Dave, Mark & Ant - Co-founders of Outlign
For years we didn’t really have one - making it up as we went along. At the same time we failed to understand why every single project was over budget.
Spoiler alert: no process = no profits.
We also stumbled mightily when we hired new staff. We didn’t have the time to train them properly. As founders we’d always had an idea in our heads of what to do at each step, but that doesn’t really help anyone else.
It also meant that we weren’t learning from our mistakes, or improving our process to be better.
So then we finally got wise… We needed to put a clear process in place for each type of project we ran, and get it down on paper so we could follow it every time.
We spent a bunch of time outlining all the phases and steps for our key services in a wiki - adding notes and guides on how and why to do each part, pre-written messages to clients, and checklists for each part so we didn’t forget anything.
And then....... we promptly went back to what we were doing and forgot about the wiki.
So after banging our heads against the wall over and over as we saw our profits disappear while our team and clients got frustrated, we decided to do something about it.
We wanted to build something that was simple and easy for our team and our clients to follow, that would visually show off our process and keep everyone on track.
Ideas and core principles for building a process-based agency
How you work is unique, capture your value.
Every agency has a unique take on how they work, design processes, and deliver the work. When documented into tools, the value of these workflows can be unlocked and shared with the team.
Master your workflow, by practising it.
Mastery in any form comes from practising. By documenting and then practising your processes consistently, your team becomes masterful at delivering your services.
Creative works will vary, the process shouldn't
Making up your process each time is a waste of effort. Decide on the process and stick with it so that your team can focus on delivering top-notch creative on the regular.
Everyone on the team using the same process is powerful.
Find the PM who's the best at delivering the process and build on that. Then have everyone in the team follow that exact process, bringing a higher, more consistent standard to every project.
Talk about your process, mostly to clients.
The process should be a big deal in your studio. But it's also important to share your methods and ways of working with the client to instil confidence, trust and expert status.Â
Before scale, comes great systems.
If scaling your agency is important, great systems must come before growth. Commit to documenting and running processes across teams & projects, bringing automation and structure to your workflow.Â
An irregular newsletter with thoughts on running a process driven agency from the founders of Outlign
Dave, Mark & Ant - Co-founders of Outlign