How many project management systems are in your “tried that and it didn’t work” graveyard?
Most founders I work with; and indeed most businesses I’ve ever worked in; usually have a list. We tried Monday. We tried Asana. We tried ClickUp. And they’ve just landed on the one that they’ve inputted the most data into. It’s alright. It works. It just isn’t quite there, and it’s a bit of a burden - it’s never quite up to date because it’s an add-on task for people to do.
Whatever the last iteration was, that’s what they’ve stuck with.
And they did everything right. They followed the advice. They sorted out their processes before they started. They had all the data nice and clean; nobody using all different names for the same company for example; and possibly even for two or three weeks, everyone entered the data perfectly.
But then it became an add-on task that nobody wanted to do. None of the statuses were correct. So you spend the Monday morning meeting basically updating the system rather than actually talking about the clients. Then you go and action all the items out of the meeting, and the system’s out of date again.
You did everything right
There are two types of founders in this situation.
There’s the one that really wants the data and the system up to date, so their job becomes nagging about the system being up to date.
And then there’s the one that just sits in regret - they know they don’t want to irritate their team by asking for updates, so they just sit with the data out of date and the investment sitting on the pile of “well, that didn’t work, did it.”
You followed the advice
You’ve probably been told that it didn’t work because you didn’t have the process sorted in the first place.
And you’re probably thinking = well, but I did.
And that is the right advice. If you haven’t got your processes sorted out, you really don’t have any chance.
But actually, recently there’s been a massive change. There’s been a real shift in what’s possible, and it solves this problem in a completely new way, in a delightful way.
Something has changed
The AI that’s available now has brought a new opportunity for how you use off-the-shelf tools. There’s a new layer, or rather, a layer that’s become accessible that wasn’t before. It’s the same old tools. The same Trello, the same spreadsheet, the same email. But you can layer on how they talk to each other. You can layer on data flow. You can have a task start life in an email and get updated in the CRM or the project management tool by itself - or at least, seemingly by itself.
Same old Asana. Completely different application.
You used to create your costing sheet from scratch, then you opened ClickUp and typed in all the different tasks and assigned them to all the different people. Meanwhile, they all got thousands of ping notifications, and it was never quite right. You had to add this custom field and that custom field to kind of sort of get it based on how you actually work.
You can now do that all automatically, in exactly the way that’s required for the special ways that your business works, or the unique ways your team does. Tasks can flow and data can flow automatically down the paths you define, rather than just the automations that are built in. It can be truly bent to your unusual shape and the quirky shapes of your people.
This is all accessible for everyone.
Arguably it’s always been possible if you had a big pile of money and a big pile of time. You could have technically hired someone - a senior developer - to create a bespoke app for you. But the massive difference that the AI of now has brought is that every agency has this opportunity. It’s just about getting the right diagnosis for the right system, and describing it accurately enough for AI to build it for you.
Imagine if an automated system actually meant an automated system - not just moving things between boxes inside of other defined boxes.
If this sounds like your agency, I’d love to hear what’s in your graveyard. Book a free 15-minute call in the featured section - you tell me what’s going on, I’ll tell you straight whether I can help.