Jamie and Hannah chat with Rachel Gertz, Director of Growth and Delivery at Louder Than Ten, about her expertise on project management within digital agencies and creative studios. She emphasizes the importance of alignment between sales and project management, regular check-ins, and effective communication. Rachel discusses her journey into project management, the challenges faced, and solutions for improving departmental alignment. They discuss the need for flexibility, continuous improvement, and the value of project managers.
"Alignment is going in the same direction, fighting for the same things, and looking at the same big picture together.” – Rachel Gertz
The finer details of this episode:
● Importance of project management and operations in digital agencies and creative studios
● Challenges in project management and the need for alignment between sales and project management
● Solutions to improve communication and alignment between departments
● Importance of understanding client goals and business objectives during the sales process
● Concept of time in the sales process and optimizing operations for long-term efficiency
● The three questions of project management: "Where are we? Where are we going? Are we okay?"
● Importance of ongoing alignment, regular check-ins, and alignment exercises for client satisfaction and project success
Episode resources:
● Summit Virtual CFO by Anders website: https://www.summitcpa.net/
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● Digital Dollars and Cents: A Virtual CFO’s Playbook to help Digital Companies Create a Financial Roadmap to Success, is now an audio book! Download it here: https://vcfo.summitcpa.net/ddc
Timestamps:
Welcome to the Creative Agency Success Show (00:00:00)
Introduction to the podcast and anticipation of the upcoming discussion with Rachel Gertz.
Insights from Rachel Gertz's Interview (00:00:14)
Discussion about the valuable tips and insights shared by Rachel Gertz in the podcast episode.
Improving Client Onboarding Process (00:00:36)
The importance of implementing new client onboarding strategies and the potential impact on client efficiency and improvements.
Implementing Advice from Rachel Gertz (00:01:11)
Encouragement to implement the advice shared by Rachel Gertz and the anticipation of positive outcomes from the episode.
Introduction of Rachel Gertz and Hannah (00:02:10)
Introduction of Rachel Gertz as the guest and Hannah as the special guest host for the episode.
Rachel Gertz's Background and Passion (00:02:35)
Insight into Rachel Gertz's background, passion for project management, and the focus of Louder Than Ten.
Rachel Gertz's Transition to Project Management (00:03:15)
Rachel Gertz's transition to project management, her background in teaching and education, and her passion for the softer side of project management.
Common Ailments in Project Management (00:05:14)
Identification of common challenges in project management and the impact of misalignment between sales and project management.
Improving Communication Between Departments (00:06:50)
The significance of communication between departments and the need for solutions to ensure effective communication among all departments.
Sales Process and Project Management Handover (00:07:43)
The impact of rushed sales processes and the importance of aligning project goals with business goals for successful project delivery.
Optimizing Sales Process (00:09:00)
Strategies for optimizing the sales process, including vetting criteria, involving subject matter experts, and aligning project goals with business goals.
Project Management Alignment Exercise (00:15:36)
Recommendation to use a client fit matrix for alignment exercises and the importance of regular check-ins to maintain alignment throughout the project.
Weekly Team Check-Ins (00:17:57)
Flexible approaches for weekly team check-ins, including the format, cadence, and the incorporation of project-related health questions.
Guiding Conversations and Asking the Right Questions (00:19:33)
The importance of framing questions to guide conversations and ensure the right answers during check-in meetings.
Each topic title is followed by the starting time of the segment in the podcast episode.
Project Management and Change Management (00:19:48)
Discussion about handling changes in project scope, involving project managers, account managers, and sales.
Flexibility in Project Scoping (00:21:46)
Exploring the idea of designing projects with flexibility and adaptability, and the impact on pricing and project direction.
Believability and Billability of Project Management (00:24:19)
Addressing the struggle of getting project managers and account managers billable, and their role in the project's success.
Post Project Evaluation and Continuous Improvement (00:26:28)
Importance and process of post-project evaluation, including setting a window for project closure and conducting lessons learned sessions.
Favorite Concerts (00:32:38)
Casual discussion about the hosts' favorite concerts and musical interests.
Final Thoughts and Contact Information (00:35:28)
Guest's final thoughts on project management, operations, and the importance of slowing down, and sharing contact information for further resources and support.
Intro (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Creative Agency Success Show, the go to resource for agency owners looking to scale their business. Join us every week to stay ahead of the curve and position your agency for future success.
Jamie (00:00:14) - Okay, everybody. Yeah, we just had a great interview with Rachel Gertz from Louder Than Ten and again, I talked about it at the end of the podcast, but a lot of notes that I took away from this, you know, I kind of mentioned it in the podcast, but we started using PMS several years ago, and it's something that we really value and making them better is always something I'm interested in. So, I thought she brought a lot of really good tips to this episode.
Hannah (00:00:36) - Yeah, I totally agree. Like, I have things that I'm even thinking of, for whenever I do a client onboarding and that I want to take back and start to implement, just even for myself in my own processes and I know that there are things that our clients are going to take away from this conversation with Rachel, because I feel like this is always typically an area where we can find efficiencies and improvements.
Hannah (00:00:56) - So, anytime that we can just kind of like grab from somebody's knowledge who's like in the weeds and the thick of it, we should absolutely take the time to do it and I think Rachel gave some incredible advice for these roles within agencies.
Jamie (00:01:11) - Yeah. And you kind of called it out as your highlight, but I love it when there's questions that people use in order to summarize stuff. Right? Like, I think that's one of the best ways to really think about I'm thinking about, like our onboarding emails from our PMS, like, why aren't we just answering these three questions? And that's going to give the client everything they need. So, she really gives them good tips around that and had a couple of them throughout the episode. It's kind of listen for those and pause when those come up, because I think those would be some good notes for all of our, all of our listeners.
Hannah (00:01:34) - Yep, I totally agree. And then report back to us and let us know what you did implement from this episode, because I'd love to hear it because I have, I have full faith that you're going to take something away from this episode that you want to go take back to your team.
Jamie (00:01:47) - Definitely. Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's episode. I'm very excited about today's guest. We have Rachel Gertz with LouderThanTen. So, I'm very excited to talk to her about all things agency life but before we get to Rachel, we also joined by a special guest host with Hannah. You're here? Hannah, from a couple of our other podcasts, but she's filling in for Jody today. So first, welcome to the show, Hannah.
Hannah (00:02:10) - And then. Yeah, thanks. I started to show up in a shirt, you know, like, make everybody feel like, you know, familiar, you know, just, but I didn't have one in my closet to be able to. I don't know if.
Jamie (00:02:24) - That's too flattering to Jody. If we're wearing Hawaiian shirts, we try not to do that. That's right. All right, Rachel, so, why don't you start off by telling us a little about yourself, a little bit about your background and your company, and then we'll just take it from there.
Rachel (00:02:35) - Yeah. Thanks for having me today. It's excellent. Rachel Gertz, I'm the director of growth and delivery at LouderThanTen and our whole passion is helping folks run their projects with ease and we do that through project management, operations, training and consulting. So, we work specifically with digital agencies and creative studios and also like creative teams that are inside of larger enterprise orgs where they almost have to treat the rest of their decision makers and stakeholders like clients. So, that part is kind of key for us.
Jamie (00:03:07) - Awesome. So, so, just tell us a little bit about your background prior to working there and so, where'd you start and how'd you how'd you kind of get into focusing on PM and ops?
Rachel (00:03:15) - Yeah, yeah. So, I, this has been like a lifelong thing. So, like 15 years of this louder than ten, and entering into it, I actually have a background in teaching and education. So, and just like psychology, it has been one of the other things that I'm passionate about. So, when I started it was like 2009, I think, and my, my then partner and, business partner, Travis, we started freelancing on the road and we took a Winnebago trip all the way around the United States.
Rachel (00:03:43) - Before then life was a hashtag before Instagram existed, which I know ages me a little bit. But while we were there, we were doing project management, freelancing and design and development for clients and working with digital agencies doing that and as we started growing into our niche, we realized that project management is something that a lot of people treat it as like, you know, side of the desk thing. You have got to do it. It's just like a must have, but there's so much nuance to it. My hope is that kind of, by the end of today, everyone's going to fall in love with it a little bit. I see it as this opportunity to, you know, treat like the team as the super glue that keeps everything together. Right? It's the thing that ties ops in finance, project management, account management. All of these pieces come together to kind of guide and direct the guide and direct the company. You need to have folks that are savvy doing this stuff and my, my passion is just looking at like, how we get that work done in that space and the softer side of it that makes it possible for us to run more ethical companies when we distribute the power that we have in projects to the right people, at the right times.
Hannah (00:04:56) - I love that. So, since you're so immersed in this space, are there common ailments that you see within project management and teams across the agency space that you're like, yep, that's common. I've seen that before. Like, are there common themes across the space that you see often?
Rachel (00:05:14) - Yeah, I'm sure you all are so familiar with this. Right. But it's like what you sell and what you deliver becomes fundamentally two different things, right? your client purchases project A, and then what you have to deliver ends up being project B, because we didn't know what we didn't know at the beginning half of the understanding that comes from it is like realizing, oh, the way that we tackle this problem has to be different. So, we sort of see that major shift happening. It's like an 8020 rule I'd say we see that from the sales process to that, initial project handover. That's where a lot of the breakdowns happen. So, it's wild and then of course, you can imagine like there's all of these other situations where if you have misalignment between account, and project management, that's another breakdown.
Rachel (00:05:57) - If you have misaligned, it's like the gaps between the actual phases is where you're watching for all of these, like in systems, right, where the breakdowns happen, design and dev and handovers to quality assurance, all of that. Right. So yeah, I'd say hands down if we can tackle the issue around sales to project management handover process, first you're going to see a big difference in the way that that team is able to deliver and how successful they can be.
Jamie (00:06:25) - Yeah, it's funny I think it's true in every industry. Right. Like, communication between departments is so important. Like, I remember being an auditor at a restaurant and talking to one department, and they just have no clue what's happening in the new product development department. It's like, well, you guys really should be talking to each other. So, now that you've identified that problem, let's give you some solutions. So, other than just like, hey, you guys have to talk to each other, like, how can you make sure that all departments are speaking to each other.
Rachel (00:06:50) - Yeah for sure. So, I mean, specific to the project management, like the sales, the project management handover area, what we often see is like what was sold is different than what gets delivered and when I say that, what I'm often talking about is we're not spending enough time a surfacing possible risk and opportunity in that sales process. We're just jumping to try to close the sale without getting to know the client, the need, their own business goals. I find it hilarious that when we then when a lot of agencies like sign a new client, they can identify project goals, right? One, two, three, they've got them listed out, but they don't actually know what the business wants to do and so, if those things are misaligned you're basically taking them in the wrong direction and wasting their money and that doesn't open up revenue streams for them, which then opens up more revenue streams for you as well. Right? So, I find it almost hilarious but it's painful because it happens way too much.
Rachel (00:07:43) - So, it's not that funny, actually but yeah, that's one of the major areas and then these other solutions that we notice, just in the same way that that sales to process is rushed, oftentimes you'll see the same thing with like the onboarding process gets rushed. So, I like to say the client should always understand these three things. Where are we, where are we going and are we okay. Right. If they know those things at all points in the project, things are going to go fairly well, it's when they start losing track of that and we're not communicating in a way that's like, I'm your point of contact. I'm going to make sure that I push back against things that will take us in the wrong direction and that steady hand and that firm, direct way of managing scope. I think that part is really key.
Hannah (00:08:29) - And so, when you talk about time, a lot of times, especially in the sales process, because we talk about this a lot in terms of the sales cycle extending.
Hannah (00:08:36) - And you know, you throw out time out there and I feel like some people might immediately just kind of recoil at hearing like, oh, you're going to add more time to my sales process but would you say that in getting these systems and operations like running smoothly, that at the end of the day that it helps? Or are you truly looking at adding some more time and you just need to plan for that in your sales process? Or are you actually going to save time in the long run?
Rachel (00:09:00) - Yeah. So, I don't know if you probably folks have heard these stats too, but I think I was reading something like enterprise clients are taking about a year to close now for our agency folks, which is an exorbitant amount of time having to go through the procurement process and all of that. So, I am not necessarily suggesting adding more time. Overall, I'm more using it to optimize. So, for example, call number one, there's probably vetting criteria that you need to have in place right.
Rachel (00:09:28) - To begin with. You know, you're, you can score your clients from 1 to 4 and you know what those criteria are your whole team understands what those are, then after call number one or whatever conversation you're having, it's a great idea to bring in either subject matter experts and or project leaders into the conversation, for sales, call two, even if they were just a fly on the wall so that there's a way for you to communicate. We have this way of talking about it where like, you can use, like on your keyboard, you can use like the pipe and the carrot to almost show like, this is what a red flag is for the potential conversation and market so that you can have a conversation internally about it and then surface are there other areas that we should be looking at because we just don't talk about things like new faces, right? New stakeholders showing up or if they're new in their role and they're like, let's change the direction like, that is something that's important, how they work with somebody else before.
Rachel (00:10:21) - How did that go? Where did they see those patterns breaking down in the past? And like, what did they learn about themselves over that process? Those are, you know, things that give you an insider view on how you can support them and that point of contact on the client side, which basically means, hey, where you headed in your life? I want to help you get there. How? What does that look like related to your goals within your, this client's organization? So, it's kind of like this client management approach but I see it as almost like very complimentary to the project management role. It helps when project managers understand and do this stuff.
Jamie (00:10:59) - Yeah, no, I think that one of the things I want to get to this question a little bit later, but I have a question before it but one of the things that I want to ask you about, so don't let me forget this is yeah, I want to talk about like post project discussions. I think a lot of those questions you talked about might come up in that.
Jamie (00:11:14) - Okay. Projects done. What could we have asked in the sales process that would have made this project go easier? Before I got to that, you mentioned the three, the three questions of project management. So, where are we? I think I understand that one. Where are we going? I think I understand that one. So, I want to understand the third one a little bit better. Are we okay? Are we talking about, is the project, okay? Is everything okay? Like, what are we what are we curious about here with this? Are we.
Rachel (00:11:37) - Yeah. Thank you for asking. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there's the. Are we okay? Just like, if we were going to assign a color to this project. Red, green, yellow, what would those related colors represent? That's a simple way to get that sort of on track off track and I'm shocked again at how many, how many agencies I hear don't do any kind of like, are we on or off with this, with this direction.
Rachel (00:11:58) - Then there's also like the individuals on the project. So, the one thing is like project managers do not have direct authority over anyone. They are accountable for project success only. So, all of their influence in power is referential it's like, hey, if you're if you like me, we're going to do a great job together so, the best role of a project leader would be to get in there and actually support removing obstacles for their teammates. So, checking in with their teammates to be like, what would make your week go more smoothly? Is there anything that I could do to have a conversation about with other PMS, about other projects you're on to smooth out resourcing for you. So, that type of treatment for teams and then of course the client themselves. Right? Like, your point of contact and then any other sort of voices in the shadows or those mystery voices that you would kind of see coming in from the background, we want to make sure that there's alignment there so that you're not going to have a situation where they're going to swoop in poop later and come and try and tank the direction on you so that are we okay can come back to metrics.
Rachel (00:13:00) - You know, just like very simple qualitative and quantitative metrics around project success. It can come back to just like, we try to stray a little bit further away from utilization metrics, only because there's like a really dark history around the scientific method and this carrot and stick management technique, where the harder you work, the more you'd be rewarded but if you weren't working hard enough, you would be punished as a worker back in like the early 1900s and it was like punishment, like severe punishment. So, we're our whole thing not to get too distracted is trying to decouple time and labor when possible and focus more on value and the design of the relationship, you know, together. Yeah.
Jamie (00:13:43) - So, so, that's one follows up question here. Sorry I want to make sure, okay. Okay. So, just so you know, like, one of the things that we did very early on was we hired project managers as an accounting firm and I don't think there's a ton of accounting firms that use project managers.
Jamie (00:13:57) - I'm trying to think through telling my project managers these three questions. So, I love the are you okay. I want to ask a little bit more about where we're going before Hannah asks for follow-up questions so, where are we going? Is it like, the long-term goal or is it the next steps or what is that type of how do you answer that question, for the for the.
Rachel (00:14:15) - Yeah, yeah. Where are we. Where are we going. So, where are we going again. It's like ensuring that project goals match business goals. It would be ensuring that we have the right people at the right times, at the right things. It's like making sure that people know what their next day focus is. Next week. Focus is clarity on the month. Focus, like all of that is just it's around alignment again, right? So, whether you're looking at like a kind of a you could have a simple checklist. So, we like the, where are we going did, we ask all three of these questions or all four of these questions.
Rachel (00:14:43) - Or if it's just simply a touch base with your team but yeah, it's kind of like an umbrella, theme for asking where are we going together? And it does relate to all the stakeholders and all of the goals.
Jamie (00:14:56) - Makes sense. Okay.
Rachel (00:14:57) - Okay.
Hannah (00:14:58) - Is it my turn?
Hannah (00:14:59) - Okay. Okay. Thanks. So, my question.
Hannah (00:15:03) - Does relate to the to the three to the three questions, I have a client specifically in mind that I'm thinking of who in their project management process, they aligned very well on the very front end of the project but now they've gotten to a milestone and suddenly the client's not happy with how things are going. Like they've gotten misaligned at some point. So, are you also suggesting that your team keep up with this beyond the onboarding process, like throughout the actual project? Like, do you have milestones or points whenever you would recommend making sure you're keeping a pulse on those questions throughout the process?
Rachel (00:15:36) - Yeah, yeah. So, again, like I would recommend we have like an actual alignment exercise that's based on a matrix that we call it the client fit matrix.
Rachel (00:15:44) - So, first of all it'll let you like gut check your sales alignment with your actual delivery alignment because everyone does it independently and then you like talk about it and you go, oh, I put that client in the like, better be a great client corner versus someone else who's like, no, that isn't a like, don't even think about it category. It's like, well, why is that different? Right. And the goal of trying to get them to move more towards aligned with goals and lower on the risk category. So, that's like if you ever got stuck, you could simply do that as an exercise to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, are we okay here? But in terms of regular cadence, I would definitely be recommending like, no less than once a week we're checking in that that alignment is working with the client because they are, I mean, for all intents and purposes, like the best, opportunity for us to create something together in collaboration and when we, when we don't treat them as like, like separate on the other side and we're like bringing them into those conversations at regular intervals, it's a lot easier to course correct than it is to wait until we're like, hey, here, here we go.
Rachel (00:16:47) - Are you happy? And then they're like, no, that's not what we thought. There are probably 3 or 4 things that happen before that that we could have. We could have potentially looked at as patterns in the relationship, different people on the team that might have recognized, oh yeah, I've seen this before. This has happened on different projects, or this client has done these 3 or 4 times and get that alignment sooner and have a conversation about alignment and I like to say alignment is going in the same direction, fighting for the same things and looking at the same, same big picture together.
Hannah (00:17:22) - We were at a conference a few weeks ago, and I heard somebody on stage say that, see if I can get this, get this quote right but unstated expectations and alignment are future resentments, and I was like, that is so true. Like I've experienced that myself with client onboarding like, I've witnessed it through, my clients with how they run their projects too. So, those questions, are you having weekly meetings? Is that what that looks like? Everybody's in the same room and you're chatting through these things.
Hannah (00:17:54) - How are y'all communicating this amongst your team?
Rachel (00:17:57) - Yeah. And again, like, I like to keep that as flexible as possible because different teams function in different ways. If you're like all in person versus, you know, hybrid or fully remote, you're going to have a different need and a different cadence for that and you might have different like, ways of setting up the meeting. So, at minimum. I love the idea of doing like a team check in, doing one like Monday mornings to kind of plan out the week and then, you can always sync on Fridays and just check in on how that week went and or if it's like just breathing room for like, how are you feeling? How's your battery level? What do you need as a separate from the client? Just like that team check in. So yeah, like weekly cadence meeting format again. Can you know how there's like, the stand-up format? You can almost do that but broaden it to be more of like a project related to health set of questions.
Rachel (00:18:46) - So, what were you working on? What you, what are you going to be working on? And do you have any blockers? It is just as relevant from a larger project perspective, and I think incorporating that like how you are feeling or how are you doing is that extra element that's like so key to making sure we're not going to be leading that client astray. You could say something like, you know, like were there, did you receive any clues this week about how the client is feeling or what they need? And were there any instances where you felt like what was communicated was not received? Right? Because, like, communicating and receiving totally different and checking for understanding is so vital in that in that case.
Jamie (00:19:33) - Yeah, I love the I love the way you're framing questions to be asked and really guiding these conversations to make sure we get the right answers. So, I love the way you're really setting up the plate. So, I guess my question to you now is, and this is I think a question that's pretty common in the industry is okay. So, we're having these meeting check ins.
Jamie (00:19:48) - We're having constant times where we're kind of checking in of where the project's going, at what point and maybe this is what you talked about with account management but what if things changed? What if the thing has changed so much that we need to go back and re scope it and, and have a conversation about money? Is that something that you'd expect the PMS to have account managers to have? Do you want to bring sales back in at that point? Like when do you make those changes and who do you bring in?
Rachel (00:20:09) - Yeah, that's a great question, I think. So again, I'm going to say it depends on the organization because different folks have different people in charge of these things, but I think that it can and could continue to be the project manager's job to always surface alignment and there should be almost like this waterline on when do we bring it up to the next person, like so. For example, if you were running a project with your client and you were the project lead on that project and say you started noticing that there was some misalignment in the project was going off in a slightly different direction.
Rachel (00:20:42) - That project manager should have the autonomy, the mastery and the purpose to be able to actually have that hard conversation with the client and I would always say that they probably want to be responsible for bringing that back to the next person that's going to be impacted by that. Do you impact the direction? Are you impacted by the direction of that project? Then yes, you should probably be pulled in. When it comes to it though, like getting that sort of chain of communication set up, if you can manage it, it's like you're, it's like you're going to that person. So, you're going to communicate that to your account manager, you're going to that person and saying, here's what happened, here's how I responded, and here's what's going to happen next, not here's a problem. What do you think? Right. So, kind of trying to do whatever you can to create that alignment before sharing the information and then just saying, like, is there anything that you want me to keep my eye on from your angle and that can kind of create that positive, direction? so in terms of re scoping, yes.
Rachel (00:21:46) - So, I think again, it depends on how you sell a project, because my whole thing is like, if you sell a project with the intention that it's probably going to change unless it's cookie cutter and you've done it a million times the exact same way, design it to be able to change that usually means that instead of a fixed bid project like you're just going to charge, you know, 100,000, then maybe you're looking at doing a sprint rate, or you're doing a day rate, or you're doing something with, time in some way that gives you flexibility and adaptability, and then you're using that time with clients to help prioritize the features and or goals and outcomes that they want to achieve with you, so that you can always look at, hey, we're doing this, but if you want to be doing more of that because we learned something, we can change direction, move in that direction, you know, get rid of these features but we're going to we're going to have to look at like, how much more time do we want to spend getting ramping up? Because there is that like knowledge onboarding period that you really need.
Rachel (00:22:48) - Right. It takes more time to get there.
Jamie (00:22:50) - And that goes back to the where are we going? Right? Where are we going and where is going changing? Then, yeah, we need to talk about either price or knocking some things off. Like, yeah, you wanted a, b, c. If now you want D, we probably can still get you C, but A and B are going to be off the tables. That okay or. Okay and I think that's something we try to do as well as we want to make sure that the people that own the client relationships are the ones having those conversations. It's I find it weird to bring in a salesperson when you've had a relationship with someone for nine months and be like, okay, now that you're changing services, let's bring the salesperson back in. Yeah, let's just let's just enable our people and power our people to have those conversations.
Rachel (00:23:25) - Exactly. Yeah, I totally agree with you, and I love the idea that, like, maybe a salesperson might just be checking in to be like, hi, how are you? How are things going? But I yeah, yeah, exactly.
Rachel (00:23:36) - But just a yeah. In terms of that ownership, I do think you need that autonomy from either the PM or if it is a client account manager then keeping it that consistency.
Hannah (00:23:46) - Well, and speaking of time, one thing that comes up for me a lot with my clients is believability of these roles and just how sometimes it's just hard to swallow in terms of that. A lot of my clients know they need the role, they know that they are necessary but it's hard from an overhead perspective because typically it's hard to get them as believable as they really want them to be in the process. Do you have any recommendations for agencies that might be struggling to get their PMS AMS billable? and how would you recommend that they go about improving that?
Rachel (00:24:19) - Yeah, I think I mean, if you look at it and you say, would the project be able to be successful without this person doing this work, it's billable, right? It needs to be built in a way that is, actually going to help you meet the project objectives.
Rachel (00:24:32) - So, I think in many cases, like PMS I've heard can be some like 50% billable, but you can also have them get up higher believability rates as well, because they're constantly liaising with clients in a way that is helping to create revenue. Right? It is helping to increase efficiency. So, I think, I think that we're almost focusing on not the wrong thing, but it's like, if we just take a look at if you remove that function, then you're what is the risk of taking that relationship building and that like alignment away from the project. Like it's going to go off the rails, right? So, it's like focusing on the bigger picture of the project health and you probably heard this right, but you like, maybe allocate anywhere from like 20 to 30% for project management and account management. If you have one role, you might sort of you might combine that, but you might split it out. It really depends on their size and then the size of projects, and complexity but yeah, like it's I would, I would treat it as something, where it's like, give it give your project the breathing room it needs in order to be successful.
Rachel (00:25:39) - And when you're having the conversation around profitability, right. I've read that, projects where you bring a project manager on, you're going to see an increase of like 15% to your net project margin and your net billable because of because of how much they're able to, you know, streamline and remove cruft from just not being able to communicate across those departments.
Jamie (00:26:02) - Yeah, I think it's no secret that like, if you're either you're charging for PM time no matter what. So, like I've talked to clients like, oh no we don't we don't track PM time. We're not charging for it. But they charge $300 an hour and like, well, guess what you're charging for? Or, you know, we track all of our PM time, and we charge for like it's one 15 hours. Like, I definitely you're finding a way to charge for it no matter what. So, that is important.
Rachel (00:26:22) - So exactly.
Jamie (00:26:23) - I'm getting back to the question I promised you earlier. So, let's talk about post project evaluation.
Jamie (00:26:28) - So, what, what are your beliefs about how much of this needs to be done and how important it is and kind of the timing and again, I would love some more of your questions that you've kind of thrown out there already, like what type of questions should be asked in order to make sure we have an effective post project?
Rachel (00:26:42) - Yeah. So, the whole reason we do continuous improvement, and we do our project retros or postmortems is because we want to learn, and we want to do things differently in the future. Right. It's going to help the team galvanize around patterns and new opportunities so, it's things like, setting, setting a window where we actually celebrate the closing of the project and having clarity around what does a project close look like? Because if nobody knows when the end is right, then the client's like, oh hey, I still need XYZ and then people are like, well, you need to deliver that. Or like, are we done? So, having clarity, first of all, what does clothes mean then? I love the idea of this is my personal preference.
Rachel (00:27:22) - But like set two meetings and they don't have to be long. You could like do an hour or something like that, sit down your internal team and have like a lesson learned session. It should be really fun, and light where you are able to talk about the highlights of the project. If you look backward in time, at the duration and just like kind of noting, where did things start to fall apart? And there's this whole concept around first stories versus second stories is like an engineering term, but the idea being instead of it being a people problem, like, oh, you, you messed up. Like, look, look at how terrible you did. Well, what was the system like that enabled that failure to happen? What did we miss? How could we go back? And if we were able to fix that problem in the future, what would that that part looks like? And just spending a little bit of time talking about the highs and the lows for that project and then and like celebrating the fact that you've got there's so many people that just rush to the finish line.
Rachel (00:28:17) - Right. It's like, okay, we're done next one but like, that's where you see people surfacing, like how they really feel about the project, which then relates to understanding what project or employee turnover rates are and I think in our industry it's like at an average of like 15%, and it's a little higher than the average industry or general industry rate is like 10%. So, if we can lower turnover, right, like that's savings. Massive, massive amounts of savings, especially if it's like mid to senior level staff. Right. Most expensive resource that we have. So, having that opportunity to just surface how people are doing again checking in is really, really vital to the health of the organization and I think too like giving people a chance to speak to like, what is one idea that you have that would help make future projects like just more repeatable or more bigger opportunity to stretch out, like stretch out, bigger revenue for the client? How could we shorten the cycle time so that things don't take quite as long to complete? Or like, we can remove delays.
Rachel (00:29:24) - And then the key in this right is we must share this with the larger team or the actual company, because if this gets lost in our project, we just talk about it that once. Yeah. What was the point. Right. Yeah. So, I think that you can have you can do a fun way of doing this where like if you have learning built into your teams and people do project launches, then you don't maybe have to do this for every single project but when you're starting to like, put a couple patterns together, maybe you do like, you know, a 3 to 7 slide pictures only and it's like one person gets up and is like, okay, here's what we learned. Here's the takeaways and then it's like writing down a thing is not learning a thing. Right. Getting that integrated, and people thinking differently about stuff when you notice change will happen, that way of communicating in which you could have that information pulled out of the delivery team would be incredible.
Hannah (00:30:23) - I know there's been plenty of times that I've been a part of, like client onboarding or projects or whatever that is and like there's so many times that I've mentally said to myself, man, lesson learned. I'm gonna put a pin in that for next time lesson learned but it like, it just it just stays right here, like for me or like I may like to happen to mention it to somebody else. There's no there's not typically a dedicated forum or space for me to voice that and I'm just thinking, like, as you're talking, how incredibly valuable, I'm sure that is for learning and improving and getting better just every single time. Instead of just saying, well, lesson learned, move on into the next thing. So, I love that suggestion.
Jamie (00:30:58) - I think where it comes up the most often is like when things are really bad, like a lot of times those things do like go around, okay, we're never going to do this again. Like that's when it comes out but a lot of times when it's really good, those things don't get around enough.
Jamie (00:31:10) - Or if it's just like, this is kind of bad and it kind of annoyed me on this account. Like, those things never make their way around or make those way to like the changing the way you're doing things and so, I think that's a really good point, is like, no matter what you have that postmortem, make sure that you walk away with, okay, how are we going? What are we going to do? What behaviors are we going to change? Because sometimes the answer might be none like we didn't learn anything to change our behaviors on this one, but I do think having that is key. So, I love that because it's like how often we have that like, oh, put a pin in that, like that and just like disappears or gets lost and you step on it later, you know, that type of thing. So, and.
Rachel (00:31:41) - When easy. Yeah. Totally. I love that. And like an easy way to track it is like why not have, a continuous improvement project board where you're just pasting out all of the learnings from each of your projects, and then they just they get kind of like pinned there, and then you can kind of surface or highlight those.
Rachel (00:31:57) - And what is really nice is when you go to start your next project, revisit that, and be like, okay, remember on this last project we had all of these errors happen or this other team experience all of these things happening this is what they said, that they would do in order to deal with that. Like that's like a nice, fresh way to start the project with clear eyes.
Jamie (00:32:16) - I love it. All right. So, we made it to the part of the episode where we have a fun question. So, so, people that can't see the video, there's a lot of instruments behind, behind Rachel here. So, I want to make sure I'm not going to pass that up. So, it sounds, I'm guessing you have some type of musical interest, or your partner has musical interest. So, let's talk about our favorite concerts we've ever been to. So, Rachel, I want to start.
Rachel (00:32:38) - Favorite Concerts?
Jamie (00:32:38) - Yeah. Favorite concert you've ever been to? So, then we'll go with you. Then we'll go to Hannah.
Jamie (00:32:42) - Yeah, and we'll wrap it up.
Rachel (00:32:43) - Okay. Okay. I just went to one called idles. Idles. And it's kind of like a post prog, like British. I don't know if you all know them, but they're so lovely and they talk about love and they talk, but they've got like, this really hard, like fun British accent. So, and it's just man. Yeah. Dancing around I had the best time and I highly recommend them.
Jamie (00:33:05) - Where did you see him?
Rachel (00:33:07) - I saw them here in van at the, at the Royal or the peony. So, they have, like, the exhibition hall here. It was, they were really great.
Jamie (00:33:15) - Okay, cool. All right. Hannah, what about you?
Hannah (00:33:17) - Well, I'm definitely going to add them to my Spotify playlist like my Spotify whiplash. Like. Oh, yeah, like all.
Rachel (00:33:24) - That stuff. Yeah, I love it.
Hannah (00:33:26) - So, I love new suggestions for music. So, my favorite was probably Tyler Childers who kind of like a bluegrass, like a friend turned me on to this to him.
Hannah (00:33:38) - And like, I never would have thought, like, I would like that kind of music and I loved it. And she invited me to go to a concert in Nashville. I saw him at the Ryman, and that was just like an incredible setting. Like the acoustics were just so good. So, it was the month before Covid hit. So, like forever. Remember that as like being one of the last things like I got to go and do before Covid. So, that's definitely fine. What about you, Jamie?
Jamie (00:34:02) - Yeah, my kids make fun of my Spotify playlist too, because it's like, not the playlist but when you do the likes, you know, when you're bored and you're like, I'm just going to play all my likes and it goes from like, rap to country to rock like folk and it's like, like, what is wrong with you, dad? Like, what are you listening to? but yeah, I'm going to talk, and Hannah knows what I'm going to talk about here.
Jamie (00:34:19) - But most very recently, a couple of weeks ago, one of my clients invited me to see, Pearl jam with him in Los Angeles and, we got backstage and we got to walk through, and we were, like, five rows away, and I've seen Pearl jam probably ten times, but never that close before and it was it was amazing. And, if you guys don't know, Pearl jam does a different setlist every single night, so they never play the same songs. They do a different order every night. So, like, every show is like your own little baby. Like, oh, this is what I got to hear tonight. And I got to hear these things and there were catalogs like, I don't know, probably 200 songs now. So, every night is so different. But that was my most fun show recently, just because of the experience and who I got to experience it with. So, it was an awesome time.
Rachel (00:34:58) - It sounds incredible to me. I love that it was amazing.
Hannah (00:35:01) - You did not say that concert. I was like.
Hannah (00:35:05) - You literally got backstage passes. Like, how could I have that?
Jamie (00:35:08) - It was so cool.
Hannah (00:35:10) - That's awesome.
Jamie (00:35:11) - Cool. So, I thought, this is a great episode. I mean, I have a whiteboard in front of me and like, it is filled up with all the notes I'm going to take and steal from you, and we pass on to our project managers and hopefully our listeners feel the same. But let's end this episode with getting final thoughts so, we're going to start with Hannah, go to Rachel, then I'll wrap it up. So, Hannah, final thoughts from this episode?
Hannah (00:35:28) - Yeah, I absolutely love the tips that you've given with these questions. Like, I think that's one of the hardest things just about project management. Anytime you're in that setting too, it is learning to ask the right questions. So, I think you've set everybody up for success with that. Like, these are great questions at your arsenal. So, thank you for giving us that suggestion.
Hannah (00:35:46) - I'm going to go back Lions and tell them they need to like Sophie.
Jamie (00:35:53) - Rachel, final thoughts.
Rachel (00:35:53) - Yeah. I have, you know, if you have a resource that's on client alignment, and just like how we can actually get that, you know, lower risk, higher, closer to goals, direction and I think for me, I'm starting to see this, and it's like it's coming up as a theme over and over as, like, if you want to go fast, you got to slow down, right? Go slow to go fast and I think that is part of it. We live in such a commoditized society where everything is like, absolutely done at breakneck speed and I think just slowing down a little bit more and being more intentional in that initial process and then all the way through is going to yield such incredible change for the team. That feels good. We need that. We need that softness.
Jamie (00:36:35) - Yeah, definitely. My final thought is I love what you do, right? I think it's you who always hear about marketing consultants.
Jamie (00:36:41) - You hear about finance consultants sometimes you hear about, hear about like, you know, implementers but someone that's actually helping with like PM and OPS directly and just going in and solving it as something that a lot of organizations could need. So, I'd say anyone that's listening and it's like, oh, wow, a lot of light bulbs and off. Definitely reach out to Rachel and I'm going to give you an opportunity to say, how can they get hold of you? So, everybody knows for sure.
Rachel (00:37:01) - Yeah, absolutely. If you want to reach out, you can find me at Rachel@LouderThanTen.com I'm sure we'll get that spelling for you, but we've got tons of resources. You can have a strategy. Call me if you're just like, hey, I'm thinking about trying to make some changes on the team. What should I be doing? We look at it like when your PMS are financially literate, when they're able to speak the language of business, and they're able to support the space that both your team and clients need to be happy.
Rachel (00:37:28) - That's like where you're going to see the biggest success and feel smooth ease on projects.
Jamie (00:37:34) - Love it. All right. Well, thanks again for coming in and thanks everyone for listening and like I said, I'm sure you'll get a lot of people reaching out to you because I love what you talked about today. So, thanks loving good content. So, thank you. Thanks, team.
Hannah (00:37:44) - Thanks, Rachel.
Outro (00:37:45) - Enjoy this podcast. Visit our website Summit Connect to get more tips and strategy for achieving business success. We're here to be a resource in this ever-changing industry.