Agency Transitions on Project Management
Life in Myanmar was character-molding and definitely slower than slow even though they’re trying to be up-speed from the backwards practices to catch up on the modern western world.
Being back in the grind may take us to the front seat and the wheel to drive faster than60kms/hr. Sometimes, It’s good to slow down and take it easy.
Handling 8–10 accounts for monitoring and execution. Sounds a lot? Not even.
Tons of learning curves, growth pains, adjustments and realizations. Leadership and management skills were definitely honed, sharpened and microscopically well attended.It was busy, crazy, awesome, stressful, and (in between the madness) fun. What have I learned so far?
The First Six:
1. Over-communicate.
Communication is the key — regardless what industry you’re in. Think of it as a relationship. teamwork is your marriage.
When I started in the agency, the first contribution I have instilled was to make use of a much efficient app called Telegram. I am a sucker for immediate update of things, every movement and status. If you’re in a huge organization, having to update everyone on a fine print where you can scroll down and up would help on aligning and reminding you on what has and what is yet to transpire from the account. In this world where messengers are abundant, pick one that can send, upload and download files, archive chats, and would also secure conversations.
2. Respect schedules and alignments
It’s crucial that your team would know where you are and what you’re doing on certain times. This would make everyone just check on how their day is like, what their focus is and when work sessions are. It gives everyone the sense of time, urgency and work flow. Let your team know if you’re working from home and what you’re working on.
3. Client Briefs
You may have known the brand by heart and your campaign but often times because of wanting to do so much things, we do get out of focus and tend to forget what is really written in fine print in terms of deliverables and what the vision-mission of the brand. Client briefs are golden, it’s useful on keeping your campaign focused, organized and a reminder on what your Key Performance Indicators are.
4. Audit reports
Ugh. You may hate the numbers but this will save you from clientele and agency expectations. It’s important you get to have the contract work side by side with your audit report, quantify and justify what has been done. This is a great indicator if you’ve over performed or under performed, if there are service credits that can still be used or you’ve given much more than what was asked for — this, in turn, we call as delight or sweeteners to please your client.
5. Manage Expectations
When dealing with a client, because they’re the client, they have the “customers are always right” in-mind; you’d have to protect yourself and the agency by managing expectations and having it all written in an agreement or a trace that states what their thoughts are and always inform them on consequences should they be late in terms of submitting necessary information or requirements.
6. ASAP — Everything is ASAP, not just one.
RUSH doesn’t mean you’d have to do less, it just means you’ve got to prioritize something up however it’s best to say that once you rush one, the entire team would need to rush the entire deliverables, too. Delays are definitely not negotiable. If things are to be done in a lightning speed, everyone should know that quality may also suffer not for just one but may also be for the rest of the following.
What’s your take? What have you learned so far?
Kassy Pajarillo is a woman of many hats: Hotelier, Marketing Professional and Brand Social Listener. You can follow her writing here, on Twitter@kassypajarillo, on her blog , and sign up for free newsletters about her thoughts at justkas
