• by Paul Pantzer , July 9, 2014

When agencies habitually try to force-fit their resources onto staffing plans by department and level, they often end up with too many splintered resources, which in turn fracture a team’s attention and focus. You can’t staff someone at 12% over eight different projects and then wonder why that person can’t seem to focus.

Making great work requires a level of focus that is more achievable when working on one or two or maybe three big things at once. Not a dozen.  That's a recipe for swirl. Then, you multiply that dynamic by 100, 200… 500 agency resources, and, well… you get the idea. 

Recently I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. (Yep, I was a bit behind in my reading). At one point, after Jobs had spent months developing the concept for the first Apple retail store, and the day before presenting a physical store prototype to Apple’s leadership team, one of his team members had a revelation. He realized they needed to organize the store around the way people live their lives, not around the set of available Apple products. After unleashing his legendary temper on the poor guy, Jobs quickly realized that this was the right way to “Think Different.”  And so they went back to the drawing board. And the results speak for themselves. 

Back to ad agencies. What if agencies built project teams to have the fewest logical number of people to support the specific roles needed on a piece of work, and didn’t load up multiple levels of every department on every staffing plan. Sounds logical enough. Not rocket science. But over the years at a variety of agencies, it's my observation that it’s not as common as you’d think. Somehow muscle memory gets in the way… not to mention the occasional department-specific focus on self-preservation. 

Let’s look at how it could work. A small group of cross-discipline leads consistently reviews every major piece of work with that account’s leadership, and the relevant department leaders. They discuss key roles and how to best staff those roles. (Consistent, in-person discussion is a key factor in making this work). The goals are to make project teams more nimble and focused, to diligently match the right resource combinations to the best “fit,” and to keep project teams accountable over time, for the resources they actually use. Fewer, more dedicated team members lead to more focused delivery of better work, faster.

Here are a few guiding thoughts for those considering such an approach. One thing worth considering: this approach requires people who are open to wearing multiple hats (strong hybrid people). If that’s not the current state of an agency’s people, or something many of them at least aspire to, this may not be the right approach for you, just yet.   

• Roles are not necessarily tied to departments and titles, although departments provide a useful starting point. A project’s delivery lead could come from Project Management, Account Management, Production, etc.
• One person can play a different role from one project to the next. For example, I may be the project leader on one project, and may be “just” a producer in one channel on another project.
• One person can play multiple roles on a single project. For example, if my skill set permits, I may be both the creative lead and the project lead, on a given project, for the duration of that project.
• To be successful, people need to have reasonably clear expectations of what key roles exist, and the main expectations of each role. 
• Some examples of typical roles could include Team lead, Client relationship lead, Delivery lead, Creative lead, Coordinator, etc…
• Absolutely critical to success: each project needs a clearly assigned leader, as one key role. That person should help sort out any ambiguity or any title-based role confusion. 

A fair question is, how ambitious should this approach be at the start? Choices range from small, incremental shifts in agency mindset (for example, let’s try to combine some “slivers” of allocation into one more-dedicated resource, in each of the agency’s accounts this year), to significantly changing staffing composition and agency process. Those choices involve increasing levels of organizational effort, so an incremental approach is probably less threatening, and more productive. 

This approach is probably more common in smaller companies, because they basically have to take this approach early on. But the days of getting paid for inefficiency are a thing of the past. Role based staffing can help to make the leap to better, more efficient delivery. It takes consistent effort from a core group to make this work well. It may take more consistent client conversations to manage expectations regarding staffing and you may need to be a bit more fluid with staffing assignments. And it will take a willingness to stretch a bit beyond one’s comfort zone… all in the spirit of more effectively and efficiently making great work for your clients.