Scenario · Process consulting · Creative agency
Fewer tools,
more time for creative work.
A growing agency with projects scattered across too many tools: tasks in two different apps, duplicate files, information lost in chats. A workflow review that simplifies the tools and automates the repetitive work.
Consulting scenario — a creative agency's workflow
The agency was growing.
The operational chaos was growing faster.
The scenario: an agency that, over a few years, has piled up digital tools as if every problem needed a new one. One client wants real-time updates: Asana arrives. Another prefers Kanban boards: Trello arrives. Files live in Google Drive, but the senior designer insisted on Dropbox. Internal communication is on Slack, but some approvals go through email, others through WhatsApp.
The result is that every piece of information lives in at least two places. When a client asks "where are we?", the project manager has to check Asana, Trello, the Drive folder and the last 50 emails before answering. It's not unusual for a PM to spend a couple of hours a day "syncing by hand" between systems — instead of actually managing projects.
An agency like this doesn't need another tool. It needs the opposite: working out which tools to keep, which to drop, how to make them talk to each other and how to train the team on one shared way of working.
Agency workflow consulting goals
Fewer tools,
more real work.
The owner doesn't want another dashboard. They want the team to stop wasting time managing tools and get back to what it does best: creative work.
Cut project managers' admin time
PMs are buried in manual updates, status meetings and hunting for information scattered across systems. In an 8-hour day, a couple of hours like that is almost a third of the time. The goal is to get under 45 minutes a day, freeing time to manage clients and projects proactively.
One system where every project's information lives
The idea is simple: when a client asks "where are we?", answering should take one click, not 20 minutes of searching. Every project needs one home — status, files, communication, tasks, deadlines — all in one place. Not necessarily a new tool: one of the existing ones chosen as the "source of truth", with the others removed or reduced to supporting roles.
Automate the repetitive steps of the project workflow
Every project goes through the same phases: brief, concept, development, revisions, approval, delivery. Yet for every new project someone manually creates the Drive folders, the Asana (or Trello) board, the Slack chat, the brief document. These steps cost 45–90 minutes per project and introduce naming errors that make later searches harder. Automation starts here.
Get the new workflow adopted without internal resistance
The subtlest problem is human. The agency has often already tried to "standardise processes" — and the new system lasted 2–3 weeks before everyone went back to old habits. The real risk isn't choosing the wrong tool, but failing to change the habits of a dozen people with different backgrounds and levels of tech comfort.
Creative workflow consulting challenges
The problem wasn't
finding the right tool.
Rationalizing a tech stack in a creative agency involves human and organizational dynamics that go far beyond choosing tools.
Agency tool rationalization process
Observe, decide,
train — in that order.
The sequence is precise: first understand how the work really happens (not how it should), then decide on tools, then build the system, then train people.
Three days alongside the PMs: seeing the real work
Before touching anything, three days watching PMs work — not asking how it "should" work, but seeing how it really does. Which tools they open first in the morning, where they go when a client writes, how they set priorities. Patterns invisible in the stated processes appear: for example, WhatsApp chats with clients are the real request-handling system, while Asana only gets filled in for Friday reports.
Tool audit: remove, integrate, keep
For each tool: what it's officially for, what it's really used for, who uses it and how often, whether it overlaps with another, what it costs (in money and attention). Final classification: tools to drop (e.g. Asana, Trello, Dropbox, an unused time tracker), tools to connect (Slack ↔ Notion), tools to keep (Figma, Google Drive, Linear, Loom, Google Meet). The trickiest decision is often dropping the tool someone built years of history on: the answer is exporting the whole archive before switching it off.
Notion as the "operating system" + Make automations
Notion becomes the hub: each project has a page with a standard template (brief, phases, tasks, files, client-facing communication). Linear for technical tasks (already loved by designers). Slack for async internal communication, connected to Notion for automatic status-change notifications. Automations with Make: opening a new project automatically creates the Notion page with the right template, the Drive folder with the correct structure and a dedicated Slack channel. Time to start a project: from 60–90 minutes to a few minutes.
Role-based training, not generic
Separate workshops per role: PMs (a full day), designers (half a day), account managers (half a day). Each starts from that role's real problems — not a tour of the tool — and shows how the new system solves them. For the first 4 weeks, a weekly half hour open to everyone to bring real problems and solve them together. That's how resistance drops: people feel supported, not left alone with a new tool.
Measure, adjust, make the team self-sufficient
In the last weeks: measuring PMs' admin time before and after, gathering team feedback, small tweaks to automations based on real use. Delivery of an agency "operations manual" in Notion: how to open a project, how to handle revisions, how to communicate with clients. The best sign is when the person who was most sceptical at the start writes it.
Three key choices
What really
works.
Observing the real work before giving any advice
Direct observation changes everything: often the real request-handling system is WhatsApp chats with clients, not the official project management tool, which gets filled in after the fact for reports. Basing the new flow on what interviews say ("we use Asana to manage projects") would mean optimising the wrong system.
And it changes the solution: instead of moving everything into Notion hoping clients stop writing on WhatsApp, the new system includes a way to turn those messages into structured tasks. Real work is respected, not fought.
A rule I apply in every workflow consultancy: describe how the work really happens, not how it should happen. Then optimize what exists, not what you wish existed.
The automation that frees the most time: opening projects
An agency like this opens several projects a month. Each one means: creating the project page, creating the Drive folder structure, creating the Slack channel, sending the client the brief template, adding deadlines to the shared calendar. On average 60–90 minutes per project.
With Make: the PM fills in a form with client, project type and start date. Automatically created: a Notion page with the right template for that project type, a Drive structure with standard names, a Slack channel with the right people already in it, a first "send the brief" task assigned to the PM due in 48 hours. Time: a few minutes. Saving: hours every month on this step alone.
Role-based training as the antidote to resistance
Failed attempts to standardise work almost always share one cause: generic training ("here's the new tool, watch this tutorial"). Every role has different problems, and a generic tutorial answers nobody's.
For PMs the workshop starts from: "on Friday afternoon you write the report for the owner — let's do it in 15 minutes instead of 45". For designers: "when the client approves the files, how do you upload them so everyone finds them straight away?". For account managers: "when the client asks for updates on WhatsApp, how do you answer in 30 seconds without calling the PM?". When the most sceptical person writes the final operations manual, the change has really sunk in.
Final stack (example)
From about ten tools to 6.
Example goals — agency workflow
After three months.
The team does real work, not bureaucracy.
Example figures, not a client's results: realistic goals for a scenario like this, measured by comparing 4 weeks before and 4 weeks after implementation.
What I've learned
Learnings to
take with me.
Real work almost never matches the stated process. Ask "how do you work?" and people describe the theoretical process — often what they think you want to hear. To understand how work really happens you have to watch it: that's where the critical pieces nobody mentions in interviews come out.
Rationalising tools is a change-management project, not an IT one. Choosing the right tools is a small part of the work; the bulk is getting people with different habits, preferences and tech comfort to adopt the change. Role-based training, starting from each person's problems, works where generic training fails.
The most effective automation removes the dumbest work, not the most complicated. Manually opening a project (60–90 minutes of identical repetitive work) is the perfect example: high cost, zero added value, fully automatable. Before building complex automations, list the most banal, repetitive things the team does every day: that's where the biggest quick wins are.
The most convinced sceptic, once won over, becomes the best ally. Whoever spent years building their own system is the person most likely to sink the project through resistance. Giving them tailored training — and above all understanding and respecting the logic of their system before proposing alternatives — turns them from obstacle into co-author of the new method.
In creative agencies, operational disorder grows with size. The solution is never to add a new tool — it's having the courage to remove the ones that are badly used, build a system on what remains, and invest in human change as much as in technology.
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