The work-span of those employed in the agency world is generally short and there’s certainly a reason behind that concern. Long hours? Hour-by-hour deadlines? Lack of structure and processes? In the event of staffing a team to take on one of its leading accounts, the agency has had a history of rapid turnover. In this instance, the agency saw a need to create change in the workplace by bringing in a project manager to oversee a portfolio of integrated campaigns. Previously the role was staffed by technical producers and web gurus who understood the technicality behind digital projects, but were not able to manage the campaign as a whole, thus they turned over within 6-9 months of time. This time around they decided to go a different route and hire specialized project managers to act as a change agent for the company. After beginning my ramp up and observing the day-to-day routine, I delved right in to managing a handful of large-scale campaigns and learned about intricacies that impeded fluidity between the teams. Throughout the process, I, along with some of the people in the agency, begged the question, how could this company – if we wanted it to – achieve different, better, more efficient results?

Before jumping in to some of the key factors that drive this motivation to create change in the work environment, I’d like to give an overview of the agency itself and preface that I am brand new to the agency world, hardly at the cusp of my career in the corporate world, however, eager and willing to make big waves at a company which will allow me to rise to the occasion. Throughout the time I’ve been with the agency environment, I’ve picked up on some nuances that make this office space unique. First of all, I am drawn to the courageous work ethic by the team. There’s plenty of room to pitch in on projects, brainstorm with the creative folks, and leverage the expertise of developers and technological gurus to your heart’s content. The agency harnesses a culture that strives for work life balance and even created its very own “fun” committee to oversee weekly events, such as “Waffle Wednesdays”, “Thirsty Thursdays”, and “TGIF Fridays”. Ensuring a challenging workload and pairing it with an enjoyable atmosphere is one of the core values the agency stands behind.

While the agency strives to create a work environment that appeals to its employees, it does fall short on its pursuit to construct a grounded, more controlled work environment, which is required when committing to a heavy workload. The agency itself has a healthy appetite for executing large-scale, highly visible campaigns. It prides itself with an extensive network of clientele in the high-tech industry and several others on the Fortune 1000 list. Many of its opportunities are retained while others flow in on an ad hoc basis. In essence, there is no shortage of work for each team dedicated to an account. With so many moving parts, creating a more organized and structured environment is vital to deliver stellar results to the client, and maintain and grow a cohesive team base. The people, technology, and process that currently stabilize the client relationships are becoming more difficult to maintain as the company continues to scale and commit to more robust strategic initiatives.

For this change impact assessment, I am going to focus my attention on a leading high tech company, one of the agency’s primary accounts, which disrupts workflow and sets the precedence for other accounts across the organization. There are several key drivers, both internal and external, that detract from the agency’s effort to synchronize team dynamics against an overflow of multi-faceted campaigns. These key drivers may start at the departmental level, but end up rippling across functional teams, influencing the organization as a whole and ultimately affecting company’s bottom-line.

Some external factors that play a pivotal role in affecting the agency’s attitude and ability to prioritize workload include recent transformational changes such as laying-off 35,000 people, restructuring the entire organization from the top-down, rolling out a new value proposition, and integrating that into new and existing teams and product offerings. The magnitude of these changes is substantial, affecting the team’s moral, challenging existing standards, and not to mention, learning and relearning how to make adjustments and adapt to this sea of change. There is no doubt that the impact resulting from this company make-over is considerable to this company, but nonetheless, it is also creating an overhaul of adjustment on its partners and this agency, who is being charged with helping to define the new vision, and develop and implement initiatives to support this 360 degree effort.

While some key external drivers may be out of our control, there are several internal factors within the agency that can be within our control to support the agency’s partnership with this company. Some of the top-line internal factors that affect the agency’s ability to perform can be broken out into three different areas of assessment: people, technology, and process – all required to work together in unison to achieve an effective outcome. If one angle of the triad is off-kilter, the agency does not have a means to work together as effectively as it would if it focused its attention on providing equal treatment to all three factors of the triangle. The agency struggles with trying to prioritize one over the other, oftentimes focusing more on delivering client results over following a process or working with up-to-date tools and technology to optimize the project experience. In an ideal world, all three should be treated with high regards.

Understanding the structure and foundation of this agency plays a significant role in identifying team dynamics and balancing out all three sides of the triangle. While the agency is composed of departments consisting of account management, creative services, and production, it does have an overwhelming account management presence that serves as the backbone for this agency. An account driven company has its benefits. One of the prevailing attributes of the account team is that they work together and form a strong alliance between themselves and the client, oftentimes doing what they can to appease the client. However, it also has drawbacks that can get in the way of allowing the team and the agency to gain momentum. One of these drawbacks is their ability to set and manage expectations for both the client without working with internal stakeholders and considering a more centralized approach for managing project, such as working with a project manager. The latter concept would be brand new to the agency and would involve a tremendous effort to create a plan, cross-train departments, and adopt this working habit. While it is a time-intensive approach, project management is indeed an invaluable asset when properly incorporated into an organization. For now the current situations involves producers (technical leads with little exposure to project management methodology) trying to work collaboratively with account managers, who play dual roles as client relationship managers and project managers.

An example of this type of role confusion can be illustrated in the team’s roll out of one its biggest campaigns. In this instance, the account team was overjoyed by winning one of its largest deals with the client. However, in winning this deal, they didn’t fully recognize the magnitude of the scope of work and resources to implement all the campaign deliverables within a two month period. They made a premature business decision with the client without on-boarding internal partners and getting buy-in from primary stakeholders only hinders the planning and execution of the project. Shortly after kicking off this project, the account team ran full speed ahead without clearly defined objectives, approved concepts, and appropriately allocated resources. As a result, the implementation team struggled to meet its first few milestones and the account team subsequently missed its very first deadline with the client. The scenario only repeats itself from there, varying by tactics. It’s not fair to say that leading with an account driven team is a primary motive to incentivize a need for change within this particular agency, but it is fair someone needs to be accountable in carefully planning and forecasting, involving key stakeholders, and obtaining buy-in before arriving at a decision. In addition, key to bringing forth this effort and effectively communicating relies heavily on the functional tools and technology to support the team.

In this agency, I’ve been introduced to software called Active Collab, which is a project management tool to organize campaigns and involve team members as appropriate. While many of the main features, such as scheduling, storing files, issuing tickets, and creating dialogue, are present, it’s an antiquated piece of software that is not very intuitive. The scheduling feature takes into account weekends, while the agency mostly operates on a Monday through Friday work week. The ability to store files and issue tickets are in separate tabs and do not link to the task at hand. The need to create dialogue in a single location is limited and quite often overruled by email, thus making it difficult to track all information pertaining to the project. The agency as a whole has distributed licenses to those actively involved in a project; however, very few team members actually use the program since they do not consider it user-friendly. In mid-size organizations (50-150 employees) that are continuing to scale, it’s critical to leverage tools that properly forecast new and existing initiatives; support varying levels of vertical and horizontal communications; and account for schedule, scope and costs. The idea of new software raises a red flag about budget constraints, training and on-boarding, and migration of current data. As miscommunication, over- and under-communication continue to impinge upon team interactions, the agency will begin to recognize the fallacies and costs associated with work and rework.

Pulling together the idea of new software still has limits around the possibility that many teams will continue to by-pass the process, since there has not been any repercussions in the past. This leads into the third leg of the triangle in gauging change impact assessment: the agency’s level of respect for processes. For the rollout of the integrated campaign, the team was extremely pressed for managing scope, time, and costs in order to deliver results to the client. As a workaround, the account team consistently sported the “all-hands-on-deck” mentality and frequently engaged internal team members for pulse checks throughout the day. Clarity for roles and responsibilities not only grayed but duplicated in effort. The necessary quality check points diminished and the recognition for belaboring inconsistencies exacerbated the production team. The ability to forward think blanketed the idea to even ponder sequential processes that were once enforced to create fluidity amongst the teams. What should have been a one-time workaround soon became a habitual process that swept across other account teams whom also felt pressured to compete with the sense of urgency instilled by the internal account team. The result: deteriorating work relationships and drive, low morale, rapid turnover of staff, and impact to delivery to name a few.

Overdosing on broken processes and outdated software, along with loose definitions of roles and responsibilities, will not allow the company to scale and commit to larger, more robust campaigns. The internal drivers for change are controllable and can make a considerable difference in ways in which the internal team interacts and drives projects. The ability to prioritize the change, get buy-in from key stakeholders, and carve out time execute a transition for change may be a challenge and stall the process in the short-run, but it will ultimately sustain and grow the business. Until the team sees change as an opportunity rather than a problem and notes the benefits outweigh the costs, then the team will continue to resist the change. This, along with a trepidation of performing outside your comfort zone yields a low tolerance for change (Kotter 25).

Bringing forth these concerns into light are far from foreign within the agency. Individuals, such as me, my manager, and a few team leads, who support the initiative, do not have complete support and enough buy-in from executive leadership. My manager has insisted upon small, but sizeable process and technological changes for the past two years (plus). Presentation after presentation to the executive team and only a handful concur or deem it a high level priority. Work continues to flow in as the work hours seem to expand. Until the majority of the executive team can envision the need for change, understand projects at the tactical level, and prioritize the steps needed to move forward, bringing about different, better, more efficient results may not be an option at this time.

Works Cited

Kotter, John & Schlesinger. “Choosing Strategies for Change,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 1979.

Northup, Tom. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/157330-all-organizations-are-perfectly-designed-to-get-the-results-they. April 2009. Quote.

Winby, Mary. “Managing Change & Ambiguity in the Workplace.” UC Berkeley Extension X411.9. Fall 2012. Lecture. 8 September 2012.