The Digital Project Manager

How Project Managers Can Thrive In Evolving Agency Models

• Galen Low and Kelsey Alpaio

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The agency world is undergoing major shifts, with evolving business models, leaner teams, and new demands on project leaders. While disruption can feel overwhelming, it also presents opportunities for growth—if you know how to adapt. As roles blur and responsibilities pile up, resilience and flexibility have never been more essential.

Joining us is Harv Nagra, Head of Brand Communications at Scoro and host of The Handbook: Agency Ops podcast, to break down how operating models are changing and what project managers can do to stay ahead. From navigating uncertainty to leading with a growth mindset, this episode offers actionable insights for anyone facing rapid change in agency life.

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Galen Low:

You have a new job title! Congratulations. You also still have your old job title. And your team is half the size it was last week. And you're being told the business model is shifting to meet the demands of the market. And you're starting to worry. Disruption is a fickle beast. On the one hand, it is destabilizing and pretty stressful. But on the other hand, it can create opportunities as business models evolve in response. This is exactly what's happening in the agency world right this very second. And unfortunately, it's just one of those things where there will be winners and there will be losers. So if you're looking for tips on how to stay resilient and set yourself up to thrive within evolving agency operating models, keep listening. We're gonna be getting the low-down on exactly how agency operating models are changing and what you can do as a project team leader to support your teams while also positioning yourself as an adaptable, growth-minded tour-de-force. Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with The Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you wanna hear more about that, head on over to thedpm.com/membership. And if you're into future-looking conversations and practical insights around digital project leadership, consider subscribing to this show for weekly episodes. Alright, today we are talking about changing agency operating models and how project managers can help their teams and themselves survive and thrive as the floor tiles shift underneath their feet. With me today is Harv Nagra— agency operations specialist, Head of Brand Communications at Scoro, and the host of The

Handbook:

Agency Ops podcast. Harv, thanks for being with me today, man.

Harv Nagra:

Absolute pleasure, Galen. I'm really glad to be here. And of course, you've just come off our show as well, so really exciting to do this collaboration with you.

Galen Low:

I love a good podcast swap. So for our listeners, this is actually the second part of a conversation that Harv and I started on his podcast. So for the full POV, check the link in the show notes and give it a listen. I'm not sure yet if it matters whether you listen to this one first or not.

Harv Nagra:

We'll, I think either order works well.

Galen Low:

And of course, if you are someone who's listening who is into agency ops, consider subscribing to Harv's podcast. It's called The Handbook. It's incredible. It's casual. It's kind of like this one. It's a lot of fun and I think it's great for just getting that perspective. Even if you are not an operations person, heck, even if you're not an agency person, I think it gives a lot of perspective on business maturity, operations, how stuff works, how stuff can work better. I thought maybe I would start with the juicy question. Let me give us a runway. So I feel like there's a lot of change afoot right now with the economy. It's like driving like some very talented people in my network into the layoff wagon. And also agencies are restructuring in hopes that they can do a little more, or at least as much with less. We've got AI disrupting knowledge work left and right, and many full-time roles are just kinda like moving to fractional and freelance roles. My question is, what can agency delivery teams do to rally and be resilient and to support one another through all this change?

Harv Nagra:

There is so much happening. But first of all, Galen you're throwing me off on the deep end with the hardest question just to start off anyway.

Galen Low:

How do we fix the world, Harv?

Harv Nagra:

Yeah. How do we fix the world? There is so much change though, Galen, like it is a stressful time, like you're saying, layoffs for a couple years, the market's been quite difficult. And then the whole AI thing and scary things happening in the economy with tariffs and all that kind of fun stuff. So yeah it is terrifying. But I think the most successful teams that I've ever worked in, like one of those things is culture, really. Psychological safety is a term that comes to mind. So I think the most flexible, adaptable, successful teams really like each other, first of all. So making sure that leadership or building a culture where people can turn to one another for advice, ensuring that people aren't afraid to admit areas that they need to learn in or are weaker for them so that other people can help fill that gap, or that you can jointly go on a mission to go find those skills or bring in experts to it. Teach you how to do certain things or whatever it might be, because we can't overcome these challenges alone. Like we're not meant to be silos. That's not the purpose of an organization. So we do have to rely on each other, and you need that connection to keep you motivated and you need some clarity and a point of view from the organization's perspective about where you're headed, how you're gonna be adopting all these tools, and how you're gonna be navigating some of these challenges. So making sure that communication is super clear. And it's not being like close to the chest so that no one really knows. That would be like a terrible thing to do. So I think culture is the first thing that comes to mind. And then secondly, I'm an ops sky, right? So I'm gonna be biased, but I think it's genuinely true that great operations is so critical. You just can't be running a really successful business if you're always winging it, right? There's a degree of course. Adaptability and flexibility that is so important to being successful. But I think you can't just be always making it up. You can't be relying on people overextending themselves to make sure that you're creating this kind of impression to your clients that things are being held together well, behind the scenes is absolute chaos. That's not a resilient business. So you have to be operating in a more mature way, making sure that your teams are structured the way you deliver your work. You've got a methodology, your processes, the tools, the way you analyze your data so that you're not wasting resource, and you're able to measure results and also forecast what's coming. So all of that points to good operations and operating in a more mature way.

Galen Low:

I love those anchors because like a, the first thing he says is like, learning, right? And like being willing and having that culture to be like, cool, we don't know everything because A, maybe we're, we talked about this in our conversation too. Maybe you're being asked to take on more responsibilities in an area that is not your sort of core skillset. Maybe you're learning new AI tools, right? Everything's different now. We all have to be able to say, yeah, nobody knows everything and let's figure it out. So the anchor point of learning, I love the anchor point of just like direction. And I think so many folks are getting this wrong because they're like, we don't know where we're going, so let's say nothing. But you're moving, you're doing something, you're trying something. And I think that visibility can help a lot. And then I like that idea that yeah, a lot of folks are gonna try and fly by the seat of their pants. Right now, because that feels like all you can do. Like even just like regular people outside of agency, right? Like, how am I gonna pick my groceries this week? Bringing stability to it through operations if I'm picking up what you're putting down, like agile, nimble operations. It's like cool, we're not gonna rewrite every SOP starting now until like third quarter 2026. What can we do now to anchor this, to put this on rails so that we are still delivering predictably, that we are documenting what is changing and that we're not just pretending that everything's business as usual. We're like building a new machine. We're iterating on it.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. It's like iterating regularly. So whether it's like quarter, there's just milestones. I think annually is a big milestone. Quarterly is a milestone, but things are changing so fast right now that even on a monthly basis, you just have to be like sticking your head above the work and whatever's happening. And making sure that whatever you're doing is still fit for purpose and it doesn't need a different kind of point of view or an approach.

Galen Low:

Can we dig into that a little bit? Because I love getting practical, tactical. I know my listeners are going, cool. What does that meeting like, what does that monthly meeting look like where we're gonna revisit ops and ops changes.

Harv Nagra:

I think what I used to do is we used to have in my agency a monthly All hands, and it was, first of all, we had a really fun format. Like all hands can be, feel very corporate and dry agencies are fun places. And we decided that we were gonna have fun with it. So there was a lot of music and video and stuff like that in it. So first of all, that was quite an engaging moment to get everyone really motivated about the mission. But there's a couple things that I did during those all hands. One was operationally I would look at the tools that we're using our systems and see if there's any changes that the product had come out with that we needed to share so that there was a new, easier, better way to do something. Number two was it was an opportunity to reinforce skills that people may have forgot, or that me as the operations director or my colleague as the finance director, would be like, oh my God, people are forgetting this thing. We need to reinforce that. So it was that moment, but also a moment to like share skills, right? There's loads of new AI tools coming out on a monthly basis. So it'd be, sometimes it'd be like working with the UX designers to say, Hey, could you give a session to our team on how you're using these new kind of AI wire framing platform? So just paint the picture. And I remember like when Firefly or whatever it was, Adobe came out with this kind of you prompt it to delete something off a picture or whatever it was, or drop box around it or something. I remember now that's like second nature to us in a matter of months, but like at some point it was like, holy crap, that used to take us ages to Photoshop that out and now it's draw a circle around it and tell it to disappear, right? So taking those moments to reinforce new skills, introduce new tools, but also look at the way you're working and see if it needs to pivot. But I think super important with that is not just to present it, but to go back to your handbook or whatever it is and document that so people can reference it afterwards. And it's not all based on memory from what happened in the all hands two months ago.

Galen Low:

I love the reinforcement bit and then just like the cross training, like you could be in that town hall and not be someone who does wire frame anything and kind of start understanding how you can fit those puzzle pieces together. It's inspiring, it's cross training and so much of learning these new tools is just like feeling comfortable with the idea that you're not alone. You're not the only one doing this, you're not doing the wrong thing, and like wasting time. And then I love the kind of follow up, right? That's okay, cool. This is where we ask questions and correct and tilt, but actually we want, it's to gently push people on a certain course and then help them along that path as well, so that the ops stay relevant, that people are using the tools properly. They know it's possible.

Harv Nagra:

Yep. And back to that point about introducing certain tools might not be relevant to everyone, right? Like the UX wire framing tool or whatever. Absolutely true. But it also establishes that word organization that is learning and experimenting and it encourages other people to do that in their own kind of realms. And the following month they could be the ones presenting the account manager's approach to AI or whatever it is. So it's really cool to feed off the energy and make everyone feel that you're in an organization that's moving forward.

Galen Low:

It's funny 'cause you started with culture and like you can see a lot of people struggle with culture and they try and fabricate it, but like exactly what you just said is yeah, we create this form that demonstrates our values, right? That we're changing, that we're innovative, that, we talk to one another and this is not like the dry town hall where we push information at you. It's fun. There's, not every agency culture is gonna be like, yes, music and fun and everything, but honestly I think it's a good way of doing it.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely.

Galen Low:

I wonder if I could zoom out a bit. So for folks who don't know Harv, your background is in agency operations, but you've also had almost all the roles under like the agency ops umbrella, from project manager to marketing specialist to senior digital producer to group director of operations and I think it just gives you this like really interesting perspective, like from the front lines. As well as like from the command center. And we're talking about evolving agency models, things like changing around us, operating models and business maturity and all that stuff that I know you love. I'm just wondering, what are some of the evolutions that you see in agency operating models today? And what in your opinion, should agency leaders be doing to support their delivery teams as the business like adapts to change?

Harv Nagra:

Step back a moment and first just shout out the fact that, several years ago, or even a few years ago, I feel like operations in general in terms of an organization that was something maybe the biggest agencies had people in place for. And it wasn't really something that I felt was very talked about, so I didn't even know it was a career path perhaps, or that it, it was a role that was available. Other than that, I was there plugging some gaps as a producer or as the digital director and juggling responsibilities and stuff like that. So that's the bigger picture change that I've seen is operations being taken seriously and being talked about more, which is super important I think, for all of us to be running smarter businesses or working in smarter businesses. And of course I think, COVID ushered in the whole remote working, hybrid working thing, so a lot of change came with that. But I see a lot more experimentation Galen with staffing models. And I'm sure you talked about this on your podcast quite often is like beyond just freelancers, fractional support coming in, people bringing in outside experts, offshoring nearshoring, having fully remote teams. And there's also these kind of new services. I can't call them new services anymore 'cause they've been around for years now. But design as a service where you can just hire somebody for a set fee and they you send all your requirements to them and they go and execute and send it back to you. So there's a lot of change happening in that kind of regard. I think the challenge is probably around a lot of things, but one of them I think is how this dilutes the company culture. When you have all these kind of fractional or outside people coming in and constantly rotating is, what does that mean? There's already been a challenge with remote and hybrid teams and how that dilutes company culture and not everyone has fully understood how to tackle that and how to make sure that you're operating in this kind of remote first way and making sure that it's super inclusive and that you're ensuring that people have that same experience and opportunities when they're working from home or remotely. But figuring out how to onboard people and collaborate people with the right way when they're in these kind of fractional roles are coming in at odd moments and making sure you're maintaining the kind of standards and the quality that you expect of yourself. So I think those are some of the challenges and some of the changes I've seen.

Galen Low:

No, that's a huge change and we're seeing that in the community as well. A lot of folks in the project management world switching to freelance work because there's more opportunities available to them. There is this sort of shift in full-time employment versus fractional. And even if you aren't making that shift, then the team that you're working with might actually be made up of that. Like the design as a service thing. Like I actually, I'm not too up on that. And it sounds like it would take a whole different sort of set of skills, different playbook really, to be managing that, to be, having that, anyone who's done like a full waterfall style project when you're trying to get every requirement. Documented and detailed upfront so that you can send it off and it doesn't change and you get the thing back the way you wanted it. It's almost like reaching back into that grab bag of okay, we need to be, like we need to bolster our documents, requirements process. Because we spent all these years getting a little more agile and going, Hey, do you like this? Here's an MVP, should we change it? And then suddenly your team, you're like, okay, I don't have my freelancer for the entire project, just for the first three weeks. That's all we could afford in the budget. We need to change the way we're working. And I love that notion that yeah, we just need to go in, eyes open, right? With the fact that remote work and remote first is a thing that requires attention, that you know our projects are gonna run differently. And really swinging back to the importance of ops, the importance of nimble ops so that this is also supported, not just make it up as we go. Maybe we're making it up as we go, but we're also trying to make it more uniform, more predictable, more stable, and honestly better for the business.

Harv Nagra:

Totally. Back in the old days, like now, it's like over five years ago, right? But you could look over your shoulder at someone's screen or just talk to your peer next door and ask them how to do something. And it is not as possible. You have to message them on Slack or Teams or whatever it is, or jump in a Huddle or call or schedule something so that knowledge sharing is not as fluid. And those conversations, there's a hurdle because you're not constantly just able to talk out loud to somebody. You have to send that message. So I, I think that's where those kind of having that, a bit of documentation and all of that stuff centrally where people can access it and they know the way the company and the organization, the projects are meant to run so they have something to reference. But of course, encouraging that conversation to make sure people get the no nuance from the people they need to speak to.

Galen Low:

I love that. If I'm understanding that correctly, there's this sort of like ops layer that can help support in terms of like culture, values, ways of working systems. And then there will also be this sort of like cool, but also you're plugging into this team as a freelancer and here's the, like they have their own sort of team culture ways of working, different project requirements and they needed different things. So that's where you're gonna get that as well.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely.

Galen Low:

It's cool. I like that. We talked a bit about this in our conversation on your podcast, but I wanna dig in a little bit because one thing that our community is seeing a lot of is just like this increase in what I'm calling role blending. Where like a role that was once a singular full-time position is now expected to wear an additional hat to serve some changes to the business strategy. Do you see this as maybe a potential opportunity for like career growth as in could this become a role transition? Or in your eyes from an ops standpoint, would this more be like a cost savings measure that an agency project manager maybe just needs to like green and bear it or just endure for a little while to keep their job?

Harv Nagra:

I thought it was interesting that this question Galen, because when an organization is not very mature and they're starting up, or they've stayed in that kind of startup mode too long. There's a lot of blending of roles and there's no clear definition of roles and everyone's juggling five different things. You might be an account manager that has some HR responsibilities or the MD is a bit of operations and a bit of accounting and things like that, and. You have to do a bit of everything. So it's also interesting that it's coming now also because of the economic pressures or downsizing or other kind of changes leading to that. Not just because of the maturity of the organization, but I've seen this in the past and I was in one of those organizations myself where I had to step up and say, okay, that thing is broken and due to my kind of, what do I call it, like my personality and lack of satisfaction with seeing something broken, that's just causing endless frustration. Just being like, okay, there's no one responsible for that. I'm gonna step in and fix that thing and just sort it out, and I continued to do that and over time, that turned into I realized that I was really good at that stuff. And I wanted to do more of it. And I liked doing that more than the client delivery stuff. So it was like I was a digital producer and digital director, and over both of those kind of job titles, I was doing more and more of this stuff that had to do with operations until I was like, okay, we need an operations director. And I feel like I'm doing two different jobs and I wanna make a case for pursuing that. I think you're exactly right. There's a challenge there that you don't wanna sacrifice what your core duties are, so you wanna make sure that you're being absolutely honest and saying, Hey, i've got this stuff that I need to deliver for the client, and if I'm doing all this additional, it's either gonna have to be out of hours or my main project requirements are gonna slip and then that's gonna have a knock on effect and things like that. But I think it's absolutely a great opportunity. Hopefully whatever you're taking on has a nice overlap or a nice extension in the logical extension of your core duties, so it becomes a branch. Galen, like I think about my early career when I first graduated university. I felt like I was in this multidisciplinary program that did everything from like graphic design, web design, animation, film, interaction design, all these kinds of things. And I was like graduated thinking like what do I do now? I'm not super good at any of them. I know how to do a bit of everything, right? And so I went and did a bit more digital marketing training and that's how I started my career. But what I found is that at the stage I'm at in my career now, being a jack of all trades back then felt like a liability and I can't do anything with this. Whereas now I feel like that's the superpower is wow. Over time I'm still a jack of all trades, but now that means I'm an operations director and I can do all these things. I can go produce podcasts. I can run training sessions. I can, sort out people's processes and I've got a point of view on technology and stuff like that. So I think absolutely don't shut down those opportunities. Learn as much as you can, and over time, over the course of your career, all this stuff just becomes like tools in your tool belt that make you more and more of a unicorn, which just makes you that much more valuable. I think it's a great opportunity as long as you're able to not exhaust yourself in the process. Having those boundaries and making sure your kind of key priorities are still being addressed at your client delivery responsibilities and all that kind of stuff.

Galen Low:

I really like that'cause it's like almost like the art of stepping up, not just being like, cool, I'll step up and do this thing and my other job, but, and maybe do neither well, but being clear, with the organization you're working at to say, listen. I'm willing to step up and step into this. It interests me. I'm gonna be good at it, but also I need help balancing to make sure that I can do both well. And I do agree with you that yeah, I think you and I both, I think coming up, like we wore a lot of hats. Wearing a lot of hats was normal. And a lot of the conversations I'm having, like I did a post on LinkedIn, I'm like, is this the new normal? And they're like, when was it not the new normal? Because like we've been doing this our entire careers. But I think there was a period of time where, we're deeply specializing and I think you know, for the deep specialists, I applaud you. I think it's still very relevant, but I think the opportunities are gonna be fewer and further between. And like the way that AI and the economy is pushing the workforce, I do think like an opportunity to do more than one job in a balanced way can really open some doors. And to your point, you said like you are like, listen, this role needs to be a permanent role. I want it. In other words, it wasn't just thrust upon you, you had agency in it and it actually gave you a path to go, do I want to go back to being a producer? Or do I want to go to become an ops director? And it gave you that exposure without having to like jump ship. Imagine just like taking on a full-time ops director role. Where, there wasn't any sort of like bridge in between. I think that'd be a lot trickier of a transition.

Harv Nagra:

Totally. I was just looking away for a moment because this reminded me of a book I'm listening to an audio book called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. So I'm only on the second chapter so I'm not very far in, but I am quite excited to read this book 'cause it talks about exactly what we're talking about. Having a lot of skills and experimenting and it just makes you in the long term, it makes you even more successful. So that's really interesting. I wanted to point out like Galen, if you don't mind, like a couple of examples of where I was taking on some of those responsibilities. One of those was as digital producer, like again, working in an organization that wasn't super mature, didn't have a very good onboarding process or even like a tech onboarding process. So I remember freelancers coming in and being sat at an iMac that had literally like hundreds of files on the desktop. And I would just sit there being like a bit embarrassed, being like, oh my God, they're gonna be like, where the hell? But not just freelancers, but full-timers, it's just so terrible of an experience to have someone else's login name on your, what's meant to be your computer. So I started volunteering to be like, you know what, let me sort that out. I'm gonna reset these Macs before somebody starts. And then it was like at some point they all had not enough ram, so I upgraded like the fleet of computers and sorted out the getting fiber internet. And then at some point it was like, we've got multiple entities, office in Switzerland, France, and the uk and we're not collaborating enough with these colleagues. So maybe a bit of show and tell. So back in the day, set up like an intranet for the organization so we could have a central place to go share what we're working on. Also have a central place to document some of this stuff about ways of working and stuff like that. And other examples are like you might have to do a bit of marketing. Social media marketing, which was my least favorite thing to be added to my plate and sometimes even shoved towards me as operations director you have to plug in those gaps when there's nobody else doing it. Yeah. And it was like, oh my God, I do not wanna do this social media strategy for the business. But yeah. Anyway, there's certain things that you might enjoy and certain things that you have to do for a little bit, but hopefully you can hand those over. Yeah, good opportunity. Sorry to go on that tangent.

Galen Low:

No, I think it's really good. A, I'm gonna find a link to that book "Range" and I'll include it in the show notes 'cause that sounds really interesting. And, and not a lot of our listeners are probably like, wow, Harv was like P-M-I-T-H-R Finance marketing guy. But what's interesting though is that in a way, those were all projects. They were projects you took on. And that was almost the way you metered them. And I like the fact that you're like, sometimes you're gonna have to do something that isn't fun that you probably didn't want to do. Even for something like social media marketing though, are you like, yeah, I hate this, but I'm gonna learn something. Or is it I'm just gonna do this, but as soon as I can get it off my plate...

Harv Nagra:

I'm rolling my eyes. That was, yeah, coming up with a content calendar was not my highlight. There was probably a point where I did enjoy it a little bit. I think you recognize your strengths, right? And from my, my, my background with like tech and like process and stuff like that, it was always the systems stuff and the training and the tech. That got me really excited versus having to juggle like responsibilities for social media.

Galen Low:

Oh, I like the way you're looking at it'cause you're like, I'll do this for now, but this is not the one I'm keeping. This is the one I'm gonna learn. It's gonna be fun. And then as it gets less fun, I'm gonna hand it off. But it's your way of like getting exposure to things.

Harv Nagra:

Totally. And if there's any kind of like leaders, business leaders listening to this I think it's also important to recognize that there's a little bit of this that you can encourage your team to do to grow their skills. If you're trying to run a business where everyone's juggling multiple hats in areas that is not really their passion and their interest if people are gonna leave, right? And it's just not, what you wanna do is have a project manager being part-time, like social media marketer and someone juggling HR and operations as a side job. It's not sustainable in the long run. So you want to try to make sure you've got internal facing roles and clear roles and responsibilities for people as well.

Galen Low:

I love that. And actually, while we're on the business maturity train, because I know it's a topic that you like to dig into. The other side of the coin, I guess I'd say, right? So in some cases with, in this job market, in this economy, project managers are maybe finding themselves shifting into other organizations. And in some cases and I love saying this because I'm like, I know so many people in my network doing this right now, but in some cases, they are moving from a big organization to something that's smaller and younger and fundamentally just like less mature of an organization. To your point where you're like, you're used to really clean onboarding and then you get there and you're like, cool, I'm excited, but also my login is the last employee's name, and you're like, Ugh. We talked before about, advocating what project manager role could do. I'd love your take on, just like what should someone in that situation be advocating for it to make sure that they have what they need to like do their job well, like how can they spot gaps and then like escalate operational issues in a constructive way, right? They're like their first couple months on the job and they're like, everything's broken, everything sucks. What is the right way to do it?

Harv Nagra:

That's a tricky situation to be in, and I don't know if there's a perfect answer to that. But the first thing I'd say is, you're right, I do love talking about operational maturity and business maturity models. So go look that up. I, it's something that I've talked about my podcast and had webinars on and stuff like that, so I'm sure you'll find content with me talking about it. But these businessing models tend to have five stages, right? Galen, like on one end you are in that make stuff up as you go stage where everyone's just flying by the seat of their pants and it's not ideal. It can be fun if it's the first couple years and you're like, everyone's just about winning business and stuff like that. But you don't want to get stuck in that. And sometimes businesses do, like the MD, the CEO just doesn't have that business acumen. Or even though awareness that things should run better. And they're like 10, 11 years in and it's like still running like that. That's terrible. On the other end of the scale, like stage five is like super efficient, continuous improvement in place and you're really innovating. But I think the most interesting thing is like stage three. I call this the stable era. You end up having like centralized, documented best practice, which helps you onboard people really efficiently and train people and a place where people can go and reference how to do that thing. Not to say that it's super rigid and it's a tick box thing that you have to do this exact thing, but it's documented. The agency or the business has a point of view about this is best practice. Of course now go use your intuition to adapt this to your project needs or your client needs and stuff like that, right? At this stage, you also have really good tools in place, and those tools, in my point of view, they tend to be deeply automated, is what you wanna be looking for. So at those more mature stages, level one and level two, might be creating quotes in the spreadsheet. You might be creating project plans and Smartsheet. You might be time sheeting in like harvest, and then trying to reconcile your budgets and spreadsheets and goal sheets and stuff like that. And it's all a bit disjointed. Again, first couple of stages of business maturity, that's fine, but at some point as you're growing and your head count is increasing and your projects are getting more complex. That is not sustainable because you spend loads of time copying data from one place to another and it wastes time and it's not accurate and everything's always slightly out of date and you don't know how your projects are performing, let alone your business. So I think it's really important at that stage that you have, like your business has deeply automated and connected this stuff, so the information flows better. You mentioned at the beginning, I worked for a company called Scoro, and it's one of these platforms that house all that functionality baked into one place. It's called the Professional Services Automation Platform. So that's also something that you could do is have something like that in place. So I think that's really key. But beyond this, I think, like I was alluding to a few minutes ago, it's not just delivery people. Your business should have internal facing roles, which is super important. So you have an operations director, you have a finance director, you have a resource manager and stuff like that. So there's people in place to create controls. So that it's not just and I've worked in places where it's basically everyone is external facing and that's where everyone is juggling side jobs. And at some point you start pulling out your hair and be like, this is not gonna work any longer. Other things to look out for is that you're measuring performance of your organization. So that comes back to the tools again, that your tools are able to let you see how things are going and what's coming up. So you have a bit of an idea that, are you gonna have the capacity to take on more work or not? Or is your team gonna be burnt out? Are you gonna have the sales that you're expecting to keep everyone busy? All that kind of stuff. So those are things to look for and I would again, encourage people to go check out this business maturity stuff and some of the stuff I've talked about, or reach out to me if you wanna hear more about it, see if those roles are in place, is there an ops director? And if not, then that might be a challenge. But there might be somebody that's juggling that and there's an internal champion already. It might be the head of delivery or the senior account director or somebody that's having to do that as their side job. So make friends with them. And be like, oh, interesting. So you're having to do this. Is there, is there anything I can help with? I've seen it work like this in my past business. Is that something you guys have discussed before? And maybe start planting the seeds a little bit. Also Galen I think you and I have the privilege of creating resources for people in businesses like that, right? So encourage your leaders, if they don't listen to The Digital Project Manager podcast or the Handbook, they just the operations podcast to say, oh, you know what? I listen to this podcast, I noticed it's not something we do. You might wanna listen to that conversation. So that's a way to plant the seed and get the conversation flowing. And it might not change overnight, but at least you're starting that ball rolling and then you can start to see if there's kind of things that you want to, and you're able to, and you're excited about kind of plugging some gaps and getting some experience along the way.

Galen Low:

I love that. I wasn't even thinking about it in that direction as it relates to the other question, but like yeah. Like in some cases, this is an opportunity if you came from a larger organization, maybe there were a four or a five on the maturity scale. You're coming down to something that is, one A you could probably see pretty quickly if the owners and operators there are like Yeah, but that's what makes us. Like we are never gonna mature 'cause we are the micro agency that doesn't do what, a maturity five would do ever. And you're like, okay, and maybe that's fine, but also you know what you're in for. Versus like that excitement of being like, you know what, I can actually help this organization get from one to three. And I'm finding that exciting. Whereas when you're at a four or a five or a larger agency and you're like. That's that person's job, right? I don't do resource management, I don't do finance. I don't do ops. Somebody already has that role, but suddenly you can come at it from the other way and say, actually, that's interesting, and I understand the reasons why. Now, it's not just the structure that's in place, the structure that was built for a reason, right? To give business more predictability and more insight. More repeatability. It's to, inspire growth. It's to do more actually, but like more fun cool things with more fun cool people in a lot of cases. And to actually be like, okay, actually maybe there is a way I can explore and nestle my way into something that isn't just me, leaping into a new job because the job market is tough, could actually be quite a cool opportunity.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah, definitely. And I think there's so many resources out there. So find those communities like DPM or the Handbook or whatever, and take that opportunity to be listening and learning stuff so that you can introduce things yourself or like I said, plant the seeds and things like that. It is a really good career opportunity if you're interested in in evolving your career in a really helpful way. Instead of complaining about that thing, try and go fix it.

Galen Low:

Yeah. I like the Scoro thing too, and the professional services automation thing because in some ways, it's not new. But I think for a lot of agencies of a certain size or organizations of a certain size, it's new. Do you know what I mean? Like they hadn't really thought about it. And I like that notion of being like, cool Hey, you should give this a listen just because just opening the aperture on, the art of the possible. It's yeah, like there's this thing, I was listening to this podcast and yeah, it might be worth exploring because it might not have been a thing that occurred to an organization that is trying to get to level four or five maturity in the model,

Harv Nagra:

and on, on that specific point, like if people listening to this are agencies, we often don't think of our ourselves as professional services businesses like you call yourself a agency or consultancy, not professional services business, so something that's called professional services automation. It's what the hell is that? I've never heard of that. So yeah, it doesn't come naturally, but it is just important to know what's out there and there's kind of separate tools. Then you can have automation baked in and do this kind of deep integration. Native integrations, you can use APIs to build connections to things. You can use Zapier to build connections between apps and stuff like that, but then there's also tools that have that full workflow in a single place, and that's what a PSA is. But anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, but I just.

Galen Low:

No, I like that because I think, you're right. I think a lot of agencies, they use tons of tools. Like we did a survey a year or so ago about how many tools each individual within an agency is using, and it's it's above 20. And people love them. That's the way they, have reliably been able to deliver and they don't want it to go away. So they don't want some big, enormous software to come and take over all the things. They wanna wait for it to glue together so that it's cohesive, that the data's accurate, that no one's copying, pasting anything. It's the dream.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah, absolutely.

Galen Low:

I wonder if we can look a bit into the future because, I know you're big on agency ops, operating models and structures. I'm just wondering what predictions do you have for agencies in the coming year? Are the big agencies gonna keep getting bigger and bulkier? Are the micro agencies gonna get, I don't know, even more micro? Will every agency team member be a freelancer? And what can agencies do to prepare for the future that you see unfolding?

Harv Nagra:

We're starting with a really hard question and ending with a really hard question. It's so hard to say Galen like, when we're recording this is just off the back of the tariffs being introduced last week and the chaos and confusion that's causing and I think initial instinct for anybody working in like an agency or something like that was, we're service-based, so we're safe, but ultimately our clients are the brands and the products that pay for marketing and outsource projects and all that kind of stuff. So ultimately it will have an impact on us. So there's just that whole kind of chaotic thing that we don't know what's happening. So there's just a degree of having to be flexible and roll with whatever comes. But I think that goes back to what I was saying, is having to operate in a really smart, nimble way where you're not wasting resources and you're being super efficient, right? So if you're planning things in a way that you know that there's not gonna be freelancers sitting there for half day waiting for their projects. That is not a good way to run your business and not having the visibility about whether you've got the capacity or you don't have the capacity to take on work and stuff like that. So making sure you're in that kind of state, and I'm probably stating a bit of the obvious here, but I think us relying on AI in more and more interesting and creative ways is gonna be really exciting. I find myself month on month, just, spending more and more time even on like ChatGPT is just, it's so interesting the kind of ideation and kind of the results you can get just sitting with it for a while and and having that kind of conversation. So I think in terms of headcount growth, I wonder if that's gonna stabilize and stay fairly consistent, but we're just gonna become more efficient and capable within the team sizes that we have, which is quite cool 'cause then we can do more and charge more, but keep the same size head counts. To prepare, I'd say, get your operating model right. Think about all those things, the people, the processes, the tools, the data that you're relying on to make sure all of that's in a good place. If you have any influence or like I said, plant those seeds with your leadership team to make sure they're doing it. And then stay efficient and flexible. Keep your ear out into what's happening and keep experimenting and sharing that knowledge in your monthly all hands and stuff like that. Giving people an opportunity to share and inspire one another. All that kind of stuff, because we just need to be able to pivot really quickly and roll with it. If you're too rigid, that's when trouble happens because you're just, you're hunkering down on what it's like today or what it was like last year and you're not ready for what's gonna happen next.

Galen Low:

I totally agree. I think, so much of it is about agility. It becomes a bit more scientific now. Where we can't necessarily afford to not be as efficient as we can be. And that's gonna take some effort. It's gonna take some smart decisions. It gonna, it's gonna take smart planning and it's gonna be looking at the data as we go to see, where it's going. I know that makes it hard for long-term planning, that's the boat that our clients are in. That's the boat, the whole world's in right now. It's an opportunity to innovate, to adapt, and to make your way through.

Harv Nagra:

Definitely.

Galen Low:

Awesome. Harv, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. I really enjoyed this conversation. Again, for folks listening, Harv and I have the first bit of this conversation on his podcast, the Handbook. I'll link it in the show notes below. And yeah, I think overall what an interesting POV. Thank you again, Harv so much for your insights. Looking forward to collaborating more soon.

Harv Nagra:

Absolute pleasure, Galen. Thanks so much for having me.

Galen Low:

Alright folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective! Head on over to thedpm.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.