Project Management Tips and Tricks for Digital Agencies

How do you build an agency that allows you to live the dream that you have for yourself, for your family, for your community, for your team, while at the same time helping your clients knock it out of the park and doing it all profitably? These are the big questions that we tackle here on the Agency Journey podcast. I am your host, Andrew Demski. Now let's get to it.

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This week on the podcast, I've got Brett Harned, who is currently running. Brett, I'm gonna let you talk about. About what you're doing, but digital PM Consulting, I think, is the name of the business where you're helping agencies and clients with project management. So let's. Let's maybe start there. Brett, why don't we just kind of go through some of your background and I'll let you introduce yourself, and then we'll go from there into some of the stuff that you're working on right now.

Okay, thanks. It sounds good. I've been running a consultancy now in my fourth year, strictly about project management. It's called digital project management. But I do work with a lot of organizations who kind of do work outside of digital. So a lot of the work that I do focuses on fixing some or helping to fix some challenges around project management. So anything around process, communications, collaboration tools, all of that stuff that kind of gets wrapped up into project management. So, yeah, I'm working with agencies, I'm working with in house teams and corporate teams and nonprofits. And it's funny, a lot of the project management challenges are similar across all of those, and it's kind of a new space for a lot of these organizations, like starting to formalize project management processes or even just starting to bring in the idea of project management. So I help organizations to kind of figure that out as well. Like, what does project management mean to them? What do they need for their size of organization, and what's the best path forward? So, yeah, that's what I'm currently doing.

Yeah. That's awesome. So before that. And you are based out of. Are you in the Philadelphia area still?

I am, yeah. I used to live in South Philly now in the burbs in New Jersey. But yeah, I've been here for most of my career. I worked last before going out on my own. I worked for an agency in Philadelphia called Happy Cognitive for about five and a half years. Left there as the vice president of project management, and really just decided I wanted to go out and do my own thing. When I was at HappyCog, I grew the project management team, started to formalize some processes and was able to kind of hand that off in a really positive way. Probably the best work experience I've ever had, to be honest with you, because I was pushed to, to do so much more than just my role. So that's kind of when I started to write, started my blog, started doing some public speaking, which I'm now doing a lot more of. And I actually started a conference when I was there. So I started a conference called the Digital PM Summit, which we are now going on our sixth year. That'll happen in September in Memphis. We usually get around 2 to 300 people in a room talking about project management, kind of all the stuff that I kind of talked about earlier in kind of like keynote presentations as well as smaller breakouts. And so yeah, I'm enjoying the benefits of working there. Prior to working at HappyCog, I worked for a larger agency, a global agency called Razorfish I'm sure you've heard of. Prior to that it was in a more kind of like print focused smaller agency that did a lot of higher ed and school work. But right out of college I was one of those people who kind of graduated right as the dot com boom was happening. And so at 21, 22, I thought that I was going to make millions at a startup. I lived right outside of New York City for a few years there and that's kind of where I learned project management. But I'm not formally trained. I'm an English and fine arts major in college. So I came out of school, school really as an editor. So I was writing Sports Instruction, which is kind of funny for me because I'm not really a huge sports fan, but was working with professional athletes, writing sports instruction, directing video shoots, learning code and Photoshop and all the things to kind of help build the website. So I was kind of like organizing things all along. And I think kind of as my career progressed, I realized like, I'm really good at this organizational stuff. And it was actually Razorfish who recruited me for an actual project management position. And it's kind of when I started working more formally as a pm.

Wow, what a journey. And that among other things, obviously there's been a lot that you've written and produced, but in middle of 2017, I guess is when your. Is this your first book that launched Project Management for Humans?

Yeah, yeah, so that's my first book, maybe my only book. I'm not sure, I haven't decided on that yet. It just came out in July. So Yeah, I've been kind of working to promote that. After spending about a year writing and editing and going through that whole process, that was definitely a good kind of professional milestone for me. It's something I'm really proud of.

Yeah, that's awesome. So maybe this, a starting point is there's a lot of people listening right now who are agency owners. And as I'm sure you run into all the time, the majority of people who are running digital marketing agencies think of themselves as creatives. And so there's a natural aversion, I think, to anything that says process or project management. And ultimately all of those same people, to scale, realize that they need to embrace these concepts of project and process management and how to effectively run projects and how guidelines and boundaries actually help creativity and help run a profitable business, or vital for running a profitable business. So as a starting point for people like, how do you. Is there any way that you found to communicate the concept of project management that makes it sound more appealing or more necessary than I guess, basically to get people to buy into the concept of project management and embracing it and taking on that role or hiring for that role? Is that a common struggle that you run into working with, I guess, with agencies specifically? And then how do you talk about it?

Yeah, that's an interesting question, and I think there's no kind of one answer to it, honestly. But I look at it in a couple of angles. So first, I do work with a lot of agency owners and I've gained a lot of insight about being an agency owner from that work that I do, but also from attending the owner Summit. I'm not sure if that's an event that you've heard of, but it's a yearly event for agency owners and owner camps, which are as another event that's more of kind of like a smaller retreat style thing where people sit down and just talk about problems and share ideas. And it's a really great forum for just kind of changing or transforming a business from the owner's perspective. And what I learned there is that yes, most owners are people who have come up through a design or development background. Maybe they started as a freelancer, they brought on a partner, then they started hiring people, they started to get more business, and then things became really real and they start to realize, wow, we're not as organized as we need to be. Maybe a client got angry and yelled at them for some reason or something that went wrong with a timeline or a budget, or maybe they just kind of realized I need to back off. I really want to focus on my creative work or I want to focus on code. To me, that's when I usually get brought into the fold. When it's like, okay, I feel a need, my business is growing. I feel a need for someone to come in and help me to organize. Like, I need help to make sure that we're profitable and that things are going out on time and that clients are actually happy. So that's the one side. The other side is, hey, we've got this small agency, we've got a project manager on board. They know digital, they don't really know much about project management because nobody's really teaching project management for digital at this point. So what can we do to kind of better our processes and get this person kind of more up to par to honestly run projects or run accounts in a better way? And I think the challenges that come from either of those scenarios are not necessarily about do I need project management, it's more what is project management, if that makes sense. So it's okay. I have a project manager here. I've worked with agencies that have project managers doing everything from billing to ordering office supplies and a lot of administrative work. My argument's always that the PM role isn't necessarily administrative. It's more strategic in nature and it should be actively taking part in projects, facilitating projects, not just being high level and creating a schedule that kind of comes out of nowhere. Right? Like, the best PMs to me are the ones who are really focused in on project goals, understanding the path of a project and how your team can work best with clients, what the project means to your clients, and actually sitting down and talking about that and having a regular dialogue about what could be better on a project, or at least at a minimum, kind of what's happening on a project and how it'll impact the path of the project, and doing the same thing with the team too. And of course doing the administrative side of pm, which is scheduling and planning, staffing or resourcing and taking meeting notes, setting up meetings, all of that good stuff. But for me, it's a more strategic kind of communications focused role. And I think that when people do have a smaller agency or when owners are working with a smaller team, it's hard to figure out when to bring a PM on and what that role is. But at that point they've pretty much already recognized the fact that they need it. Right? And I would just say, like, you know, when I first started talking about this stuff and writing about it, like, I don't Know, seven years ago or so I was in more of a position that was people don't respect project managers. And what I figured out was that people didn't respect project managers because they either hired a bad PM or somebody who didn't have the right experience, or they never really defined what they needed from that person. So that person ended up floundering to try to figure out how they could best add value. But if you hire a PM and put them in a position where they can't actively take part in projects and feel invested in those projects, then they're going to fail, right?

Well, I think a common pitfall is in any agency, any business, there's just a series of hurdles that you face. And so the first one is the sales hurdle. Can we get anyone to buy what we're selling? Then immediately after that you jump straight into the delivery hurdle. So we sold them this. Now we need to go figure out how the heck do we actually deliver on that. And so a lot of times, like the classic example or the classic story is the agency owner sells in the beginning, it's not a problem. They're also delivering every door that you open. It's the same person, just a different hat. And then they try and scale and they realize for us to keep growing and for me to not completely burn out and be stressed out, I need to hire somebody to take on a component of my role. And so a lot of times when they hire that project manager, it is just that unscoped. You need to be the account strategist, you need to be doing the billing, you need to be handling all the calls, you need to coordinate every piece. And it's not, it's not well scoped at all like you're saying, and it's super comprehensive. So how do, how do agency owners or agencies avoid that trap of I'm stressed out, I don't have a documented process for this, but I need to have someone come take over all this for me. How can they break that down into pieces and steps so they make it a clear journey and can set themselves and the project manager up for success.

Yeah. So first, it's not easy, right? It takes some hard work and thought. I think the first thing you need to do is to truly define what the project management role is and what your as an owner, what your vision for that role is. Like, who is the person that you want in that position and what will they be doing day to day versus what you're doing. Right. Like who's going to own projects, who's going to own client relationships and then on the flip side, who is owning sales and upselling and all of that, or keeping clients happy and engaged longer term? Because I think there's a lot of confusion around project management versus account management and sales too, which is kind of a whole other conversation. But it's something that I want to mention first. You have to define what the role means in terms of practices. What I've found is there are a lot of businesses out there who are doing what they did when they were a team of four, and then they grow to a team of 10 and then a team of 20, and they're still doing the same thing and it's not working. So oftentimes what you have to do is figure out what the things are that aren't necessarily working as you scale sitting down to identify those things. And this is something that I do in my business is just go in and gain an understanding of everyone's point of view in the process and what's working and what's not working to come to some conclusions about what can be changed to kind of smooth out the process, so to speak. And that comes in a lot of different forms, right? Like it can be, well, teams are starting projects and they're not feeling like they're getting enough information to start about the client or the scope or the timeline. So coming up with a process for how you transfer knowledge from that business development or sales process into the project can be critical. Talking about overall project process, how do we work? A lot of teams are trying to adopt agile methodologies without really kind of understanding what that means, like going out and saying we're agile. And they get into the situation and clients start questioning like, you're not really agile. This is not what we expected. So figuring out what does agile mean to us or what does our process mean to us? Is there a way that we can kind of spell it out and make people understand how we actually work? And that really comes down to sitting down with a team and on a project level, looking at your project scope, looking at your kind of impending timeline or deadline. Right? Like the way that you're going to get the work done will be dependent on how long you have to do it and how much budget you have to do it. Thinking about the personalities and expertise involved is really important, not only on your team, but also on your client team. You have to come up with a process that works for your clients as well, and you have to sell that process to them and educate them on it. So it's really about like sitting down and really kind of picking those things apart, understanding what a project means to everyone at the table and how you're best going to work together. And what I found is there are some. There's kind of like a toolkit, right, that you can create as a company. That is, these are the things that we do in our process to make sure that we're keeping our project on time and on budget. And these are practices that we do across all projects, no matter how we're working. So agnostic of whether it's a waterfall kind of process or an agile like process or a hybrid of the both. What you can do is sit down and come up with project management practices that help to facilitate projects. And the things that I typically end up recommending are definitely regular status reports to keep everything kind of open and transparent and making sure that information is being communicated on a very regular basis and keeping people accountable. Probably some level of standup meetings, depending on the timeline in the process, and just probably some other like communication practices that essentially keep information out in the open and keep people in the know. I think that just builds accountability and it builds trust and then it starts to build kind of like longer term relationships with. With happy clients.

Right? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you started there at the end to get into kind of what my next question was, which is the reality is there's a whole systematic approach that people ought to be going through. Probably starting with. It sounds like from what you're saying, just kind of an audit of where the breaking points and the tension points right now and then kind of building from the ground up, but obviously in the course of a podcast. So we can't go through that on an individualized basis. Like I was going to ask about what are some of the, the tactical building blocks that people should be thinking about and kind of evaluating right now. So I'm going to just bring up another, I guess another common point that I hear and see if you have any recommendations for that. And so it's the agency. And quite frankly, this happened in my own experience working with, when we originally started our agency, Guavabox, way back in 2011, working with three other college students out of our dorm room my senior year of college and we're starting to build an agency and the idea of. So we were doing some of these tactics where we were keeping each other updated and having meetings, but had. Didn't really have a whole lot of, I guess, meaningful accountability. So kind of the accountability problem, like are there real consequences if I don't do what I said I was going to do. And I think that a lot of times when people hire a project manager, that's one of the things, at least in my experience, talking with a lot of agencies, that's one of the things that they're looking for is can this person kind of be the person who's cracking the whip and making me actually get done what I keep saying that I want to get done? Do you have any good. Is this something that comes up a lot? Any good ideas around how to build in accountability? Is it. It could be. And maybe the right thing is you need to work with an outside consultant or somebody. You feel differently if you're paying somebody and. Or maybe it's setting up a board and reporting to them, or maybe just some type of internal structure. But is there any good way to build accountability? And that's one of the things that seems to come up repeatedly outside of, hey, I'm busy and I want to outsource half of my job to you, so come in and be a project manager and do all the things. That nebulous term to me means is the second thing is like accountability that comes up all the time is, well, I hired them because I wanted them to be the person to keep me organized and keep me accountable to hitting the goals and activity objectives that I have.

Yeah, yeah, it definitely is a topic that comes up a lot. And I will say that a project manager can definitely help you with that account accountability and help with team motivation. But without the support of leadership and an owner and some really good policies around missing deadlines and not communicating, there have to be some kind of repercussions sometimes because without those things for a PM to lean on, they're kind of nothing. They just kind of turn into that annoying pest who feels like they're constantly checking in with someone. It's not like you can sit down at someone's desk and force them to get something done. So when you're hiring a pm, it's important to focus on finding a person who's going to be a good cultural fit for your team, because you want a person who is likable and is going to get along with the group and somebody who is actually curious and either has a good level of knowledge or has the capability of learning about design and code, to ask smart questions, to call BS when needed. When somebody says they need more time, somebody who is invested in the team and understanding the way that they work, the way that they like to communicate, that kind of person is Going to have higher success levels on a team as a project manager because they'll be able to connect with the team in a way that the team trusts them because they know that they're kind of out for their best interests or for the project's best interests and they're not just a box checker. And I think that kind of comes back to what I was talking about earlier. Like the lack of respect for project management really goes to organizations who don't value the role in a way that sets that person up to be successful and to have the authority to call the BS when needed. If you've got a PM in a position who doesn't feel empowered, then they're not really going to be able to do anything. So to me that's most important. Again, going back to the first point I made is understanding what your vision is for the role and what this person can do for you, but just to add on to that, supporting it and actually recognizing how the role can help you if you set it up properly.

Yeah, it definitely does start at the organizational level because most people, you know, motivation, if we're thinking of a carrot and a stick like project manager can only whatever stick you give them is all they can use to keep things going. So if you don't have any type of policy or anything baked in, it's hard to be an effective disciplinarian if that's a part of your role or motivator. Maybe in the more positive light, if you're not really enabled to do that and there's not something at the organizational level, policy wise, that translates over. So empowering a project manager makes a lot of sense.

And I think too, if that person isn't curious and isn't interested in learning about the way people work and understanding on a task level how the work happens, then that person's never going to feel empowered on their own to be able to motivate someone because they don't understand the work. So I think that's like when hiring someone, that's really important to try to figure out how much does this person know and how, I guess empowered will they be to really sit down and talk to a team and work through a challenge and understand why things are going wrong and not be nervous to ask questions that might feel dumb, but to actually solve problems.

Right. That makes a lot of sense. Man, I've got so many questions. There's so much we could get into. But Brett, we are right at the time limit here, so I'm not going to eat up Too much more of your time. As far as where we can point people for next steps and learning more, there's Definitely the website, Bret Harned.com, which we'll link up in the show Notes, is the best place to get the book through the site or to search on Amazon for project management for humans or what other resources would you recommend people check out?

Yeah, so I think I linked to the book from my site, but it's also on Amazon in terms of other resources. I have a blog there that I've been writing for a while, and I do continue to write and blog. So I mentioned the Digital PM Summit. I work with the Bureau of Digital. It's an organization that puts on events and there's a blog over there. So on top of the events and finding ways to network and find PMs, that is a place. But there's also a great blog and a podcast there. I also have a podcast coming out, which I'm not sure if I mentioned to you. It's going to be called Sprints and Milestones and it should be coming out in the next month or so. And there are tons of meetups and like a community that has really formed around digital project management that I would love, encourage, love to encourage people to join and look into. There are meetups in cities across the world, honestly, and I've been really lucky to kind of be a part of that. It all started in Philly with our first Digital PM meetup. Then it grew into a conference, and then it grew into lots of other meetups where people are talking about lots of topics that we talked about today. So I think that's a good place to start exploring dpm.

That's awesome. Well, lots to dig into here. Brett, thank you so much for coming on. This was great to connect with you.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

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