Adam Cooper (00:02.454)

Okay, so today I'm joined by Harv Nagra, the head of brand communications at Scoro and host of the handbook, the operations podcast. And Harv brings a wealth of experience working at the cross section of marketing and tech and operations. And most notably with professional service firms and helping them mature. So Harv, welcome to the Fractional CFO show. How are you doing today?

Harv Nagra (00:29.016)

Doing really well, Adam. Thank you so much for having me.

Adam Cooper (00:31.772)

Well, thank you very much for being here and yeah, really looking forward to this one and operations and finance are two very close cousins, I would say in the business world. So yeah, really looking forward to this one. I guess to start with, would you mind giving us a bit of a brief introduction of how you got to where you got to? saw from your, you've got quite an interesting background and career path. So it'd be great to hear just a couple of minutes on that please.

Harv Nagra (00:41.004)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (00:57.644)

Absolutely. So I live in London in the UK, originally from Vancouver, Canada. And I moved here about 13 and a half years ago. Adam, I've always worked in the kind of design and marketing area. And I guess earlier in my career, it was more closer to project management or digital production. And that's very much what I was doing when I first arrived in London.

Fast forward a few years, I was kind heading up a digital team at kind of a pan-European agency that was based here in the UK with offices in France and Switzerland as well. And I guess along that journey, Adam, I was starting to kind of recognize that, well, first of all, the business I was working at was a fantastic place to work, but there was a lot of kind of issues related to the maturity of the business is maybe how I would

put it now, but just the way people were onboarded, how tech was set up, when a new starter started, the way systems were used, there was just a lot of inconsistency. And so I had started just stepping in and sorting some of that stuff out.

one because I was on a visa and it was difficult to move jobs. So it was like, okay, rather than just moan about it, which I, you know, I also participated in the moaning, but it was also, you know, I'm going to be kind of stuck here. So I'd rather just sort it out so that it's a better experience. So that's what I started doing. And so anything from like needing to upgrade our internet connections in the office.

to new starters, they would be sat down. This is like pre-COVID. So, you know, we were all in the office, but they would be sat down on an iMac sometimes with like a hundred files on the desktop. And I would just think like how awful an experience that would be on your first day to get a computer that has someone else's login on it, someone else's files on it. So I started setting up all the kit for like new starter onboardings and stuff and started like planning what that onboarding would look like, things like that. And then,

Harv Nagra (03:04.653)

At some point we brought in a finance director. So we were moving from kind of just having a bookkeeper to an FD. And that's also the time where we decided that it was time to upgrade our systems from what we were using and move to a PSA platform, professional services automation platform. So she and I became really close and kind of tackled that initiative together. And we kind of selected a platform, kind of worked with our CEO to plan the kind of

internal comms and roll out the whole system change and all that kind of stuff. And it was such a good experience and I was super motivated and excited about it. And the feedback we got from our colleagues was also like, wow, this was really well executed. And I think it also came with a lot of things like just a big boost in maturity in the way our business was running. And that was where I started recognizing that maybe this is the stuff I...

well, not maybe, but this is the stuff I'm really excited about, behind the scenes stuff, more than working with clients on client projects and that kind of thing. So that was the first inkling. And I used to also look at my skills and think, what am I good at? I'm good at creating a to-do list and getting stuff done. And I think for a lot of us that come from this background, it's kind of like...

Well, what is that? And, you know, there's other people with other very tangible skill sets and I didn't see my own in that way. And it took me many years to start kind of appreciating that this does have value and this is what it means. So I was making a case for operations and eventually it did get greenlit. And yeah, so I did that for a number of years. I'm probably running a bit long, but I'll really quickly wrap up this.

so a few years into that role, I'd kind of solved the problems I wanted to solve. And I was kind of like, well, what's next? Thought about consulting, but I wasn't quite ready. I thought about moving to, a bigger agency. but I also had brought in a system, which was called score. and was really kind of excited by what I saw and thought it would be an interesting opportunity for me to get into tech. So I did join them a year and a half ago.

Harv Nagra (05:23.321)

And so it's the role I'm in now. So I don't do hands-on ops anymore, but I've launched a podcast through this role, the handbook, the ops podcast, as you mentioned in the intro. And so I talked to really brilliant ops and finance leaders, agencies and consultancies and have learned a lot on that in that way. And yeah, so that's a bit about what I'm doing now.

Adam Cooper (05:47.939)

Excellent. Now really interesting and a fascinating journey and one that a lot of agency owners and founders and sort of execs in smaller agencies go through, which is they don't quite understand, you know, the purpose or what operations are or what internal ops are. And I know from a finance point of view, when I've been in agencies and businesses which don't have operations versus those which do, it's night and day. But what, what is it you think,

Harv Nagra (06:12.353)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (06:16.922)

and you mentioned it as well, you had to justify that within your agency. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that some founders or earlier stage companies sort of hesitate to hire those internal ops roles? how can you make that case now that you've been through that journey to sort of persuade them otherwise?

Harv Nagra (06:19.607)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (06:33.559)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (06:36.917)

Yeah, I think I was making that case for years and my bosses were, they said two things that one, you're really good at what you do as digital director heading up that team and we need that role. Okay. First of all, and number two, we've never had an operations role. We don't know how to manage that, that role. So we wouldn't even know how to design your job specs. So there was this kind of block.

that was put in front of me, a blocker kind of that this is not the choice or the path. And I think, I'm sure Adam, you come across this in your work as well, there's this massive fear of kind of non-billable roles often, especially at kind of the earlier stages of maturity in a business where you just think that everyone needs to be billable. And my organization was like that business for a very long time.

And it was, I think it was just around that pre-COVID time where it just felt like all of us kind of senior leaders in the business that were heading up departments and stuff were juggling multiple responsibilities. It was like, you're, this is what your job description actually is and what your job title is, but on the side, you're a bit of HR. You might be running marketing. You might be like me, like onboarding people and rolling out systems and stuff like that.

And so it just felt like we were at a breaking point where like the pipe was going to burst and we can't scale any longer if everyone's attention is so split that they can't focus on what their main duties are. And they're just trying to put all their effort into keeping the business from kind of collapsing, if that makes sense. So I think it is a bit short-sighted, but it's definitely a huge part of unlocking your growth if you do invest in those kinds of roles that can help you.

Adam Cooper (08:19.099)

Hmm.

Harv Nagra (08:28.833)

get stronger foundations in place.

Adam Cooper (08:31.1)

100%. Yeah, they'll definitely see that. And I like the way you put that as a fear of the non-billable role. I think that's so true at the outset of smaller agencies. And it's one of the things that I encourage is not necessarily, you know, dumping money into non-billable roles, of course, but managing it in a structured strategic way so that you've got the right levels of support to streamline operations as well as maintaining focus on the billable roles. So, you know, really, really true. Something you mentioned there about

Harv Nagra (08:39.873)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (08:49.581)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (09:00.656)

the systems implementation that you did in your first role, in your sort of hybrid design digital operations role, and that experience of collaboration with the finance director. Tell us a little bit more about that, because a lot of the audience on this pod are finance folk, and then there's also the non-finance folk and the business owners. So it'd be good to just dive into that a little bit about how you found that, what that experience like collaborating with a finance director.

Harv Nagra (09:07.191)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (09:11.223)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (09:30.606)

I think there's, you know, like this Venn diagram of skills. and, know, obviously one of those roles is deeply into numbers and metrics and in, control of all of that. And then you have this other role that's, more oriented towards process and technology and efficiency and things like that. But ultimately both those roles or those individuals have to be like really,

Adam Cooper (09:30.648)

on that implementation.

Harv Nagra (10:00.493)

be able to see the big picture and the small picture and be able to do that zoom out, zoom in kind of thing and be really, well, hopefully really passionate about the organizations they're in and wanting that success. And also, I think just having really high standards. So I was very excited when this individual, she's still one of my, even though I've left that organization, we speak and call each other every day.

one of my closest friends now, but like we, just was instant like match that you are the person this organization has been missing. That's how I felt and what we needed. So I immediately kind of clung onto her and I think she recognized that in me that, okay, this individual is already doing XYZ for the business. We are looking to roll out this system. He's already been kind of involved in some of those discovery conversations for platforms and stuff.

and that we would do really well together. She was obviously new and needed more influence in the business. And I obviously needed her support as well because she brought a lot of that expertise. So I think there's a lot of complimentary skills there. And I think both of these roles only really flourish when they're working super closely together.

Adam Cooper (11:19.644)

Yeah, interesting. And I like the way when you were talking about the system rollout, you mentioned about the CEO and the internal comms and that change management piece as well. Because I know from experience that you're right, you need the numbers and metrics person, you need the process and efficiency, but having those, that senior stakeholder sponsorship and those softer skills and that softer skills not meant in a derogatory way, but the ability to manage that change.

Harv Nagra (11:29.186)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (11:40.801)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (11:47.982)

and bring it all together. So critical,

Harv Nagra (11:50.158)

Definitely. And I think that's something I recognize intuitively that there was a lot of individuals, especially in kind of client services that were kind of working in his image. If that's, if that's the right way to put it, right. People that he had hired and trained and stuff like that. And in order for those people to suddenly become more process, you know, care about process and systems and stuff like that, it couldn't come from myself.

or the finance director, it had to come from him saying, I'm going to be doing this too. I care about this and this is why you should care about this. And this is what it's going to mean for our business. So we kind of designed that communication program for him saying, this is what you need to say in front of the full business. And then these are the things you need to follow through. You're also going to have to do time sheets and X, Y, Z. Right? So yeah, exactly that.

Adam Cooper (12:44.388)

It's a very familiar story, very familiar story, excellent. So just changing tack slightly, you mentioned when we spoke before about your business maturity model that you've developed. It'd be great to understand a little bit more about that. And I'm thinking from the perspective, first, just to understand it generally, but then specifically how people use it and how CFOs can use it as a tool to grow the business.

Harv Nagra (12:46.359)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (13:04.098)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (13:10.285)

Absolutely. So, Adam, you know, I was mentioning, I'm going to start with a bit of a story. I was telling you there was this point a number of years ago where like all the senior team in this business, we almost had like an intervention with the co-founders saying, we can't do it this way anymore. And this is going to fall apart if you don't really start investing in internal roles. And so they took the point and they hired a kind of an interim COO to come in.

And one of the first things I said to him was that, Hey, look, this is all the work that I've done. I want it to be an ops role. If that's not green lit, I'm probably going to leave. and so he validated everything I was doing. and I got that role. So that's how I entered into it. But one of the first things then he asked me to do is he told me to go look up a business maturity model and said, look it up and see where you think.

We say, so he referred me to a certain one and I looked at it and it was so interesting. It was so eye opening. Cause I was super proud of the work that I had done, to kind of bring the business to where it was and the work the finance director and I had done to bring in this new systems and processes. had documented processes, people working consistently for the first time and stuff like that. But I didn't have a benchmark right for what, what good is, what good looks like in other businesses and stuff like that.

Adam Cooper (14:24.412)

Hmm.

Harv Nagra (14:37.005)

So that's what that business maturity model did for me. so there's a load of models for every industry and sector. They all tend to, I shouldn't say all, but a lot of them tend to have five stages of maturity. And in my opinion, you don't need to go read a book about this or do a course in it. It's just very intuitive, I think.

didn't dwell on this model that he had referred to me for very long, but it really helped me very quickly understand where we were and what we could be aspiring towards. So something that I am really passionate about now, and I think you were mentioning there, I've kind of launched a business maturity assessment or a quiz now. It takes about three minutes, 25 questions, and it kind of gives you a benchmark for where you're at today and what you can do to level up.

Adam Cooper (15:24.689)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (15:32.981)

And the reason I was so excited to launch that and I worked on it over the course of the summer is because I wanted other people to benefit from this kind of awareness and the benefit I had from discovering this. So I just wanted to bring more attention to it. yeah, that's a bit about what it is. And if you like, we can go more into kind of the details of that as well.

Adam Cooper (15:47.782)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (15:56.475)

Yeah, and I'd be interested to understand, the rationale for launching your own rather than leveraging one of the existing ones, I'd be interested to understand that. And then yeah, to dive into the different stages would be great.

Harv Nagra (16:02.711)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Harv Nagra (16:08.459)

Yep, totally. so it's not like I've reinvented a maturity model, right? So they, like I said, they all tend to have about five stages and those stages are fairly similar in their kind of descriptions and stuff like that. What I don't like about the ones that are already out there is I find them, that the terminology they use very academic and corporate and stage names like initiated and piloted and stuff like that. And if I said, your business is piloted like to someone like you'd be like, what?

Adam Cooper (16:28.518)

Mmm.

Harv Nagra (16:37.825)

the hell does that mean? Like, you know what I mean? It's just not very user friendly. So I'm not sure who the audience is, but I am sure it makes these organizations look very academic and stuff like that, but not user friendly. And number two, I didn't see the resources. I am sure there's kind of paid resources where you could go and have these kind of industry organizations do a maturity assessment for you, but those are paid. And again, quite heavy duty to have somebody come in.

Perhaps to do that for you. So I wanted to do something that was much more lightweight and like I said user-friendly So that's why I launched my own kind of assessment. I have kind of designed it around five pillars That are core to a good business operations and that's assessing your people maturity around people around process around technology around data and metrics and growth strategies So those are the five areas we look at

Adam Cooper (17:16.156)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (17:36.518)

and ask a few fairly straightforward questions that people should be able to answer very easily about their role. And you don't have to be a, you know, a CFO or a COO to be able to answer those. can be, you know, head of delivery, for example, would be able to do that. And then you get that score about what your overall maturity is in these five stages and also what your maturity is per pillar. And, you know, I was talking about terminology and stuff. I, I,

these stages, I'll tell you what I call them. Level one is what I call the chaotic era. And tell me if you want me to go into descriptions about these or if I should not. Yep. Yep. Cool. The chaotic era, you know, you might think this is about being a startup or very young business, but you can be in that chaotic era at 10 years into your business, right?

Adam Cooper (18:17.026)

Yeah, no, please do. Give a couple of sentences on each, it'd be great.

Harv Nagra (18:30.091)

And that's really about people not having any standardized processes documented. Everyone's kind of working in their own way. The systems are very ad hoc. People are kind of using whatever they want to use to get the work done. And usually the focus is solely on kind of winning business rather than standardizing anything. So unfortunately, I think businesses can get stuck in that stage far too long. And

I off the top of my head, it's 30 % of all businesses and professional services businesses, including agencies and consultancies don't get past that stage. Level two is what I call the glimmers of growth era. And this is where there's pockets of best practice in different parts of the organization. So that might be because there's somebody in a certain team that is very process oriented. So that was me a number of years ago as part of the digital team being like,

Adam Cooper (19:07.089)

Hmm.

Harv Nagra (19:26.445)

Well, the rest of the organization is being very chaotic, but my team is going to work this way because it just makes more sense, right? We're going to be consistent. So pockets of best practice. You maybe start bringing in a few better tools, but it's still very much. You don't really have a great deal of visibility on where your business is going on your, and control of your finances and stuff like that. Stage three is, um, a really big milestone. And I call that the stable era.

So this is where you have documented processes, you have consistent ways of working and people know how they're supposed to work. They're not learning based on who they sat next to on their first day, but there's kind an onboarding program, so everyone learns that important knowledge of how to work. And at this stage also, I think the business has got to that kind of size where you can't just wing it anymore, so they've brought in better systems. It's not just kind of...

everybody choose your own platform and do whatever you want to do to track your projects and all that kind of stuff. But consolidating and selecting systems more, well, thoughtfully is how I'd put it, right? So one of two things I think happened at this stage, either people have taken their systems and attempted kind of a deep automation and integration trying to use

Adam Cooper (20:33.084)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (20:46.058)

native integrations, APIs and stuff like that to make some of this stuff talk to each other. Or they've gone even a step further and they've brought in a PSA platform, a professional services automation platform, which maybe we can talk about a bit later to explain what that actually is and what that means. So you start generating good data at this stage, but I think usually you're looking back at how you performed last week, last month, last year, rather than really looking forward.

Adam Cooper (21:01.756)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (21:14.894)

And then stage four, sorry, and how many, I forgot to mention. So stage one, I was saying 30 % of businesses make it to there. Stage two was another 25 % of businesses. So if you imagine in those two chaotic kind of stages, that's 55 % of all service businesses don't make it past that. Another 25 % make it to stage three, the stable era. That was a good benchmark. And then stage four is what I call the data-driven era.

Only 15 % of service businesses make it to this stage. And I think where this stage differs from the previous is that you've got those good systems, you've got that kind of automated platform set up, the PSA, whatever it may be, but you're able to, you've kind of leaned into being able to have enough good data, but also understanding how to look forward. So you're able to see where your revenue forecasts are, what your capacity forecasts, your utilization, all that kind of stuff.

so that you're able to guide where your business is going. It's not just gut feel, you're not looking backwards. You can look backwards and you do do that, but you can also make decisions on hiring, on capacity to take on work and stuff like that because you're able to look at those leading metrics and look forward forecasting. And then stage five, I call this the innovation era. Only 5 % of businesses make it to that stage. And it's like,

all of the above, you're firing on all the cylinders, but because all of that is going so well, you can really focus on kind of innovating your client offer and the client experience and stuff like that because all of this, you know, you've got so much control over your organization that you can be doing the really cool, exciting stuff to put you miles ahead of the competition. And again, only 5 % of businesses make it to that level. So you can imagine that that's obviously very rare.

Adam Cooper (23:06.938)

Yeah, no, really interesting and interesting how you've got those metrics in terms of percentages of businesses that get there. In your model, do you have kind of indications of how to move from one to the other? So it's not just a diagnostic, I guess, but also a planning tool.

Harv Nagra (23:22.572)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So again, like the way I've designed this isn't necessarily like an academic approach in the sense that you're going to get volumes of kind of content around that and stuff like that. But what it is is absolutely you get an assessment of the overall score, you get a score per pillar of your maturity. And under each of those pillars, people process tech data and growth strategies.

there is advice on what you should do to get to the next stage. And a lot of that is formed based on, in fact, the conversations I've had on my own podcast, the handbook, really brilliant finance ops leaders and thought leaders and their advice on what you can be doing to get that maturity.

Adam Cooper (24:11.708)

Okay, perfect. I think we'll put a link to the model if you're happy to do that in the show notes. that's really, people can take a deeper dive into that. But yeah, really, really helpful way of thinking about things. Just looking at the, you've obviously worked very closely with a very good dynamic FD you mentioned as you were implementing your systems in your first role or your first operations type role.

Harv Nagra (24:13.336)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (24:16.673)

Absolutely.

Harv Nagra (24:30.446)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (24:37.338)

What was it particularly that made that work so well? Like what did that partnership have in terms of the elements, the chemistry that made it work so well?

Harv Nagra (24:46.734)

I think it was that kind of high standards, know, as kind of somebody that was ops focused, I did have those really high standards for myself and also kind of other individuals or other people, you know, my own team and stuff like that. So seeing somebody else that had that same kind of, and I think anybody that probably works in finance, I would imagine.

has to have those similar kinds of skills, if it can be called that. So it was that seeing somebody that had that really high standard and expectations. And I think the other thing that worked really well is that she was very tech-oriented like myself and process-oriented. So the technology element is so important, right? For both of these roles, there's a lot of use of tech and automation and systems that you have to use. So seeing somebody that was as passionate about that.

Adam Cooper (25:39.1)

Hmm.

Harv Nagra (25:45.167)

enabled us to work really closely together. And I think, you know, I mentioned the Venn diagram before, but there was also that lens we both brought. It was very complimentary and it allowed us to kind of see the blind spots of the other individual. Because I had also come from a delivery background, I was able to see like, we can't design that person like that because the reality of the way we deliver work means XYZ has to happen. Whereas then she would fill in gaps. I know this sounds ridiculous, but at one point we were

having to educate the team on what a purchase order was, is, and why that's important for the first time in your life. You're going to have to raise a purchase order. We're not going to order your whatever your print order or something like that, right? So it was kind of that joined up lens that we were able to bring to it.

Adam Cooper (26:32.732)

Yeah, no, I love that. I'm smiling because I've had that very same experience of needing to educate what a PO is. Yeah, you wouldn't believe it, but it's true. It's true. One thing I love that you're talking about there is having that sort of that seat at the table and making sure that both finance and operations were both there from the outset and working together. And I think that, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this because I think often when you're doing something like a system implementation,

Harv Nagra (26:38.956)

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Harv Nagra (26:53.518)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (26:59.684)

It's not just finance and ops that you need at the table. You almost need a representative of each area. And we talked earlier about the CEO and the client service teams being in his or her image and how important it is that you bring all of those stakeholders at the outset around the table so they can all educate each other. Is that something that you noticed with that project you were talking about?

Harv Nagra (27:23.79)

I think the first time around, when we brought in that first system, was a smaller group. was mostly her and I working together to design this. There was just so much fluidity in the way people were working and it was just like very, very chaotic. it was kind of like, we just need to implement some best practice here and bring people along for that ride, so to speak, and kind of create some education around.

Adam Cooper (27:34.204)

Hmm.

Harv Nagra (27:53.282)

Right. But at some point, Adam, we did have to bring in a second system. I knew one a number of years later because the one we were using got sunset. And actually that's my employer now. So score. the platform I brought in love so much. And that was where it was really interesting. It was a similar exercise in that we were bringing in a comprehensive big system in. Right. But this time around, we knew what we needed to do. and we knew.

Adam Cooper (28:01.135)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (28:21.314)

what worked for our business and what didn't. there's something else I wanted to say about that. We'd done the education exercise with our team. So people also had that kind of, they knew what these things were, why we had to do time sheets, why we needed purchase orders and stuff like that. So in some ways that job was easier. But you're right, that time in that implementation, we definitely got much more input from our

department leads and also like it was a multi-entity business so the heads of like France and Switzerland to get their input and to do some more standardization that we hadn't done before. So things like looking at rate cards or you know quoting templates and stuff like that so that we could be even more consistent in the way we worked across the group that time around so absolutely.

Adam Cooper (29:17.092)

Okay, okay, great. something you've touched on, we haven't dived into, but I'd love your view on it, is around moving roles within an organization to a new area. And often that can bring you into sort of contact with things that you're not so familiar with, and particularly as you're moving on in your career, it might be that you feel intimidated by a particular...

Harv Nagra (29:36.578)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (29:41.092)

sort of part of that new role. What's your advice to someone who's changing roles and moving into a new area of the business and how to overcome that intimidation and just get, you know, dive in really.

Harv Nagra (29:53.359)

I think, well, for me, I never came from a finance background. And I think to this day, I fully acknowledge and I readily admit that that is an area that I need to learn and grow more in, especially if I was to move back into an operational role. And I think in this case, Adam, my friend, that finance director in the organization, I relied perhaps a little too much on her

to fill those gaps in my knowledge just because it was so not my comfort zone and not something that I'm super passionate about. So I do acknowledge that if I was to really truly embrace that role, then a really good ops director also has to be really, really, good at the finance element, if that makes sense and being able to read metrics and stuff. Not to say I'm not able to do that.

at decent level, but I, wasn't just not my area of passion. So I'd say go and seek out those resources because there's a lot of stuff out there, you know, including stuff that you're doing. And it can be as simple as listening to those podcasts, like yours, like mine and stuff like that, that make it really easy and accessible to, learn some of that stuff in a really kind of nice, soft conversational way. But there's a lot of kind of, free resources out there, but also kind of.

relatively cheap courses you can do and stuff like that that help you. But I think you'd be surprised about the amount of kind of free, really useful, industry relevant resources that are out there. You usually just need to enter an email address.

Adam Cooper (31:32.573)

100%. No, advice. There's so much out there and so much that's free or relatively cheap that it's easy to do. Cool. just going back to one thing you said about scaling and you were scaling quite fast in that original organization you talked about. You were lucky to an extent that your finance leader and yourself had that great relationship and you were able to move to a system that took you to that next stage.

Harv Nagra (31:39.886)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (32:02.086)

but I guess it could so easily not have worked, right? And you could, you know, I've seen this, I'm sure you have where you get staff who get burnt out because you don't have the systems and processes in place to allow you to operate efficiently. How do we avoid the burnout? Is it simply about, you know, working, finding good people around the organization, putting in place those best practices that get you from...

Harv Nagra (32:05.038)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (32:14.048)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Adam Cooper (32:27.472)

the chaotic era to the glimmers of growth era, et cetera. What's your recommendation and experience about how to avoid burnout?

Harv Nagra (32:29.134)

Mm.

Harv Nagra (32:35.214)

To avoid burnout. Well, I guess you're looking at beyond the systems kind of stuff. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I think, you know, the to avoid burnout, the real answer is that the leaders that are running the organizations are that are kind of in control of what's happening are recognizing and I think there's noise outside. So I'm not sure if you could hear that, but

Adam Cooper (32:40.348)

That's it. That's it.

Harv Nagra (33:00.174)

I think the real answer is that those leaders that are kind of leading those organizations and able to make the decisions are listening for feedback or signals that people are frustrated. And if they're not, and if they're ignoring that too long, that is what is going to lead to burnout. It's not like the process of maturing or bringing in a system is going to lead to burnout. It's that you've ignored the issue far too long.

And then people, good people start to leave. And I've seen that I was talking to a friend who's just resigned from his role at a creative agency this week. And they are, I think this business is like 11 years old and they're still in that chaotic era, level one. And now, you know, the, the, staff have come from a variety of organizations in various stages of maturity have shared a lot of feedback over the years and they are the, the leaders are unwilling or unable

to make any changes and perhaps unwilling to bring in anybody that can help them mature. And I don't know why that is. But yeah, people leave, I guess. So the answer is that you're going to burn people out by not doing anything about it.

Adam Cooper (34:10.203)

Yeah.

Adam Cooper (34:14.652)

100%. I've seen it. don't know what it is about agencies is that when working in agencies, it is more common than you would imagine that that happens and that that progress doesn't happen through those different eras and different stages, as you say. And perhaps it comes back to that fear of the non-billable, right? It's like the people who can help streamline those processes, the ops people, the finance people, HR, know, those vital functions that are not billable, that are not client facing.

Harv Nagra (34:31.95)

Hmm.

Harv Nagra (34:43.246)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (34:44.54)

They're often sort of left too late and by that point it becomes very difficult for the leaders of the agency to almost accept that they've made that mistake and sort of fess up and face that fear. So I think it's not uncommon, I think what you're saying. Not uncommon.

Harv Nagra (34:57.336)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (35:01.112)

And I think, and yeah, and for a lot of small and medium organizations, I think, there, there's a lot of this kind of accidental founder thing happening where, know, somebody used to work in agency has decided, well, I could do this on my own and do it better. And that's fine. They do that creative or whatever they produce really well, but they were never trained in business or finance. And so there is a fear and an anxiety around the finance elements and maybe even the business element, because they don't know.

Adam Cooper (35:09.125)

Yeah.

Adam Cooper (35:20.377)

Hmm.

Harv Nagra (35:29.388)

So I think the thing is that you need to face that fear and just say, well, I don't need to be an expert in this, but I need to bring in the people that are experts in this and help me level up.

Adam Cooper (35:39.389)

100%. It's like a level of maturity that you need to take as an individual, take that responsibility and open yourself up to those new systems, processes, know, functions often, which you maybe haven't seen or experienced before. Particularly true amongst first time founders and younger entrepreneurs. Not always, but it's something that you need to have experienced and been burnt as you, it sounds like you have and I have as well. So yeah, fascinating. Okay, very good. I'm going to...

shift to our final section, which is our business book bonus section. And this is where we ask our guests to recommend a book or a podcast or piece of content that's shaped how you think about business or operations or leadership and that you'd like to recommend to the audience. So, Harv, what would you like to recommend to the audience?

Harv Nagra (36:29.486)

You know, the one that came to mind when I was thinking about this, and it's quite old, it was a book that I read kind of much earlier in my career. It was called Lynchpin by Seth Godin. And it was about being the best in what you do in your kind of universe. That doesn't mean that you need to be the best, you know, FD in the world, but it means in your local...

whatever bubble that you want to call, that you want to view it as, that you do your best to be an expert and be passionate about that in that space. So that always resonated with me, I think, at that earlier stage in my career. And even now, I think it kind of, it aligns with my kind of view on being like really passionate about what I do.

and wanting to have those really high standards as well for myself and the work I put out. I'm sure there's kind of newer books that I've read, but that was the first one that came to mind when I was thinking about this.

Adam Cooper (37:38.052)

Well, I think I love Seth Godin. I haven't heard his name or seen a lot about him recently, but he's definitely one worth mentioning for the audience to check out. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes for the listeners. Thank you very much. And before we wrap up, where can people find you online? How can they check out more about what you do? yeah, just to give us a bit of an insight into how to find you.

Harv Nagra (37:42.766)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (37:49.71)

Mm-hmm.

Harv Nagra (38:00.598)

Absolutely. So the best place to find me and I talk about operations all the time. So it might be quite interesting, hopefully for you to look at is on my LinkedIn. So linkedin.com slash IN slash Harv Nagra. So that's the best place. So drop me a connect and send me a message if you want to chat about any of this stuff. And of course, I, you know, as mentioned earlier, I host the handbook, the operations podcast. So you can find that on Apple, Spotify, or wherever.

So do check out that. And we've got, you know, I think about 15 months worth of episodes there, which you can go back and check out a variety of topics on. And of course, do check out this business maturity quiz that I've just launched as well. So that might be super interesting to find out where you stand today and what you could be doing to level up as well.

Adam Cooper (38:54.04)

Excellent great stuff. Well, thank you so much hard for joining me today on the fractional CFO show I really appreciate your your time and your insights today. Thank you

Harv Nagra (39:01.998)

Thank you so much.