Blog

No fluff. Just real lessons from the trenches of hours-based businesses.

What Happened When We Stopped Hiding the Data Jun 27, 2025

For a long time, we followed the classic playbook: only leadership gets access to live data.

Why?

Because there was this fear.

Fear that if people saw how much their teammates were working or not w...

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The Secret? There Isn’t One. Jun 26, 2025

There was a time when we protected our way of doing things. We thought we had a unique system, something proprietary that only we understood.

Then we realized: there’s no secret.

Operations isn’t ro...

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When the System Becomes the Work Jun 22, 2025

We thought we had it figured out.

We rolled out a new resourcing system using our project management tool. It was meant to be the source of truth: hours, tasks, timelines, dependencies, level of effo...

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The Thing We Didn’t Say and Should Have Jun 20, 2025

We were trying to staff a big project.

One of those major accounts, great brand, great revenue potential, and likely a long-term client if we got it right. But it wasn’t simple. This wasn’t just a sp...

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The Real Problem Wasn’t Visibility. It Was Trust Jun 13, 2025

We Thought the Problem Was Visibility. It Wasn’t.

There’s a moment that still sticks with me. We had a team that was struggling with forecasting, resource planning, and team utilization and everyone ...

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What a Healthy Delivery System Actually Looks Like (From the Inside) Jun 10, 2025

If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s this: a healthy delivery system doesn’t start with tech, software, or methodology. It starts with something far simpler: a plan.

Not a 49-slide deck. Not a te...

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The One Pattern We See Everywhere: A Lack of RACI Clarity Jun 08, 2025

There’s one thing we’ve seen over and over again across every agency, every team, every client situation: no one knows who’s really responsible.

Sometimes it's subtle. Sometimes it's loud. But it's a...

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Time Tracking Isn’t the Problem. What You Do With It Is. Jun 02, 2025

There was a stretch where we were hitting our utilization targets but still missing deadlines. Everyone was tracking their time. We had the data. But something wasn’t right. Projects were slipping, sc...

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What I Wish My Old Agency Leaders Had Told Me About Utilization May 30, 2025

There’s something I wish I had learned years earlier, something that would have saved me months, if not years, of confusion, frustration, and burnout: utilization is not a set-and-forget metric.

Util...

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The One Data Point That Changed Everything May 28, 2025

We thought we had it figured out. Forecasts were solid. Project plans looked good. Tasks were broken down. People were assigned. And yet, we were still missing deadlines. Projects were slipping. Clien...

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