchas Dyson, Fiat, Rolls Royce,
Bupa, and more.
She also has a long history ofworking with government and
(02:32):
defense clients.
With that vast experience, I'mso excited to see what we can
learn from Jinny.
So let's get into it.
Jinny, welcome to the podcast.
Let's start with your agencybackground.
In your case, you've gone fromOps a MD role, which is really
interesting and I think could bereally inspiring for some of our
audience.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (02:49):
Yeah, sure.
so my experience is all indigital agencies.
I started sort of straight outof university, in project
management.
So I joined what was then E3Media in Bristol, as a
production coordinator when theagency was around 30 people.
and I guess my progression hasbeen through account management
and project management.
Account management was the rolethat my production coordinator
(03:13):
turned into, which was sort ofhybrid projects and account
management.
And I was at, E3 Media for aboutthree and a half years before I
moved to London and went to,AKQA as a project manager,
which, you know, the size andscale was very, very different.
And it's, it was an incredibleplace to work.
I learned a huge amount, but Ireally had, very good grounding
(03:34):
in E3 Media and all the kind ofthings that I learned there.
At AKQA, I worked my way upthrough the sort of project
management and programmanagement roles.
So from project manager tosenior, then associate program
director, program director.
Then I looked after a group,increasingly sort of large and
complex programs of work andbigger teams.
(03:55):
And by the time I left AKQA, Iwas head of delivery and
operations for London.
So I think operations was reallyquite a natural progression from
delivery.
There are quite a lot ofoverlaps in terms of things like
monitoring, reporting,resourcing, identifying and
developing processes andgenerally just organizing stuff.
(04:15):
and I think the more senior Ibecame, the more operational
management I was gettinginvolved in naturally.
And I was really interested inprocess development and how to
improve ways of working and lookat things like profitability.
And that was really what led meback then to what is now Great
State.
I had been commuting to Londonfor a while.
(04:36):
After my second maternity leave,I decided to freelance a bit and
see what my options were closerto home in Bristol.
So I joined Great State as anoperations consultant to help
with some efficiency andprofitability challenges that
they had at the time.
So that was a sort of eightmonth or eight to nine month
stint as a, on a freelancebasis.
And then I became the permanentCOO.
(04:58):
So that role was incrediblybroad.
I think operations generally canbe very, very broad.
and it meant that I was gettinginvolved in a lot of the
leadership and management of thebusiness more generally.
and so then that became quite anatural shift.
Into the joint managing directorrole.
and it's been really great to dothat with my MD partner, David.
(05:19):
but yeah, it hasn't felt sort ofthis seismic shift, I suppose.
it's been kind of quite organic.
Harv Nagra (05:25):
I love that whole story but I do wonder have your
priorities and focus shiftedfrom the COO to the MD or co MD
role.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (05:33):
Yeah, it definitely has, potentially I
was slightly naive in, in mythinking that this was just
going to be, you know, fairlysimple change.
It's definitely been a learningcurve.
And I think, I think I am quitethe natural introvert, and a lot
of my time in my previous roleespecially was spent looking at
internal processes and workingwith the internal team with more
(05:57):
sporadic client and new businessinvolvement and things like
that.
So the shift to MD has been muchmore externally focused.
Harv Nagra (06:05):
Right.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (06:05):
and I'm having to spend more time
looking outwards and, you know,networking and events and
spending time with clients andthings.
And while I can do that well, Ido find I need some like
recharge, recharge time.
and I think it's also, I foundit a little difficult to move
away from some of theoperational things I was doing
previously just because that's,you know, where I'm very
comfortable.
(06:26):
but our priorities really aremore around the direction the
business is going, focusing onmaking sure we have a really
solid business plan with cleardirection for the internal team,
and then, a clearer externallyfacing business proposition.
So those things are what we'refocusing on at the moment and
things that are in development.
Harv Nagra (06:47):
it's quite interesting.
You know, a couple of the placesthat you've worked there was
AKQA, which is on a vastlydifferent scale from Great
State, can you remind us whatthe size difference is between
those two businesses?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (06:58):
Yeah, sure.
so when I joined AKQA London, itwas around 350 people.
and over time, it actuallyscaled up to around about 500,
but it's also a globalorganization.
So we, had access to peopleacross multiple countries as
well.
So there's actually thousands ofpeople that work for AKQA as a
whole.
whereas Great State is a, UKbased, independent agency of
(07:20):
around, about 70 perm staff andthen between 20 and 30
freelancers at any one time.
So kind of around the hundredmark, most of the time.
Harv Nagra (07:30):
I think there's some great learnings to be had there
in terms of, what you learned atAKQA and how you've applied that
and what we can learn from you,therefore, and take it to our
own agencies.
So let's let's dig into thestory a little bit more.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (07:44):
Okay.
Harv Nagra (07:45):
you tell us kind of the changes that you saw over
your time there, as the agencygrew.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (07:49):
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I was there quite a longtime, so I, think I saw a fair
amount of change in, inleadership, in ways of working
and in the clients that we had,in the types of work that we
were doing.
I was there between, 2008 and2018, or just the start of 2019.
So, So much changed in the worldin that time in terms of
(08:11):
technology and stuff, there wasa lot of things happening, which
I guess probably influenced someof the changes that happen
within the agency.
But, one change, was as we weregrowing at one point, we split
the business into some clientgroups that operated in slightly
different ways.
So sort of to operate a bit moreas independent pods.
Harv Nagra (08:30):
Okay.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (08:30):
if that Google method of like an agency
within an agency sort of idea, Ithink the idea was ultimately to
give some autonomy, moreautonomy to the, to the separate
groups and to help with scalingeven further.
and some of that was, was reallypositive, but I think ultimately
increased Operational overheadstoo much, uh, because obviously
(08:51):
lots of people doing things indifferent ways and we needed a
little bit more consistency.
so that did revert back after awhile.
another one is probably about,commercial changes, over the
years as the market sort ofchanged, there was a shift, I
suppose, from having some nicebig retainers, and clear spend
(09:13):
of, work that we were going tobe doing on a longer term to, to
shift to a bit more of acompetitive and challenging
environment where budgets were abit more project by project.
And that's definitely continuedin, in the market over recent
years.
And I think that that's notnecessarily more challenging for
a bigger business.
big and small, it's challenging.
I think it comes down to, youknow, how well you can build
(09:35):
your client relationships andwork closely with them and get
as much visibility of the workthat they're wanting to do and
help them to do that.
So that it's a bit more stablefor you as the agency as well.
Harv Nagra (09:46):
Absolutely.
Another interesting thing aboutAKQA is at some point they were
acquired by the WPP group.
many of our listeners might nothave gone through an acquisition
like that, myself included.
So I just wanted to hear fromyou about your experience in
terms of how that impactedprocesses, tools, and people.
(10:06):
Did those change after theacquisition in any way?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (10:09):
Not really, to be honest.
And I think especially at thelevel I was at at the time,
because it was around 2012 2014,I was probably slightly more
removed from business levelreporting at that point.
I think what I noticed was,largely, they seemed to let us
get on with things as we, as wehad been.
there was you know, Some morefocus on financial reporting, as
(10:30):
you'd probably expect.
Harv Nagra (10:31):
Mm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (10:32):
and I, but I think the exec management team
at that point would have beenthe ones that kind of had more
of that impact in terms of whatreporting they needed to do.
It certainly didn't feel like itfiltered down to, to our level.
Harv Nagra (10:42):
And, and so in terms of the tools and systems that
you needed to use, did thosestay relatively consistent as
well?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (10:48):
I mean, there was some sort of, agency
wide training and process sortof compliance that was was
introduced at one point, whichjust brought a level of
robustness I think.
There was sort of more,compliance things that we we
needed to adhere to, which were,which was fine.
It didn't really cause anyoverhead, and we had access then
to some other things, likeadditional training materials
(11:11):
and training courses that werekind of WPP group wide.
so we got some benefits there,but in terms of the actual
tooling, we did change ouragency management tool, but I
can't honestly remember whetherthat was as a result of the
acquisition or just a globalimplementation that we were
doing, we needed to do anywayacross our, our markets.
And it was quite necessarybecause our systems were a bit,
(11:33):
some of them, not, not that fitfor purpose.
I think a bit clunky and notjoined up.
So, a new system wasimplemented.
Harv Nagra (11:40):
Super interesting.
So some ways it sounds not asdisruptive as somebody might
think.
And I, I wonder if that doescome down to the size of the
organization because it was abig machine.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (11:50):
I mean, certainly my perspective, I
think that it didn't feel likeit had a massive impact on the
day to day.
But, I think, one of the reasonsthat WPP acquired AKQA at the
time was down to the reputationof the business, the quality of
the work that we were doing.
And so it did seem like for themost part, They were letting us
get on with what we were good atand not trying to, you know,
(12:13):
change how things were, wereworking.
That's certainly how I felt.
And I know that's not the casein some acquisitions.
So we were maybe, you know,somewhat lucky in that, but, it
definitely didn't seem to have anegative, or particularly
disruptive impact on the, theday to day team.
Harv Nagra (12:31):
That's, that's really good to hear actually.
Something you mentioned therewas kind of systems and of
course you had one there.
It sounds like in place, butmaybe it was a bit creaking.
And then a new tool was broughtin.
Can you, can you just expand onthat a little bit?
You mentioned that it was an allin one system.
Is that the case?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (12:48):
Yeah, pretty much.
Yes.
It was the system that we usedto sort of set up our projects
in the first place and thenmanage our resourcing in as
well.
That definitely had its benefitsfor sure, because there was sort
of less manual effort involvedin monitoring things like burn
against a project and,financially, are we where we
need to be, predicting whetherwe're going to overrun or not,
(13:10):
profitability, managingutilization of the team and
there were a lot of good reportsset up that, you know, you could
really quickly see the data thatyou needed to see.
Harv Nagra (13:21):
so in an organization like that, how
robust is the reporting andforecasting?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (13:27):
Some was, was better than others, we had
pretty solid processes aroundrevenue forecasting, how to
forecast revenue when it, youknow, at what point in the month
it should stop changing, um,
Harv Nagra (13:39):
Mm
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (13:40):
sort of thing.
And we tried to, there wasreally clear structure around
reforecasting after each quarterfor the rest of the year, you'd
have your kind of year budget oryear forecast, and then you'd
reforecast every quarter,ideally it's going up, sometimes
it's not, and sort of settingyour targets throughout that
process.
(14:00):
What became, as I said, youknow, talking about commercial
challenges or changes in themarket, when we had a lot of
kind of long term retainers andthings that sort of forecasting
process was prettystraightforward.
Once you get into the realms of,not knowing where the That
revenue is coming from andhaving to kind of fight a lot
harder for it, that just becomesa harder process, but having
(14:23):
that rigor around it.
So there's the very clear on howwe're doing it and when we're
doing it meant that, you know,it was just difficult to know
quite how solid the numberswere, but you were going through
the right processes.
We had resource management teamas well.
So, they had a lot ofresponsibility for resource
forecasting in line with therevenue forecast.
(14:43):
So looking, you know, three, sixmonths ahead at a type of
resources we're going to need,are we the right shape?
Do we need to bring in moreskill sets?
Like what, what are the thingsthat are coming up that we might
need to plan for?
That also becomes moredifficult, obviously, when
you've got less visibility, butwe were still trying to get a
decent enough view of a roadmap.
(15:05):
I think the one that wasslightly more difficult and the
one that you sort of look atafter the fact is around
profitability.
So you need to kind of, you cando it to a certain extent as you
go, because you can predictwhere you're going to end up
Harv Nagra (15:20):
Mm hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (15:21):
monitoring your burn, which absolutely you
should do, proactively managingthat.
But sort of at the end of apiece of work or a period of
time, you get the actualinformation of what's happened.
And sometimes it's difficult todo stuff with that information
and make a change for the nextquarter or six months, whatever.
(15:42):
I don't necessarily think it's abig agency thing.
It's just busy agency thing.
You know, you're just moving onto the next thing.
So, um, you're not necessarilypaying as much attention to that
as you could.
Harv Nagra (15:53):
That's always a challenge.
It's a bit of a lag from takingthose learnings or actually even
taking the time to process thoselearnings and apply them to what
you're doing right when,
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:02):
Yeah.
Harv Nagra (16:02):
there's so many moving parts.
That's really interesting, youwent from this global agency,
huge size to Great State, whichI'd still say that's fairly
large, about a hundred peopleyou said with the freelancers
but you've come into this from areally kind of broad experience
where you've seen how that bigmachine works.
So
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:17):
Yeah.
Harv Nagra (16:18):
talk about the things that you took from your
prior experience that you'veapplied to Great State?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:23):
I'd say one of the biggest things is my
focus on quality, I think.
So that was ingrained ineverything we did at AKQA.
It's like one of the fundamentalvalues.
and everybody kind of lives bythat and operates in that way,
Harv Nagra (16:40):
Hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (16:41):
thinking about how to deliver the
absolute best quality.
and it's really great because myMD partner is very similar, also
having come from a big kind ofglobal agency that had that kind
of ethos and way of working.
So we both have, pretty highexpectations.
We want to deliver high qualitywork.
We're ambitious, but I thinkit's nice for us now in a, in a
(17:02):
slightly smaller agency that wecan operate like that and
compete with, with biggeragencies, but, we're just a bit,
maybe a bit more lean and a bitmore nimble.
Harv Nagra (17:11):
In your day to day, how does that manifest or how is
that demonstrated?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (17:16):
we're really irritating, just always
telling people how it could bebetter.
No, I think a lot of it comesdown to just being clear about
expectations and standards asmuch as you can to try and set
direction for what great lookslike, what are we aiming for?
so in everything we do with theteam is trying to, to make it
(17:38):
clear what we think is going toseparate us and, make this the
best possible thing we candeliver for the client.
so in some very specificexamples, we've been very
heavily involved in new businessand over the last sort of six
months or so.
And so we've been able to reallyset the standard for what we
(17:59):
think our new business responsesneed to be, for, for the future.
and so being really clear aboutthat.
it's stuff like that.
I think as much as possiblesetting clear standards and
expectations of where we'retrying to get to.
Harv Nagra (18:11):
So is that yourself and your partner just sharing
your feedback or, or do you haveany kind of processes built in
across the organization thatalso serve as these checks?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (18:22):
so there are Some of it is the former, so
we are involved in things andwe'll get, you know, give our
opinions and feedback and getsort of a little bit involved in
working sessions or we actuallycreate some of the outputs for
new business so that we can sortof set those standards.
And yeah, there are other kindof processes in place where we
(18:42):
have the quality reviews, maybenot us solely, but our sort of
heads of department fordifferent, for our different
disciplines, so that we can feelconfident that, you know, the
creative outputs we'redelivering have been quality
reviewed and
Harv Nagra (18:56):
Mm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (18:56):
they're going to be, you know, meeting
our standards.
So, yeah, there's definitelythat.
There's more that we want to doreally, because I think,
although we've been in the, inthe post for a year.
It's not very long when youactually get, get going.
and a lot of the sort of firstpart of that was pulling
together a business plan andbeing clear about objectives
and, and targets and things.
And now the last sort of, Fourto six months, we've been, as I
(19:19):
said, quite focused on newbusiness and setting some
standards and things there.
There's more that we want to donow, I think, in terms of
internal processes and ways ofworking that we'll have a bit
more, direction for the team.
Harv Nagra (19:31):
So coming back to the question we were talking
about what you've taken fromyour kind of prior experience
and applied it to Great State.
So the first thing you'vebrought up is quality.
So what else is there?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (19:41):
Yeah, so, I think some some more rigor
around processes and costmanagement specifically.
So, some of those processesthat, that we used in AKQA just
introduced some of those into,into Great State and none of
them are really, sort of have tobe specific to big agency.
Harv Nagra (19:59):
Mm
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (20:00):
they're kind of just sensible things
that it would be good for peopleto monitor and be on top of, you
know, it is sometimes importantto check all your subscriptions
are necessary and go through allthe costs in the business.
and save, you know, even if it'sa few hundred pounds a month
overall, you just need to beoperating really efficiently.
(20:22):
So it's just things like that.
yeah, having a bit of a closerview on, is each project
profitable?
Is each client accountprofitable?
as a business, yourprofitability is managed
slightly differently, but if youare operating efficiently with
all of your project delivery,then that will have an impact on
overall business profitabilityas well.
Yeah.
So that there was a, there wasand is a agency management
(20:46):
system in place, that is not aspreadsheet.
Harv Nagra (20:49):
Mm-Hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (20:50):
so we, you know, we have systems in place
already for, The, the sort ofproject setup, invoicing,
forecasting and a separate onefor resource management.
So that's the only thing thatwe, in an ideal world, we would
make a change on is to bringthose things together.
Because we have to do somemanual effort to then tie the
data together from those twosystems.
(21:11):
So it is something that we'relooking at to, to replace or
change anyway, the way that we,that we, the tools that we use
so that we can have it slightlymore joined up.
Harv Nagra (21:22):
Right.
And, you've been talking aboutkind of, the rigor around
process and cost management andgiven us a few examples.
Are there any kind of metrics,if you put on your COO hat, what
kinds of things do you look atand what you kind of expect your
team to be on top of?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (21:36):
Yeah.
So I guess from a, from adelivery and client services
perspective, delivery areslightly more responsible for
profitability, client services,a bit more for revenue and
hitting revenue targets, butthey are very closely aligned.
You don't want loads ofunprofitable revenue.
and, So those those two teamsworking very closely together
(21:58):
and sort of monitoring andmanaging those two things
together is very important sothey need to be on top of burn
reporting and, risk managementand those sorts of things.
I think It's really importantfor both of those teams also to
care about the impact of whatwe're delivering.
So that comes down to KPIs andsuccess metrics around the
(22:20):
actual work.
and so making sure that we havethose things set at the start of
a project so that we can comeback and look at whether this
project actually was successfuland we delivered good outcomes
for our clients.
from an operational perspective,we will review and monitor
utilization.
So that is one that you can onlyreally look at after the fact,
(22:41):
but then trying to use thatinformation to improve things in
the future.
So looking at, how much timewe're spending on internal work
or unbuild work and why and isit valuable use of time?
What what more could we bedoing?
is it progressing us in some wayor is it just Spending too long
on admin or whatever.
So, we have people who will kindof delve into that a little bit
(23:04):
more and try and improve,improve that.
We look at I guess from afinancial perspective, we will
gross profit, our staff to GPratio and, you know, that
ultimately leads down to, tooverall profit.
So, we will review that on amonthly basis and, make sure
that where we have flex, oroptions to be flexible in our
(23:27):
costs and when we need to, thenwe can make those changes.
We obviously have somewhat fixedoverheads, but then some things
are variable like our marketingspend or, or our freelance
spend, for example.
So looking at where we mightneed to flex costs, on a monthly
basis.
but then I'll be looking at, youknow, the quarter, ahead,
rolling quarter,
Harv Nagra (23:46):
hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (23:46):
you know, the next half of the year.
We're just doing H2 forecasting,planning.
We're just finishing it now, sothat we can have a good view of
where we're going to end up atthe end of the financial year.
Harv Nagra (23:56):
Excellent.
That's, that's really useful forus to know and then kind of
benchmark ourselves against.
So, so those are two examples.
wondering if there's another oneor
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (24:04):
no, yeah, I have another one.
I implemented, something calledthe Great Women's Network.
it's similar to something I didat AKQA.
so this was initially, this wasaround the time of International
Women's Day a few Maybe four orthree years ago, and we didn't
want to do a kind of, here's asocial post of our women who are
great, obviously, but
Harv Nagra (24:25):
hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (24:25):
we wanted to do something that felt a
little bit more fundamental tous as a business and something
that would live on.
So we set up this, this network,which basically is, a forum for
the women in the agency to cometogether, to talk about
experiences, to try and sort ofgrow and develop.
So we bring in, externalspeakers or go to, you know,
(24:45):
events or do some specifictraining or, sort of webinars,
seminars around, women in techor what have you?
and I had done a similar thingat AKQA and started this kind of
program of, of activities.
but it was kind of towards theend of my, of my time there
before I went on maternity leaveagain.
But, I think, Diversity andinclusion and specifically
(25:09):
gender equality in, in theindustry has always always been
really important to methroughout my career.
I think I didn't really noticeso much when I was younger and
in my first agency in Bristol.
And then, it sort of becamesomething I became aware of
over, over my career and justbeing in rooms with men all the
(25:29):
time.
It was great, I think, once Iwas in a position to maybe
influence things a bit more andcreate those kinds of
environments and forums for, forthe women in the, in the
companies.
That's been something I'm reallykind of keen to do and proud to
do.
and David, the, the other MD aswell, is, is really passionate
about diversity and inclusionand, you know, creating a really
(25:53):
positive and inclusiveenvironment.
So we have been able toimplement some new policies in
the business, we've implementeda menstruation and menopause
policy and, you know, we havequite a lot of options around
flexible working and things likethat.
So, Yeah, it's really great tobe able to work with somebody
who also shares that, thatpassion so that we can create, a
(26:14):
really balanced environment.
It's, yeah, been really good.
Harv Nagra (26:18):
That's excellent.
And, and, you know, a, hugeboost to your company culture,
I'm sure, but also great foremployer branding and, and very
inspiring.
So those are some really greatexamples.
so we're, we're going tocontinue talking about Great
State and from that kind ofoperational perspective want to
hear from you about what thingsthat you do really well, again,
that hopefully we can beinspired by and apply it our own
(26:41):
places of work.
So tell us about Great State andone of those things that's
really great.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (26:47):
Okay.
I think one of the things we'rereally good at, and that people
are often surprised by, I think,is the variety or the range of
work that we do.
For the types and scale ofclients that we have given our
size.
we have some really notableclients, and do everything
really from strategy to verycreative solutions to user
(27:09):
research to large scale militarylevel security type platform
builds.
and so our processes andstructure have to be flexible
enough, I guess, to respond toall of that at any one time, as
well as being robust enough tomeet the needs of the clients
(27:30):
and brands of that sort of scalewhich often you only really see
possible in, in bigger agencies.
So, we have been in positionswhere we can compete with those
bigger agencies, which is oftensurprising, I think, to, to
people.
and I think we've found reallygood approaches to scaling, as
well.
And we have to do that sometimeswith SC cleared resources
(27:52):
because of our client base.
and we've built some really goodrelationships with, recruitment
partners and other agencies todo that really well, because
sometimes you have to do thatreally quickly,
Harv Nagra (28:03):
hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (28:03):
need, you need to already have those
relationships in place to, beable to do that.
we also have nearshore partnersin place for our non MOD
Clients, and that's been reallyinstrumental in our approach to
scaling at short notice as well.
so some of that is just makingsure you have the right
processes in place to do that.
Some of it is the relationshipswe're building with those
(28:25):
partners.
but I think, we have been verygood at that.
Harv Nagra (28:29):
Excellent.
I want to go back to, we'll comeback to nearshoring, which I
think is really interesting aswell.
But I want to go back to thatkind of comment you made first,
which was around process andstructure that's allowed you to
kind of win these reallyimpressive clients and compete
with much larger organizationsor agencies.
So what, what have you donearound your processes or a
structure to allow you to dothat?
(28:50):
If you can give us some examplesof what you have in place at
Great State that enables thiskind of work.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (28:55):
Yeah, sure.
So we are structured in clientgroups.
So So we align clients to clientpartners and Delivery Leads.
So they are responsible forlooking after that group of
accounts.
and within that, then we willalign, discipline leads to
specific client work so thatthey build up a certain amount
of knowledge and understandingof the, of the client, the
(29:17):
technology that they use, youknow, their requirements and
potential strategic objectivesor whatever, so that, you can
maintain some level ofconsistency, but then you are
sharing resources across thoseclient groups, so it's not
completely managed sort ofseparately.
I think our processes are, Imean, we have a kind of delivery
(29:39):
framework that we work to, whichis founded in Agile principles.
Because we work with a lot ofgovernment clients, it also
aligns very well to thegovernment digital standards way
of working.
Plus it's also very flexible,very adaptable.
As anyone who works in an agencyknows, it's unlikely that every
client is going to work in thesame way.
(30:01):
So you have to build your, yourframeworks and your processes in
a way that are, able to beflexed and adapted.
So, you know, making sure ourteams know what are the non
negotiable things that we haveto do, like what are the
business critical reporting,things that we need.
but then what can flex because aclient needs to work in a
slightly different way.
So some of our government or MODclients need different
(30:23):
reporting, and we have toprovide things in a different
cadence or, they need moreinformation than some of our,
you know, corporate clientsmight need.
So there are things that we haveto put in place for the specific
client groups that don't existin every area of the business,
but it's just having thefundamentals there so you have
enough kind of rigor and processand structure to be able to
(30:44):
deliver well, but the, theknowledge of which things can be
more flexible so that it adaptsto, to the needs of that
specific client.
Harv Nagra (30:53):
Great answer.
before we move on, I wanted tojust touch on something.
You know, you've got these kindof client groups here.
there was this, earlier exampleyou gave of these pods at AKQA
that kind of failed.
And, and they resulted in maybe,you know, too much overhead or,
or redundancy in terms of, rolesor, or, or things like that.
So what's the difference?
(31:14):
Why does it work at Great State,but it didn't work there?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (31:17):
so, um, actually, when I first came back
to to Great State, they had alsoimplemented a similar thing.
and, again, I think it it didn'twork for a different reason, or
similar, but slightly differentreason at Great States.
Partly the problem when it wasimplemented here was that, we're
a bit too small to allocatespecific resources only to one
(31:40):
Client group.
so you know, there'd be thisamazing technical architect that
everyone wants, but they can'tdo it.
they can't go and work on thisother client because they're
over here in this, in this team.
so that became very challengingalongside the operational
overheads, which obviously whenI came back in, I was like, that
is probably going to bedifficult for you guys because
(32:00):
you're all doing things indifferent ways
Harv Nagra (32:02):
Hmm.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (32:03):
we're too small to do that, I think.
that's when we shifted it toclient groups.
So the difference in that isthat there is much more flex and
movement in the rest of theresources.
So instead of each one operatingalmost like an agency within an
agency and having to keep all ofthose people busy all of the
time, generally client servicesand delivery stay fixed in those
(32:25):
teams and then you might have,say that we have a group with
four accounts in it, thetechnical lead might only work
on two of those accounts andthen another one in a different
group,
Harv Nagra (32:38):
I
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (32:38):
um, based on their expertise, their
technical experience, whateverit might be.
So it just allows, one, itallows some variety, but it also
just allows that flexibilitythat, you know, one team is not
having to sort of keep a setnumber of people busy all the
time.
It allows you to just adapt andscale up and down as you need
to.
Harv Nagra (32:58):
That makes sense.
It sounds like resourcing isjust much more stable as a
result of that just because youcan share that resource and it
doesn't become kind of locked inas
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (33:08):
There's certainly less of an overhead
associated with, you know, orjust not, it also just minimizes
wasted time, because if you'relike, I need to keep this person
busy, but I've got no billablework for them, what can I get
them to do?
it makes people become a littlebit kind of territorial and
protective about stuff whenactually this project over here
could really benefit from theirfree time right now.
(33:31):
so it's just makes it, makeeveryone have a better use of
time and, it not be quite sosort of siloed.
Harv Nagra (33:38):
Makes sense.
that leads nicely into thatother example you gave about
nearshoring, which is somethingthat you do really well at Great
State.
So tell us about that.
How does that work?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (33:47):
Yeah, so, we've worked with a couple over
the time that I've been here andit's been for various different
things and, generally it justprovides us some really good
scaling options quickly, I wouldsay the majority of the, the
time we use it for developmentresource, just to scale up
bigger teams, more quickly.
And the company that wegenerally work with are, very
(34:12):
responsive.
They're very flexible, movepeople around their side and
provide us lots of differentoptions.
And they have similar skill setsto ours in terms of the
technologies we use.
but also offer some other thingsthat we don't, have in house or
don't do so much of in housebecause you can't, as much as we
aim to be, you know, technologyagnostic, there are some
(34:33):
platforms that you just can'tbuild up that much knowledge in
house across all of them, at oursort of size.
So it allows us to sort of bringin additional skill sets when we
need to.
This is a little bit like anearshore recruiter, except they
do actually work for the companythat we partner with.
it gives us basically access to,thousands of developers, in lots
(34:57):
of different skill sets, andsome other resources now that
they are starting to introduce.
So, some sort of more UXproduction, some, project
management, although We have avery, large project management
team.
So we don't need to do thatcurrently, but, yeah, they're
starting to sort of bring inother, other roles, but we've
(35:18):
predominantly used it fordevelopment.
Harv Nagra (35:20):
Okay.
Really, really useful.
Thank you for that.
We're we're coming to the kindof the end of our conversation.
so Jinny, where can people goand learn more about you and
Great State?
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (35:30):
cool.
Okay.
So we were in the process ofredeveloping our website right
now.
So that's Going live at the endof November.
So that would be a good place toto sort of find out about us as
a business.
we're quite active on LinkedIn,and Instagram.
So that's quite a good startingpoint.
We often run sort of webinarsand events and things that we
share on, on LinkedIn.
We have some blogs that talkabout me specifically
Harv Nagra (35:53):
Okay.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (35:54):
Or things if anybody actually cares about
that, but yeah, that that'sprobably a good start.
Harv Nagra (35:59):
Excellent.
We'll put a link to that in ourepisode notes.
And I just want to thank youbefore we go once again for
joining us today.
I think you've given us somereally nice examples of what
works well.
And I think your credit toyourself and Great State about
setting a benchmark in terms ofwhat we should be aspiring for.
So I really appreciate
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (36:17):
Oh, well, thank you very much.
That's high praise.
it was lovely to talk to you.
Harv Nagra (36:21):
Thank you so much.
Jinny Mitchell-Kent (36:22):
All right.
Thanks.
Harv Nagra (36:23):
I found that really interesting.
Firstly, hearing about theworkings of such a large agency.
I was also a bit surprised thatthe acquisition by WPP didn't
have more of a dramatic impactat AKQA.
But like we said in theconversation, that may have been
due to the size of the businessbeing a force in itself.
Given her experience, the formerCOO title, and that she's
(36:44):
currently joint MD, What I'm notsurprised by is how impressive
an organization Jinny seems tobe running now.
It definitely sounds like theprocesses, systems, and controls
they have in place are at leastwhat I would call level four in
terms of business maturity,meaning they're data driven.
But if I was really able to takea closer look at their offer and
client experience, it's quitepossible they're at a level
(37:06):
five, which is where they'rereally able to lean into
innovation.
It's difficult and rare to getto either of those stages.
So hats off to Jinny and theteam at Great State.
Now, if you have any feedback onthe show or have any topic you'd
like us to cover, send me a DMon LinkedIn.
And if you're enjoying theconversations we have on the
podcast and think they'revaluable, please share the
(37:27):
podcast with your agency friendsor help me get the word out even
further and post about the showor an episode you loved on
LinkedIn saying what you lovedabout it.
I'll be back here with the nextepisode soon.
Thank you so much for listening.
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