Mastering the balance: How to forge a thriving agency culture without sacrificing operational excellence

Unravelling the operations vs. culture paradox

The age-old tug-of-war between operations and culture can seem like a never-ending battle. Should the focus be on constantly increasing deliverables at breakneck speeds, or can we afford to dedicate time to cultivate a work culture that nourishes the human spirit? The truth lies in equilibrium—aiming for that golden ratio of 50/50, despite the pressures to keep tilting towards operations.

Starting Point: Streamline operations

Organised chaos and firefighting—sound familiar? These are often symptoms of neglected operations, where the focus on hard metrics overshadows employee engagement (EQ). The reality is, without setting operational groundwork, even the most spirited company culture can crumble under inefficiency.

Metrics and capacity

To prevent this, design metrics that take into account the actual capacity for work delivery. This doesn't mean packing schedules to the brim. Instead, remember to factor in a buffer—at least 15% for learning, non-delivery tasks, and team bonding, allowing for a workflow that breathes.

MarTech essentials

Equip your team with marketing technology that empowers rather than hinders. Centralise and streamline processes for briefing, agency workflow, client interfacing, and digital asset management.

Cultivating culture amidst operations

Creative Operations isn't just about logic and system optimization; it's also about fostering an environment that allows creativity to flourish.

Then consider how to communicate formally and quickfire as a team, book and change shared resources (e.g., creative, film, and production) through to keeping a strong audit and storing/repurposing finished assets at the end.

I'll always remember a leadership low point when asking a high-calibre performer why they'd resigned after a few months. "It's just the comms," they said, "I can't work like this".

Having become used to operational inefficiency I didn't even understand their plea. Thanks to a daily reality of briefing via email, no workflow, no resource booking, multiple client and agency platforms and 15 (yes, 15) different systems just to deploy a single piece of comms. Crazy.

Be realistic about how long it may take to get the work to start flowing through the system. It could take several years if built from scratch.

So you’ll need to look after your people at the same time.

That’s why Creative Operations is so fascinating because you have to do both at the same time. It intersects between science (the left brain) and art (the right).

The sweet spot is when all the great systems you've built produce even greater work.

Empathy and support

Most leaders (hopefully) have empathy and embrace the concept of servant leadership. They've read about our crisis with lacking emotional intelligence, post-pandemic leadership burnout, and physiological safety as the most critical factor in growing a high-performing team.

We have access to the data points and eNPS (employee net promoter score) – feeling proud of our benchmarks and over-indexing. The trick is to bring it all together – 50/50 - with equal importance.

Building the right work culture will allow people to feel engaged, have autonomy, be free to express diverse options, and enjoy social as well as work events together.

Balanced operations allow people to look up from the daily grind. To feel that sense of accomplishment, working towards common goals in an environment where they can thrive. If the operations haven't avoided a work stack bottleneck, management should be there to nurture and step in.

Well-being at work

Recognise the importance of well-being. In a world echoing the need for work-life balance and mental health prioritisation, ensuring that your operations don't become suffocating is key. Agile methodologies like daily stand-ups should be complemented with genuine, empathetic enquiries into team members' well-being.

Operations and people in harmony

Don't let the business driver 'do quicker, with less' force you to build operations that forget your end users. Adopt Agile and have daily stand-ups. But allow time and space to ask the double question. "Are you okay?" I'm fine... "Are you sure?"

Let's use our hearts and our heads when building creative operations. A solid backbone allows everything to work, be planned and flow through. To deliver high quality with happy humans using the processes, feeling safe, respected, and self-organised to be their best selves.

Heart and head in creative operations

Leading a creative agency demands a dance between head and heart. Your operations are the backbone of your success, but without a thriving culture, that success lacks meaning and substance. Build operations that respect, empower and elevate people, creating a space where high-quality output and happiness coexist.

Use data wisely, but don't overlook the human element—happy humans lead to higher quality, smarter outputs. The right culture not only supports operations, but it’s also the lifeblood that nourishes every idea, every creative impulse, and ultimately, every success.

Read more of our blogs including Creating a people-first culture: The key to thriving teams and timely creative output.