eBook- 7 Villains Terrorizing Agency Work and How to Thwart Them

WANTED: THE LEAGUE OF AGENCY VILLAINSIf your agency is anything like most agencies, then your workdays are probably getting terrorized by the League of Agency Villains (LAV). The LAV is a group of seven of the most terrible agency “bad guys,” teamed up and working together to wreak havoc on your work processes, deadlines, and client satisfaction. Agencies battle these villains every day, but often don’t recognize the true threat they pose because agency teams have been conditioned to think they’re necessary evils. This eBook exposes these agency work villains for the dangers they really are and spills the secrets for how to thwart them.

Be On the watch for:

Disparatool

Madame mega meeting

Major Interruption

Fe-mail fatale

rework King The firedriller Duke dodgy datA

THE EVIL PLOT

Disparatools’ evil plan is to make you manage your

work in as many different, disparate work tools as he

can. Things like spreadsheets (and lots of them!), task

management apps, emails, Google Docs, digital asset

management systems, time tracking tools, proofing tools,

social tools—you get the idea. And many agencies use

more than 10 tools! The evil part? Your work and all

relevant data then lives in so many places that important

information gets lost, it takes several hours to manually

collect the data you need, and your agency ends up

spending what seems like forever not making progress.

Hours that could be billed to the client get lost and

you end up working the weekend to make up for it.

Using multiple disparate tools makes:

• Work and project data near impossible to collect

• Data unreliable or outdated

• Information get lost or duplicated

• Teams waste tons of unbillable time switching from tool to tool

POWERS: CREATING INFORMATION SILOS

THREAT LEVEL:

WEAPON OF CHOICE: DISPARATE WORK TOOLS

“When employees are storing stuff in the cloud, and using something

like 15 different cloud storage tools to do it, their corporate knowledge,

their brain, is destroyed.” - Alistair Mitchell2

The average executive loses six weeks per year

searching for missing information (almost 1 hour

per day, per person). 1

Thwart this villain!There are several things agencies can do to avoid the tortures of Disparatools:

1. Consolidate

Choose one place to manage your work. This will minimize

duplication, lost information, and scattered data; facilitate and

enhance information sharing; and architect better processes

for gathering and analyzing data. The location you choose

needs to be easily accessible by everyone.

2. Integrate

Choose tools that integrate, but don’t go crazy. It’s

important that the point solutions you’re using play nicely

together, but after three or four integrations, things become

so complicated that any small change in your process

creates a time-wasting reconfiguration beast.

3. Check Yo’ self

Your agency doesn’t need a different tool for each part of

your workflow. Find a tool (or a select few tools) that has

more of the functionalities that you need and stick to it. Any

time you find yourself or your team

wanting to evaluate a new tool, ask the right questions:

• Will this replace one or more of our existing tools, or will it be an additional tool?

• Will this tool help us simplify, or will it just add more steps to our process?

• Will this tool integrate or play nicely with the other tools we’re using?

• Will this tool deliver a significant value return, or will we end up at a loss?

4. Expand

Disparatools won’t be beat by three or four people; it will

take the entire agency. Implement these best practices

agency-wide to break down information silos, keep everyone

on the same page (including your clients), and make better

use of your valuable time.

“Consolidating tools offers many benefits,

including real tool integration, better

service perspective, quicker incident

resolution and higher service reliability.”

- Glenn O’Donnell,

Senior Analyst, Forrester Research.3

FAVORITE COLOR: WHATEVER “MAKES IT POP”

THREAT LEVEL:

POWERS: OBNOXIOUS FEEDBACK

THE EVIL PLOT

One of the evilest of agency villains, Rework King can upset

even the most patient of creatives. “Can you make it pop more?”

“Why is this part yellow?” “Can you just make everything green?”

“What if we scrapped this layout and tried three columns?”

Rework King, often disguised as the client, thrives off of making

things much more complicated for your agency than they need

to be. In fact, 25-40 percent of all spending on projects is

wasted as a result of rework.4 And 14 percent of a worker’s day

is spent deciphering feedback, duplicating information, and

forwarding emails or phone calls.5

With Rework King at large, deciphering feedback feels more

like solving complex riddles than constructive criticism. This

evil plot causes two major problems:

1. Starting everything from scratch

Everyone ends up doing the same types of work by start-

ing from scratch every time and never automating, stan-

dardizing, or using templates.

2. Failing to manage requirements

Your team consistently has to re-do work because errors

are made or the initial outcome of the work fails to meet

their stakeholder’s expectations and/or requirements.

The more agencies try to get organized, the more Rework

King interferes and causes:

• Missed deadlines

• Exceeded budgets

• Upset clients

• More rework

Thwart this villain!

There are a few important things to remember to trump Rework King:

Solve the

requirements problem

(the cause) and you solve the rework

problem (the effect) . 5

- Blueprint

4. Manage clients and approvals

Rework often occurs when there aren’t efficient processes in place for

receiving feedback and approvals. Improve these processes by keeping clients

involved along the way and managing feedback and approvals in a central

location, like a digital proofing tool. This way, everyone involved can see the

feedback and stay informed.

2. Use templates

Work templates can be your agency’s best

friends. For little to no cost, templates simultaneously

save time, promote good communication, and contribute

significantly to project success. Additionally, templates help you gather

all the information you need up front, diminishing the possibilities of rework.

1. Get Aligned

You can prevent rework when the work

you are doing is aligned, from the begin-

ning, with the client purpose or goals.

Take extra care to ensure that your

work is strategically aligned from day

one of the launch.

3. Take your time

Before beginning a new request or project, take plenty of time

to get all of the information you need up front. Use creative

briefs on all new projects and then double check that you

fully understand what the client wants

and expects.

FAVORITE COLORS: FLAMES

THREAT LEVEL:

WEAPON OF CHOICE: DOING EVERYTHING LAST MINUTE

THE EVIL PLOT

The Fire Driller doesn’t care what

important task you’re currently working on;

when he needs something done, he needs

it done yesterday. And he breathes heavily

down your neck until he gets it. This terrorism

is often affectionately referred to as “fire

drills.” Without any standardized work processes,

everyone in the agency runs rampant, just like he

likes. Basically, because of The Fire Driller, agency

teams are constantly working against unrealistic deadlines

to get things done and priorities are nothing more than

a distant memory. He’s diminishing ROI, over-allocating people,

and walking around like he’s the ruler of the universe.

With The Fire Driller in power:

• Team members become fire drill slaves

• The most important work doesn’t get done

• The loudest client gets what they want first

• ROI diminishes

• Resources are over-allocated with work

• Everyone is frustrated and burned out

The average organization often spends 40-50% of

its time on unplanned (and urgent) activities. 7

Thwart this villain!There are a few ways to avoid being trapped by The Fire Driller:

1. Understand the root cause

Fire drills are often caused by:

• Forgotten dependencies due to poor planning

• Lost email requests

• Legitimate last minute items with short turnaround times

The key is to be ready and agile enough to manage the

important fire drills and to eliminate the others.

2. Better planning and coordination

You can help eliminate your fire drills by:

• Clearly identifying dependencies and responsibilities up front

• Building in time for strategic fire drills so they don’t cause timelines to slip

• Improving your processes for change management and prioritization

3. Better communication

Improving the communication within your agency, and with

the client, around the impact of fire drills can help you be

more strategic and:

• Manage the expectations of the impact of fire drills

• Understand existing workloads and the impacts of last-minute changes

• Communicate these to relevant parties

Being able to say, “If we do this, then project X that Client

A needs by Friday will be delayed. Are you and the client

both okay with that?” will help you weed through fire drills

and keep your team working on strategic work.

Miscommunication can cost an organization

25% to 40% of its annual budget. 8

POWERS: DATA HOARDING/UNRELIABLE DATA

THREAT LEVEL:

WEAPON OF CHOICE: OUTDATED SPREADSHEETS

THE EVIL PLOT

Duke Dodgy Data aims to make it impossible for agency

teams to find the data they need and trust the data they

find. He often shows up in the form of several spread-

sheets with incoherent facts and figures; there is no way

you’re going to be able to roll them into a report in time.

Agencies try desperately to piece together reports

needed for meetings and to justify their jobs. But

Duke Dodgy Data kills visibility so everyone ends up

scrambling to:

• Compile and present up-to-date reports

• Justify budgets and resources

• Communicate well with clients

• Deliver work on time and within budget

• Understand what does and doesn’t work

• Apply lessons learned and improve processes

Without the correct data, you’ll end up unable to justify

budgets and resources, incapable of communicating well

with clients, and delivering work late and over budget.

Agencies with poor business analysis capability will have

3x as many project failures as successes. 9


Here are a few good tips and reminders when battling Duke Dodgy Data:

1. Communicate

Most effective work managers create a communication plan during the planning

phase of work. In this plan, you should clearly identify:

Then, work with your team to create a process for getting updates to

you and the client at the right times. Including them in the

process will help them buy in to the process and

be more likely to adhere to it. Take this

one step further and create a

template for this

process.

• Who should get updates

• What information they need

• Why they need it

• When they need it

• Where the data will live

• How data will be distributed

2. Increase

your visibility

The right tools will help provide something

that most agencies can’t usually provide for

themselves: visibility. Visibility is the key to thwarting Duke Dodgy

Data. The right tool will help you, and anyone else who needs to be included,

stay updated on the progress of the work. A tool that manages workloads and

resources as well as providing collaboration within the context of the work

will help your agency get the visibility they need to be more productive.

70 percent of marketing

professionals believe

access to in-depth data and

the ability to translate

it into insights is a

competitive advantage. 10

WEAPON OF CHOICE: CALENDAR INVITES

THREAT LEVEL:

POWERS: TRANSFORMING MINUTES INTO HOURS

THE EVIL PLOT

Madame Mega Meeting is very secretive about being evil. She makes

agencies feel like she is a necessity to have around, but over time, her

benefits transform into giant obstacles. At first, she initiates what seems

like a harmless weekly status meeting to keep everyone in the loop. Then

before you know it, she’s scheduling meetings for every little thing,

clogging up everyone in the agency’s already packed calendars, and leaving

next to no time for people to actually get their work done.

The consequences of letting Madame Mega Meeting prevail are:

1. Wasted time

• Most employees attend 62 meetings per month. 11

• 50% of meetings are considered a waste of time. 12

• On average, 31 hours per month are spent in

unproductive meetings.13

2. Halted productivity

• 73% of workers do other work while in meetings.14

• 49% of workers consider unfocused meetings and projects as the biggest workplace time waster and the primary reason for unproductive workdays.15

3. Wasted money

• $37 billion - the salary cost of unnecessary meetings for U.S. businesses. 16

• Estimates of meeting expenses range from costs of $30 million to over $100 million per year to losses between $54 million and $37 billion annually. 17

4. Dissatisfied employees

• 45% of workers feel overwhelmed by the number of meetings they attend. 18

56% of creative professionals consider unproductive

meetings as one of their top work inefficiencies. 19


Follow these guidelines to escape the clutches of Madame Mega Meeting:

“Reducing staff-member’s

wasted time by just 5 minutes every hour

would increase productivity by 8.3%” 20

2. Eliminate review meetings

Just scheduling these meetings can be a nightmare.

Instead, use a single, asynchronous collaboration tool that

allows team members and clients to weigh in on work with full visibility

into all other feedback.

1. Eliminate status meetings

Don’t freak out. Doing this is possible if

you provide a single work management

system that gives you and the client real-time

visibility into who is doing what, when

things will be done, which resources are

allocated where, etc. Do this, and you’ll

no longer need status meetings.

3. Be productive with meetings you need to have

Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself if this meeting is really

necessary. Are there other, faster ways for you to get your

information to people or to get what you need from them? If

the meeting is a must, define the purpose very clearly

before. When the meeting starts, make sure all inputs

are provided and keep things as brief

as possible.

During an average meeting, agenda items are covered in only 53% of the scheduled

time, with the remaining time as unproductive. 21

THE EVIL PLOT

Major Interruption is the master of launching work

request grenades at your team. He throws them like they’re

harmless, and laughs when you have to jump out of the way and

then scramble to clean up the mess and collect the casualties. In

work environments that lack standardized processes, workers

are constantly interrupted by these new requests and, on

average, they spend two hours per day recovering from

those distractions.22

But the grenades are only part of the problem. Major

Interruption’s requests come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes

they come via phone calls, emails, instant messages, desk drop-bys,

or even sticky notes left on desks and they all put a serious

damper on productivity.

• Average employees endure 56 interruptions a day23

• The average interruption takes five minutes

• Interruptions total about 50% of the workday

• 80% of interruptions are rated of “no value” 24

WEAPON OF CHOICE: DROPPING WORK REQUEST BOMBS

FAVORITE COLOR: PAIN

THREAT LEVEL:

When an interruption occurs, it takes 10-15 minutes to get back on track with train of thought afterwards. 4 interruptions in a day can mean the loss of an

hour in concentration.25

22% OF MARKETERS RANK DISTRACTIONS AND INTERRUPTIONS AS THEIR #1 WORK INEFFICIENCY. 26

Thwart this villain!Here’s some advice for crafting your battle strategy against Major Interruption:

Request management

Proper request management processes can cut down interruptions from random work requests

immensely. You can implement these processes by following just a few steps:

1. Choose a location

Together with your team, choose one place for submitting

and gathering requests. Optimally, you’d have a tool for this,

but in the absence of the right tool, it can even be a paper

tray or an email address like [email protected].

2. Tell everybody

Communicate to your clients that any requests for your

team need to be submitted to the place you’ve chosen. Give

them all the information they need to do this. Also,

reiterate to them that any

request that is not submitted

using this process will not

be addressed.

3. Get the info you need

Provide requestors with a template for submitting all of

their requirements and request information. This could

be a Word doc, a link to a Google Drive form, or a page

incorporated in your tool. In the template, ask any and all

questions that will help you have all the information you

need from the very beginning.

4. Prioritize intelligently

Monitor your incoming requests regularly and compare

them to your corporate goals and your existing projects

before assigning them relevant priority.

5. Stick to your guns

Anytime someone tries to drop a request at your desk

or via email, politely ask them to submit it via your team’s

process so you can make sure it doesn’t get missed.

THE EVIL PLOT

Fe-mail Fatale is a saucy minx. Emails are

her game and she’s good at making them seem

alluring. Agency workers waste hours trying

to keep up with her by checking and responding

to emails, but they still never feel like they

can get a handle on their inboxes. Every time

a new email kisses your inbox, she drags you

deeper into the depths of email misery.

You barely have time for anything else

and when you’re not managing email, you’ve

got anxiety about not managing email. But, for

every 100 people who are unnecessarily copied

on an email, eight hours of productivity are

lost and 58 percent of workers spend half

their day filing, deleting, or sorting information,

and it costs an estimated $31 billion in losses. 27

FAVORITE MOVIE: “YOU’VE GOT MAIL”

THREAT LEVEL:

WEAPON OF CHOICE: REPLY ALL

It takes people 16 minutes to refocus after handling

incoming email. 28


There’s one sure-fire way to expose Fe-mail Fetale for the temptress she is:

Eliminate unnecessary email

In most organizations, email is used for:

• Making requests

• Communicating about statuses

• Tracking down information

• Clarifying information

• Sharing Documents

• Asking for feedback

• Asking for approvals

• ...and more

You can eliminate the

feeling of drowning in email just by

moving all collaboration about work to a single

work management tool with collaboration and

notifications. This way, all work communication happens within

proper context and is easier to track and manage.

The average employee

checks their email

36 times per hour. 29

MAKE YOUR AGENCY A SAFER PLACE TO WORKNow that you know how to recognize and fight off these agency villains, (and as hero,

G.I. Joe put it, “Knowing is half the battle”) all you have to do is make a plan and put

your plan in action. Embracing an enterprise work management approach will help

you find the secret to ultimate success and conquer all your agency villains.

Agency Work Management

• Manage all work in one place

• Manage work through the entire work lifecycle

• Manage work in a simple, intuitive tool

workfront.com + 1·866·441·0001 + 44 (0)845 5083771

ABOUT WORKFRONT Workfront is a cloud-based Marketing Work Management solution that helps in-house creative teams and agencies, marketing departments, and external agencies conquer the chaos of excessive email, redundant status meetings, constant rework, and tedious approval processes. Unlike other tools, Workfront Marketing Work Cloud is a centralized, easy-to-adopt solution for managing and collaborating on all creative work through the entire work lifecycle, which improves team productivity, credibility, and executive visibility. Thousands of enterprise marketing teams and agencies trust their work to Workfront, such as Adobe, Cisco, HBO, Covario, Ralph Lauren, SapientNitro, REI, Trek, Schneider Electric, Tommy Hilfiger, and ATB Financial.

To learn more, visit marketing.workfront.com or follow us on Twitter @Workfront_Inc.

www.attask.com

http://marketing.workfront.com

WORKS CITED

1. Shirley Fine Lee. “Management/HR Statistics,” Shirley Fine Lee (2014). http://www.shirleyfinelee.com/MgmtStats

2. Proffitt, Brian. “Cloud Storage Crisis Looms For The Enterprise Brain”, ReadWrite. February 21, 2013. http://readwrite.com/2013/02/21/cloud-storage-crisis-looms-for-the-enterprise-brain?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=-Feed:+readwriteweb+(ReadWriteWeb)#awesm=~oEPL0T4hW4Yj8m

3. Benarz, Ann. “How to Consolidate IT Management Tools” NetworkWorld. September 22, 2010. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/092210-consolidate-manage-ment-tools.html

4. Introduction to the CMMI Acquisition Module (CMMI-AM). Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University, 2005. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/assets/tutorialmod3.pdf

5. Rubin, Courtney. “Study: Employees Are Unproductive Half the Day.” Inc.com, March 2, 2011.

6. “Avoiding Project Rework - Measure Twice and Cut Once” Blueprint. June 7. http://www.blueprintsys.com/avoiding_project_rework_measure_twice_and_cut_once/


8. “The Costs of Poor Communication.” Linchpin. https://sites.google.com/site/linchpin-learning/value/the-costs-of-poor-communication

9. Ellis, Keith. ““Business Analysis Benchmark: The Impact of Business Requirements on the Success of Technology Projects” IAG Consulting. http://www.iag.biz/images/re-sources/iag%20business%20analysis%20benchmark%20-%20full%20report.pdf

10. “Marketing and IT: Big Data an Obstacle, an Opportunity, and Key to Customer-Cen-tricity.” Marketing Profs. 2013. http://www.marketingprofs. com/charts/2013/10574/marketing-and-it-big-data- an-obstacle-an-opportunity-and-key-to-customer- centrici-ty#ixzz2af1zvee

11. Atlassian You Waste a Lot of Time at Work. https://www.atlassian.com/time-wast-ing-at-work-infographic

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.





19. “2014 Workfront Marketing Inefficiencies Survey: Executive Summary” Workfront, 2014. http://www.attask.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2014_AtTask_Marketing_Ineffi-ciencies_Survey.pdf


21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.



25. Ibid.

26. 2014 Workfront Marketing Inefficiencies Survey: Executive Summary”, Workfront, 2014. www.workfront.com/marketing-madness-survey

27. Spira, Jonathan, “Overload! How Too Much Information is Hazardous to Your Organiza-tion,” 2011.


29. Ibid.

http://sites.google.com/site/linchpinlearning/value/the-costs-of-poor-communication

http://sites.google.com/site/linchpinlearning/value/the-costs-of-poor-communication