The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

Mike Della Porta: How to elevate service delivery for scale

• Harv Nagra • Season 1 • Episode 22

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We’ve all had those moments, we land that huge new client – first comes the elation for winning the mandate that will transform our fortunes, and then the mild panic at how we’re going to deliver.

There’s also times when what we do is simply just not that well understood across the organization – there might only be one internal expert, which creates a significant amount of risk for the business if they were to leave.

That’s where assessing – and improving – your business capability maturity becomes critical.

The good news? A business capability maturity model gives you a steer on how you can go from ‘figuring it out’, to something that’s a solid part of your agency’s remit and expertise, then to true innovation – through the prism of people, process, technology and information.

In this episode, we’re chatting with Mike Della Porta – an award-winning tech and operations leader who’s been a COO, CTO, and CIO at one of the top independent marketing agencies in the US. Mike shares practical advice and lessons for agencies looking to scale sustainably.

Here’s what we dive into:

  • What each stage of business capability maturity looks like and what to consider at each 
  • Using tech and tools to scale smarter
  • How to get buy-in from your leadership team if they don’t understand the value of ops
  • How ops roles can become billable and provide value to clients


Follow Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-della-porta/

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.

This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Harv Nagra:

Thanks for listening to The Handbook, the agency operations podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Scoro. How is a platform like Scoro different from project management tools like Asana, ClickUp, and Monday. com? Those platforms can be useful project management tools, but what they don't do is cover the end to end of the agency workflow. What I mean by that is that they're not designed to create your quotes, resource your projects, monitor your budget and financial performance, invoice what you've done, and report on your business. That's the difference between a PM tool and a PSA, Professional Services Automation tool. I think of it like an operating system for your agency that brings together all of these functions and interlinks everything, so you're not left with data in silos and having to copy information from one place to the other. Scoro stood out amongst the competition when I was looking for a new platform at my agency, that's why I brought it in. Sign up for a free trial at Scoro.com. Or if you arrange a demo call, tell them Harv sent you. Now let's get to the episode. Hi all, welcome back to the podcast. If you're a regular listener, you'll know that I often talk about business maturity, how an agency evolves and optimizes its operations. I find business maturity models, an incredibly useful tool to understand where you're at today and what you can aim for. But there's another perspective on maturity, the maturity of your agency's capabilities, what you produce and deliver. This is about the how, how your agency produces its outputs through the lens of its people, processes, technology, and the use of information. The journey of maturity, whether it's operational or capability focused, is never really over. There's always something new to optimize, refine, or improve. That's why I'm so excited about today's guest, Mike Della Porta. Mike is an award winning technology and operations leader who thrives on solving big operational challenges. As the former CTO, COO, and CIO at one of the leading independent marketing agencies in the US. Mike led a transformation of the agency's capabilities to innovate and scale, driving record financial success. With 20 years of experience, Mike founded Della Porta Consulting to help agencies scale sustainably while driving profitability and growth. He also helped launch an operations program at one of the leading agency networks in the States, the 4As, which we'll be diving into today. Let's see what we can learn from Mike. Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Mike Della Porta:

Thanks for having me.

Harv Nagra:

Let's start with your background in the agency and tech space. Could you share a bit about your journey with our listeners?

Mike Della Porta:

Sure. I am a grizzled 20 year veteran of the agency world. 18 of those 20 years was with one of the leading independent agencies in the States, uh, predominantly focused on media, but we, we did have, a rather, large creative practice that focused on a lot of content marketing. But my background is mostly in, in media. And, when I started, we were about 40 people and toward the tail end of my career, we were knocking on 300 folks. So we

Harv Nagra:

Oh, wow.

Mike Della Porta:

growth story that really hockey sticked in the last few years. And during that period of time. I had a chance to really grow with the organization. So I started more on the sort of hybrid role of account management and media planning and buying where, you know, at a 40 person shop, everybody had to do everything. So I got a chance to wear all of those hats, did my own account management and my own insertion orders and

Harv Nagra:

Amazing.

Mike Della Porta:

to, you know, figure out those contracts and then billing and reconciliation. So a little bit of everything along the way. as we started to grow, I had the opportunity to really pursue my passions, which was more on the operations and business intelligence side of things, the technology side of things, and help the organization really develop new capabilities and scale over the last couple of years.

Harv Nagra:

A lot of those areas that you specialize in, we share very common interests in those things. When I first met you, I was really excited to chat with you and have you on the podcast so we could compare notes and talk about some of this stuff. So that's really fantastic. You've done some work with the 4A's as well, which is a huge network in the US. For those that aren't familiar, can you tell us a bit about who the 4A's are and what they do? And talk about some of the work that you've done with them.

Mike Della Porta:

Yeah of course, I love the 4A's. So for those that don't know, the 4A's is basically, in the States, it's the agency trade association. It's a wonderful group of people and experts that are there to support agencies of all different sizes and shapes, you know, everything from holding companies to the independence and as a newly minted chief operating officer, I had approached the 4A's and was asking a few questions around, generally where are my people, you know, I'm, I'm focused on business intelligence and technology stuff and operations stuff. And, you know, we're looking at project management systems. I'm like, are there, are there peers that I can speak with, you know, at other agencies, and there was some really wonderful curriculum and opportunities at the executive level for CEOs and CFOs, but maybe not so much for folks like me, chief operating officers, where I always joke the, the O in COO is other, right? It really varies from one agency to another. So, we had talked in, the 4A's, Molly Rosen in particular, Chick Fox, Grover, Sal Conti, a few others had really supported me and, and hooked me up with a wonderful tag team partner, Kiran Lenz. That, the two of us had co founded and co chaired, what we call it is the, agency operations business transformation round table, AOBT for short,

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Mike Della Porta:

the idea was bringing together, COO, CIO, CTOs, you know, folks that really focused on that tech and operation space for agencies of all ilks and bringing them together and really talking shop. And it was such a wonderful experience in the sense that everyone was so willing to share and we really built a fantastic community. So it quickly became the largest round table at the 4A's over the course of maybe 12, 18 months.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Mike Della Porta:

we drafted a white paper together for the industry.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

like a best practice and, and sort of guide for agencies, again, of all sizes to help navigate the various, uh, situations, scenarios, things that agencies were running into.

Harv Nagra:

Amazing. That is so impressive. And I was having a peek at that, the content sounds super relevant and really a playbook that you can reference in terms of how, how to go through some of this stuff. You do have to be a member to access that, but, you can find out more information about that on the 4A's website. but it's interesting you said, where are my people, and that's something you were kind of missing. I'm based in the UK, as you know, and I've seen the conversation about agency operations grow incredibly, where it was kind of the thing that people didn't really talk about and you felt very isolated and that has changed a lot over the past couple of years. So I'm just wondering, how do you feel things are in that space in the States? Are there more conversations happening as well? Is it being taken more seriously or do you think there's still a ways to go?

Mike Della Porta:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I certainly there's, there's still a ways to go, but I think, I think the biggest change or that the catalyst for a lot of this is, you know, agency operations, no matter how you define it was, was always sort of more in the background, right? These are sort of the unsung heroes, the work that kind of happens in, in the seams. It's sort of invisible in a lot of ways, but these are the folks that you know, really help the agency. Whether it's running the agency, the operations of the agency, or delivering services to clients. These are the people that kind of act as the glue. They, they make everything go. And I think what's happening over the course of time and technology is really the catalyst, is that is things are getting more complicated and clients have a lot more expectations around ROI and transparency and security and other capabilities that agencies are really starting to get into. Ops folks are graduating from being more behind the scenes and invisible to being billable. And so we're moving these, these professionals these sort of Swiss army knife type folks that can do a lot of different things. We're moving them forward In the process and engaging with clients. And I think the agencies that are doing that proactively are going to benefit greatly by introducing the clients to these types of professionals and they can really influence the quality of the work and the ideas and the innovation upfront, as opposed to maybe historically, really just being focused on doing things better, faster, smarter, or fixing things.

Harv Nagra:

I really love that, Mike. And I, I haven't really spoke to anyone that's put it that way in terms of these roles becoming billable, which I think is music to the ears of any kind of MD or CEO of an agency,

Mike Della Porta:

for sure.

Harv Nagra:

that is really interesting, but you're right. The more complex things get and the more technology comes into play. And that's one of the, One aspect of the role of an operations director, right? But we've often had to just apply that behind the scenes and in house. So yeah, I can see the value of that, when you lend out that kind of expertise to a client.

Mike Della Porta:

A 100%. And it’s tricky, right, because whether you’re more gearing towards the analytics side, the creative side, the media side, typically agencies are hired for, you know, their core competencies, but, but every agency is stretching in these different directions, and again, I think the catalyst is largely driven by a technology and, you know, whether it's technology and software development, AI, things that would have been done behind the scenes to just make things go, now these are becoming capabilities and projects that clients are interested in and they could and should be billable.

Harv Nagra:

Very, very interesting. so one of the things that we're talking about today is business maturity. to, to start, could you maybe tell us what a business capability maturity model is for anyone that's not familiar?

Mike Della Porta:

Sure. It's, it's a really wonderful tool that acts as a framework for the organization to assess what your capabilities are. So these are things that, to put it in simplest terms, these are things that you do. So how good are we at doing the things that we're hired for or doing the things that we need to do in order to run a business and agency. It's a great framework to get everybody around a document where there's common language, common definitions of what good looks like, and how do we continue to improve over the course of time.

Harv Nagra:

So, tell us a bit more about what that looks like the number of stages maybe, and the dimensions that come into play.

Mike Della Porta:

Yeah. So typically, um, you know, and there are all kinds of different versions of this, but what they all tend to have in common is it's a five point scale. One being the lowest, five being the highest, and usually what you're looking for is this graduation from level one to two to three all the way up to five in some cases, the idea is that you're evaluating your capabilities through a common set of definitions and attributes criteria, and you look at these capabilities through the prism of people, process, technology and information. And so it's a really, again, nice way for a leadership team, or those that are in charge of departments, divisions, capabilities, to assess how they're doing and really consider what a roadmap looks like and being clear about what your ambition is at the in the in the grand scheme of things, right? It doesn't make sense to be a rockstar at everything. It's actually cost prohibitive to do that in a lot of cases, but where do you really want to place your bets in terms of investment and resources to really shine on the things that your agency needs to stand out for the most hmm. and then hedge a little bit on the other things that maybe aren't as important or would be characterized as more kind of supportive in nature.

Harv Nagra:

And really gives you a steer on kind of the gaps that are causing you the biggest, biggest issues as well. So you can start to unblock So in terms of kind of assessing yourself, and we'll be going into each of the stages in a little bit more detail, so you can walk us through and visualize what that looks like. Okay. But in terms of assessing your capabilities against these, is there a formal way you recommend doing it?

Mike Della Porta:

I mean, you know, so it depends, I suppose, on the size and the scope of what you're trying to accomplish. There's certainly software platforms out and there are companies and consultants that focus on this specifically. I was a, I was very lucky to be a customer of Gartner for a long time. So Gartner, in my view, is a wonderful organization that really helps with this sort of thing. But if you don't have the ability to take advantage of those types of resources, really can put this together in something that amounts to like Excel or a deck. Just some basic tool that gets the information down on paper recorded so that it's shareable and knowable and you can get your leadership team around it and revisit it, you know, maybe on a quarterly basis.

Harv Nagra:

So Mike, even if someone isn't familiar with the idea of a capability maturity model, their business might get to a point where they still recognize there's a need to change I'm sure you can think of some examples, what kinds of things do you think lead to those realizations that we need to mature?

Mike Della Porta:

Sure. So I think two of the classics for any agency is, We've just won a monster new client. We're so excited, but Oh my goodness, our processes and our tech, maybe our people, it all needs to level up in order to capitalize on the opportunity and deliver on the promise that we just made, right. So it's not that anything was, was necessarily wrong. It's just not big enough or, or, or scalable enough. it doesn't have the kind of agility that you need to take on that new big piece of business. The other one that tends to pop up and, you know, the starts to dovetail into, you know, where you start on a capability model typically is on that level one you might have somebody that's just an absolute rock star at what they're performing, but because they're the only person that knows how to do that thing, they're sick, if they go on vacation, if they leave the organization, you have that sort of hit by a bus situation. In other words, there's no redundancy in place. So if that person isn't there doing their thing, everything stops. And so again, if they're awesome at what they're doing and they're, but they're the only person that knows what they're doing, congratulations, you're a Level 1 on the capability model. And one of the things that you need to work on is, that buddy system, getting the tag team in place, building the redundancy, starting to get stuff down on paper so that it's trainable. And you can, you can work on that within the organization so that if and when that person isn't around anymore, for whatever reason, you have somebody else that can slide right in.

Harv Nagra:

I had a client at one point that would constantly bring up the example of getting hit by a bus, that so and so is the only person in your organization that controlling this, you need to make sure we're going to be okay if something goes wrong. But yeah.

Mike Della Porta:

um, you know, another one I see all the time and, and, you know, for folks that have been on the, the operation side of things, most of the time when I got the phone call, it's because it was something new that we had never done before. And so we needed to figure it out. Right. It was maybe something brand new that just came up and it was this amazing opportunity, or maybe it was like an extension and evolution of something that we were already doing,

Harv Nagra:

Mm hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

to harden it. We needed to scale it. And so, you know, that was typically one of the times I would get the phone call. The other time was when something needed to be fixed, it was broken, or it was something that wasn't as good as it could be. And so how do we, how do we focus on improving it? And so, you know, a lot of times you might have somebody that's a practitioner of a certain capability or function, or maybe even a service that you're developing for your client. And in the agency world, you know, there's those old adages of a fake it till you make it,

Harv Nagra:

hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

you know, maybe you have that one person that's doing their thing, but now the question comes up, well, we're doing this for one customer. How do we do it for two customers? How do we do it for three customers? And when that moment happens. You kind of have to step back and say, okay, what is it about what this person is doing or this combination of people, process and tech that we can replicate and scale and deliver on the promise for multiple clients and take advantage of that opportunity.

Harv Nagra:

100%. We're going to be talking about, well, we're going to start by talking through the stages, but we're going to come back to this point as well. so why don't we get into those stages? I mean, the, the first two, maybe not particularly mature. How do you differentiate between those two?

Mike Della Porta:

Yeah, so, I mean, different words for level 1 and level 2, but, you know, typically level 1 is'initial'.

Harv Nagra:

Mm

Mike Della Porta:

You're, you're either starting out, you've never done it before and you're starting it, or it's perhaps something that you've been doing for a while, and it hasn't received the kind of time and attention or maybe the investment. Required in order to do it consistently. Right? So the way that this tends to feel when these activities are happening at a level 1 is it's kind of confusing. It's maybe a little bit messy. Firefighting comes to mind, right? It's very ad hoc is Yeah. sort of the point. Right? And so. Some activities make sense for that. Maybe they happen every once in a while, but if it's something that you really need to build out and scale, that's when you need to start looking at a capability model and saying, okay, what are the things that we need to change again, through the prism of people, process, talking information to, to start to mature this, so moving up from initial to level two, which would be characterized as'managed'.

Harv Nagra:

Mm

Mike Della Porta:

That starts to feel like you have the buddy system in place. You have more than one person that can perform these things. It's repeatable, there's shared knowledge maybe within a team or a department where they can back each other up. And the point there is that rather than it being really ad hoc, and there's not a lot of definition around, like, what good looks like, in level two, starts to take shape and you can start to say, hey, I know that we did this thing really well and we can train it up and we can start to do it on a regular basis.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm,

Mike Della Porta:

or you know another common scenario is, it's sort of a decision around whether or not to outsource.

Harv Nagra:

Mm

Mike Della Porta:

Maybe this is something that, early on, because it was project based, you're outsourcing to a trusted partner. And over the course of time, because the work is more consistent and repeatable. You decide to insource it, or maybe it's the opposite that you're doing something in house because everybody has to do everything. And as you start to grow, you can pick and choose your battles in terms of what you're specializing in, and maybe you look at that work that's a bit more commoditized and send it off to an expert, a trusted partner that can perform those things, and you focus on really what. Set you apart from your competition and what makes your customers the happiest.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. So, Mike, from there, we move into stage three. Tell us what that is and what that looks like.

Mike Della Porta:

Sure. So I, in my view, and especially in my experience, I think Stage 3 is generally what a lot of organizations should be shooting for,'roughly right'. When you start talking about fours and fives and we'll, we'll get there. It starts to ratchet up with the cost and investment is there, but for number 3, it's really where the definition of good is really well understood and you can perform it. It's really at the, the department level, the division level, multiple practitioners at that point. And to translate it, simply said it becomes your bread and butter. Right. These are the things that maybe your agency is known for now. what it feels like, it's, it's routine. It's understood, because you have that common definition of what good looks like. You can get a group of people together and have a retro or a post mortem and have a really great conversation around, hey, here's how we did, here, the next time we do it, because we know what's coming up. Here are the things that we want to change and improve. So it really becomes institutionalized in terms of knowledge at that point. I think, once you're, once you're at that three level, or you're shooting to be at that three level, that's where technology and process really becomes important. So what I, what I've seen in my career is a lot of things that would be characterized as maybe manual in nature, things that you've built and spreadsheets, this is the point where you're probably in the market to look at software to help digitize and automate, or at least set the circumstance, for, for that sort of approach. And so again, it's, it's sort of a neat thing in the sense that as you're building up towards the capability model and moving up the levels, start almost creating a requirements document for, for what technology you might be in the market for, right? You have your people in place, processes documented, the work is getting out on time, on cost. everybody is happy. And now it's more a question of, well, how do we harden this? How do we scale it even more? That's usually the right moment to start thinking about technology and what solutions are out there.

Harv Nagra:

Mm hmm. Thank you for that. So we're, we're going to talk about stage four and you also, spoke about some of the financial investment that four and five require, which I'm quite interested in hearing about. But first, maybe let's talk about what goes into a level four and, start there.

Mike Della Porta:

Yeah, so Level 4 really about feedback loops at that point, right? So you have a circumstance where people and process are locked down. A lot of the work is getting captured in software at that point. So you're creating and capturing information. And so it creates that circumstance for more data driven decision making. whether that's people making the decisions or you have software and algorithms that are helping to optimize those, those results or processes for you, it's really about that measurement and understanding that we have a process that's in control. We know what the range is for looking at what's good and we can manage that to that effect. And, I think it's, it's, it's, It makes sense for certain things. Level 4 makes sense for activities or capabilities that are more tech enabled from the get go. So, you know, some of some of the capabilities I can think of that really lend themselves to that, certainly things related to finance, cyber security on the media side, programmatic and platform driven media planning and buying. There's so much technology at your fingertips. Um, for the folks that are hands on keyboard there, they can take advantage of a lot of the functionality that exists within that software. And deliver really outstanding results for their clients. But the biggest point there is that the functionality exists. You have to take advantage of it.

Harv Nagra:

Excellent. Okay. So, um, level five What does this stage look like?

Mike Della Porta:

This is really about optimization and innovation. So your maturity has reached a point where you have the data at your fingertips and you've, you've more or less created that culture of excellence. So everything is firing on all cylinders You've moved You've beyond improving the process. You're actually innovating on the process or innovating beyond the process.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

So it's a really outstanding place to be in the grand scheme, but again, it doesn't lend itself to everything that an agency would be doing.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm. Mm hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

That information and the people that are in those seats interpreting the information and making decisions and ultimately tinkering and innovating beyond the process that that is a a really important place to be for new capabilities and where maybe the puck is going.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm. Excellent. I really think That helps us visualize how we can go from Starting out with the new offer capability all the way to the other end of the maturity scale with a focus on innovation. All right. So we're going to switch gears a little bit. Given your background and experience, I wanted to ask you some broader questions. So starting with, you know, you talk about the importance of tech and business transformation and the importance of optimizing your tech stack. Can you talk us through that a little bit? Why do you see that as an imperative?

Mike Della Porta:

Sure. I think, um, you know, depending on the size of the organization and how quickly you're growing again, I go back to, it's not necessarily fact that anything is wrong or broken. it's maybe just not flexible or scalable for what your growth trajectory is. Every agency knows a lot of things are born in spreadsheets and sort of these manual activities, and when you start to grow and scale and you start to invest and you need more people involved with it and you start asking yourself questions around, well, where's the single source of truth for this? And how do I know the status of that? That's where technology can really shine. And so one of my favorite examples is certainly project management systems. I've never met an, met an agency that's been absolutely in love with their project management platform. so I, I don't believe that, you know, that exists where there's a silver bullet from a, from a PM perspective. However, the agency is growing. There are different considerations for what you may be in the market for. And that's what I mean by evaluating your technology stack every so often, or, or in my case, I used to do it on a scheduled basis. regardless of what the growth trajectory was, you know, the growth would always pull things, but regardless of the growth, I would always check in on an, on an annual semi annual basis to make sure that everything was, Working the way that we needed to. And I spent a lot of time on the edges of where the work was, you know,

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Mike Della Porta:

folks that were interacting with our clients to really hear firsthand from their experience, what they needed so that I could arm them with the best tech. And so they could deliver the best service to our clients.

Harv Nagra:

That's really great advice. You also talk about kind of inaccurate reporting data silos and endless spreadsheets, and I mean, a spreadsheet is a super easy place to start. So that's why we, I think all just kind of gravitate to that when we start doing any planning, but it does get really messy and hard to stay on top of.

Mike Della Porta:

Agencies are, are, are interesting organizations. You know, I, I, I've worked on the agency side for 20 years.

Harv Nagra:

yeah.

Mike Della Porta:

it's just so core to our DNA to be fast, to be first. there's,

Harv Nagra:

mm-hmm

Mike Della Porta:

you know, I can think of times in my career where I was kind of an, an adrenaline junkie, right? Like I, I would love. would always love to be where the action is, right? Whether it was a firefighting or like something new that we were doing, but the point was is that it was new. It was exciting. It was fast. It was unpredictable. That sort of

Harv Nagra:

Mm,

Mike Della Porta:

in the face of a lot of the discipline that you need from a business intelligence perspective to slow down a little bit and adopt more of a mindset of measure twice, cut once, right? So

Harv Nagra:

mm

Mike Della Porta:

there's this illusion that going fast somehow saves you time when, in effect, it actually more often than not causes the team to go back in time to fix and correct things that they, they should have spent a little bit more time focused on in the first place, right? Or maybe partnering with our clients, partnering with our partners, getting the alignment, the stakeholder alignment up front to really understand what are we all trying to accomplish together? Where does this information come from? we get it? Do we trust it? Like the lineage of information is really important. just simple things like naming conventions and versioning. Are they attachments, are they it up in the cloud? Very, very tactical things that, that if you have a good handle on can really be a lifesaver in the grand scheme in terms of accuracy and efficiency.

Harv Nagra:

Mm

Mike Della Porta:

a, from a data and analytics and BI perspective. So I like to work with teams where, you know, typically the, the activities are very manual in nature. There's a lot of spreadsheets. And the first place I like to focus on is really just what are the needs? What are those business questions?

Harv Nagra:

mm

Mike Della Porta:

everybody's

Harv Nagra:

mm-hmm

Mike Della Porta:

on and developing something, you know, almost a cousin to the business capability model is a maturity framework, or I'm sorry, a measurement framework rather

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Mike Della Porta:

nails down. What are those business questions? What KPIs help us understand the answers to those questions or give us insight? Where does the information come from and can we draw a straight line across of those things? All before pulling a spreadsheet, typing a number into a piece of software. Let's get that alignment first to make sure that we're all on the same page.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. So Mike, when it comes to improving ways of working, sometimes I hear in house ops people say that I get it and I know this is important, but my MD isn't on board. What would you, what would you say to them in terms of advice? Mm, mm,

Mike Della Porta:

You know, ops people are so great, they can do so many different things and I think, you know, culturally that's a really big consideration in the grand scheme in terms of the approach. So culturally, if operations is considered more kind of back office behind the scenes, maybe just getting the phone call when things are broken and need to be fixed or sped up, knowing that start point is important. And so how do you how do you start to reposition within that circumstance? It's understanding the value that you can create. And most importantly, it's the value that your stakeholders are yearning for. So if you can understand what that is and how to speak that language and then work with your colleagues and your stakeholders and your leadership to help them understand how you can do that, how you can add that value or create that value. the most important part of, of starting that journey ops people in my view, and I was guilty of this too. We, we focus a little bit too much on how we need to focus on why, and if we can do that and really get to the heart of that, then we have all kinds of tricks, all kinds of tech and processes and methods and tools, all these things that we can bring to bear. creating that value,

Harv Nagra:

Mm

Mike Della Porta:

and getting into the seat of the stakeholders critically important.

Harv Nagra:

hmm. Absolutely. So, Mike, another thing that I hear ops people say is that they might come into a level one or level two business and they end up feeling really overwhelmed because there's so much to fix. And it's like every problem I go to fix, I uncover five others. What would you say to them?

Mike Della Porta:

Yeah. Isn't that the truth? Um, I think a good project charter can be an invaluable tool in the grand scheme because you're right. Inevitably, you'll be sent out on a mission.

Harv Nagra:

Mm,

Mike Della Porta:

uh, doing your thing and you'll, you'll uncover all kinds of interesting things along the way. And what I,

Harv Nagra:

mm-hmm

Mike Della Porta:

told my, my teams is write that stuff down. Let's report it up

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm

Mike Della Porta:

check in on that, but let's be careful not to get derailed. Right.

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Mike Della Porta:

words, if it's not

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Mike Della Porta:

to the mission that we're on already, let's see that one

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm

Mike Della Porta:

we have a backlog of things that, Oh, that was interesting, or, Oh boy, this is going to come back to haunt us in a little bit. Let's circle back on that stuff

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm

Mike Della Porta:

the initial mission. And I think that's important because it can turn into. You know, I always call these like sort of Frankenstein projects, right? You start off with one thing and then it just starts appending all these different, uh, other, other sort of submissions in the grand scheme. And what ends up happening is you never actually complete anything.

Harv Nagra:

Yep.

Mike Della Porta:

then that

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm

Mike Della Porta:

uh, your ability and credibility with your stakeholders to do that next thing. Right. So important to deliver on that first promise, collect the intelligence and, and the things that you've uncovered. And then we can, we can wrap that up in a, in a new project and set off on that.

Harv Nagra:

Really, really good advice. The backlog. I think focusing on the things that are going to be a factor in this project and then just putting the rest the backlog is really, really good advice.

Mike Della Porta:

I mean, harv, another strategy, just building on that quickly is a new ops person being invited to the party on a particular thing. It can be overwhelming, um, identifying where the low hanging fruit is. Is really important, right? So, you know, that adage of, you know, let's not boil the ocean, find something that you can really knock down and create a lot of value, build the stakeholder excitement, the credibility and use that as the foundation and the momentum to do bigger things later on, I think is a really nice strategy. I've seen that work quite a bit.

Harv Nagra:

Excellent. Mike, last couple of questions. Is there anything else you'd say or advice you'd give to someone in an Ops role that maybe we haven't covered or do you think we pretty well covered the range?

Mike Della Porta:

No, that's a, that's a great question. And it's somewhat related. I'm teaching business intelligence at my alma mater, the

Harv Nagra:

Mm hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

I was talking about this with my students, I think for ops people, for business intelligence, people, for anybody in that, in that arena, the curiosity is so important and collaboration and the relationships. the most important, the tools, the tech, as much as I love technology and everything that's out there and how fast it's moving,

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Mike Della Porta:

it's all incredibly exciting,

Harv Nagra:

Mm hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

I'm just gonna continue to change and move, and morph into all kinds of things. So how we get the results that we're looking for is, is a little less important than that, that why, and building the relationships and understanding your stakeholders. So for those that are in in the arena or about to enter the arena, I would ask them or encourage them to really focus on the more the soft skills and the people in the relationship. And the tools and the solutions will, will swiftly follow.

Harv Nagra:

hmm. I like that. Um, where, where do you think the next couple of years is going to take us in terms of like the, the, the tech that we use in agencies?

Mike Della Porta:

Oh boy. I can answer that in two ways, I mean certainly everyone is talking about AI and all its different flavors. So, you know, on the media side where everything is so tech enabled and is, Throwing off so much information. I think there's a wonderful opportunity there, to further, further integrate AI and machine learning. It's, it's always been there. It's always been in the software. That's sort of the funny thing in the grand scheme of things is that, you know, the, the world and the industry is talking about AI and machine learning as if it's a new thing. It's just, it's, I think it it's become a bit more in the forefront of, of. The public in the grand scheme, where, you know, if you work in ad tech, especially this is, this has been the case for forever, practically. Um, but with that being said, I think, I think the integration into the workflow and taking advantage of the functionality is, is really the most important thing. And it's moving so quickly, it's making the time. For those people that are hands on keyboard to learn the new bells and whistles and figure out where it applies for their work. So that's really important. And then from a from an agency perspective and enterprise perspective, I think it's really looking at your operations staff and your technologists, whether they're formally identified as such or identifying those maybe citizen developers or those high potentials. And really arming those folks with the, the circumstance and the learning and development, the support really help them realize their potential, because those folks are really going to be the future leaders of your organization. they're going to be the future strategists. They're going to be the reason that your clients sign up with you. And so those people and making sure that they're ready and that they're visible and confident and creating a lot of value. where I would focus a lot of time and energy.

Harv Nagra:

That is such an inspiring note to end on and, and really gives us something to think about. Thank you very much for that. so Mike, we're coming to the end of our discussion. Can you tell us a bit about the kinds of businesses or agencies that you support and what kind of work you do with them?

Mike Della Porta:

Sure. I love working with agencies. It's certainly my background. I have a special place in my heart for agencies. I'm also a Lean Six Sigma practitioner. So where I, where I love to engage with agencies, are sort of in two circumstances. Agencies that are looking to grow proactively or they found themselves in receipt of, growth opportunities. They won that next big client. And in both cases, they're looking to really harden their, their processes and their technologies. So oftentimes it takes the shape of, Hey, we have all of these processes or we have the technology that we have. can we, can we partner together? Can you look at what we have and make recommendations on. scalable? What's not? If we're in the market for new talent, new process, new technology, how do we characterize what that is and make sure that we're making the right choices?

Harv Nagra:

hmm.

Mike Della Porta:

And so not just helping with the evaluation and recommendation along those lines, but in many cases, helping with the implementation as well. Because that's really kind of the hardest part at the end of the day is the change management. You've, you've bought a new system or you've brought on a new team of people. Everyone's excited for that new thing, that new opportunity, but where the rubber really hits the road is the implementation and the, and the change management. And that's something I specialize in.

Harv Nagra:

Excellent. And do you kind of work across the U S then or kind of closer?

Mike Della Porta:

do. I'm based in Western New York, go Bills! but I work with agencies across the country.

Harv Nagra:

Amazing. And if anyone wants to go and learn more about you, Mike, where can they do that?

Mike Della Porta:

Sure. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so you can find me there, or, I would love a visit at my website at dellaportaconsulting.Com.

Harv Nagra:

Thank you so much. Mike, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. So thank you so much for, for joining us today.

Mike Della Porta:

Oh, thank you for the opportunity. And I love that you're doing this podcast and helping us agency folks in operations, uh, get together, share best practices and learn a little bit.

Harv Nagra:

Thank you so much, Mike. All right, everyone. Welcome back. That was a really interesting conversation. I found myself in the past debating the methodologies we followed to deliver certain outputs, discussing how we could simplify, standardize or speed up the process. And I think Mike's examples really illustrated how you can look at that step by step from where you're just starting to offer a new capability in your business, and maybe there's just one person taking control of that, over to level two, where you maybe have a buddy system. So there's a couple of people capable of delivering whatever it is. Then on to Level 3, where it's well systemized and now it's just a standard part of your offer. Mike was indicating that Level 4 and 5 take considerable more time and cost investment, but there could be advantages in moving to those stages as well, where you become tech and data enabled to really optimize what you're doing, and finally to Level 5, where everything is in excellent state, and you can really lean into innovation. Another thing I found really interesting about what Mike was saying early on in the conversation is not only how Ops fits into all of the above, in delivering those capabilities and maybe designing those methodologies and processes, but how our skills, our approaches and our use of technology mean that we can actually start to go beyond optimizing in house work and become billable in supporting clients with their work. That's a really exciting thing to think about. It's essentially making the move from operator to perhaps technologist. Now, if you'd like a cheat sheet with the key takeaways from this episode, then head to scoro.com/podcast and sign up for the newsletter. We always drop you an email the week after the podcast episode goes live, so you have the learnings on hand to put into practice. I'm gonna leave it there. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who would appreciate this conversation. And do encourage your colleagues to subscribe to the podcast. I'll be back soon with the next episode. Thanks very much.

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Harv Nagra

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