Has 2023 been a bumpy ride for your agency? Like you’re swimming upstream with one arm tied behind your back and a crocodile snapping at your heels? Whatever your experience has been this year, it’s sure to have been a disruptive one. From the ongoing economic and geo-political uncertainty, to shifting client and consumer behavior, to rapid technological change, the agency landscape is more complex and competitive than ever.

Can business exist without risk? Risk is inevitable, a nearly unavoidable byproduct of seeking to make a profit. But there’s a big difference between risks we never see coming and those we plan carefully for. Risk management comes up repeatedly in any discussion of project management best practices because identifying, tracking, and planning for risk are all keys to lessening its potential impact. One tool agencies can use to better understand and track risk is called a risk register.

Have you ever tried to push your way through a door that said “pull”? First comes confusion. What just happened? Why does my face hurt? And then embarrassment: No one looks good walking into a door. But once we get past the shock and awkwardness, there’s a great lesson to be learned here. Pushing and pulling are two different ways of doing very similar things. But in most situations, only one works — and the other has a negative effect that could leave you looking foolish.

As cool as it would be to open a magic room and have an exciting new product waiting for you, reality just doesn’t work that way. Developing a successful product takes effective planning, research, lots of work, probably some arguments, and learning from your inevitable wrong turns. And, just like your agency doesn’t jump into projects without a plan, you can’t develop new products without a process (well, you can, but it won’t be pretty).

You’ve probably heard, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” And while that’s great advice across the board, it rings especially true in marketing. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution in marketing. What works for one of your agency’s clients might not work for the next.

As an agency, you’re in the business of creating success for your clients. And while you already have a proven roadmap you use as a starting point for new clients, there’s no single path that delivers strong results 100% of the time. One key element in planning and executing a successful marketing campaign is selecting the right marketing strategy.

Let’s face it: IT projects are notoriously complex. So is managing them. With shifting client requirements, unknown endpoints, finicky development languages, and the constantly evolving nature of technology itself, information technology projects face more potential hurdles and pitfalls than their analog counterparts. To overcome these challenges, IT project managers have specialized training and often more experience.

Do you find yourself searching through mounds of folders for the file you need? Can you not remember which platform it was on, what you named it, where you stored it, or all three? If so, you’re taking time away from the more pressing, higher-priority activities on your plate. This issue isn’t just a “you” problem — organizations everywhere are going through the same thing.

Program managers and project managers might sound like very similar jobs. They have similar job titles, work with similar concepts, and speak a similar workplace language. They even have similar academic and professional backgrounds (though there’s a difference in depth). But make no mistake, these two roles are as crucial as they are distinct — and those distinctions are worth understanding.