The first thing to review is who are your core agency/consultancy/independent partners to support your team. Your external partners can be a fantastic source of industry expertise, innovation and diversity, and can support team motivation and morale with their unique skills and experience. When was the last time you gave your key external agencies an update on your organisation and clarified their role, their value and how they work together to support your team, brand and overall business performance? Over the last decade or so, when kicking off a new consulting project, the most frequent desire from a project team is for ‘happy clients’, so be kind and accommodating to your agencies. Project teams often talk about breaking new ground, delivering real value, forming new relationships and getting positive feedback – client-centricity is key to their ways of working.

In the ‘new normal’, most of us are still working virtually most of the time, so it is vital to ensure there are enough touchpoints with your agency partners, that expectations are clear and that there is a strong personal connection across the team.

So now it’s over to you: have you got clear briefs in place for your agencies, with objectives, deliverables, measures of success and budgets? Do you have good levels of interaction and relationships with your agencies?

Do you get the sense that your account is a priority? (If not, be on the alert!) Have you been forced to use the procurement mandated agency of choice? They may not be resourced and motivated to fully support you.

I did a little bit of field research for this article and thought I’d share the ingredients for success that seasoned consultants highlighted:

1. Everything is about the brief – please make sure you are clear about what you want to achieve, the organisational and market context, key timings, deliverables and measures of success.
2. In order to create a strong brief, please consult with your colleagues for input and ensure senior management is aligned on scope and budget. (It’s just not good form to abandon a formal proposal process through lack of internal alignment, as there are real costs for agencies in time, effort and morale.)
3. Check that you and your colleagues have the time to support the agency with delivering a great job, for good communication and collaboration.
4. Share your preferred communication and working style – these vary widely across companies and personality types!
5. Keep asking for your agency’s ideas, advice and constructive challenge – they will love opportunities to add value.
6. Respect the scope of your original brief – don’t try to push your agency team to deliver way outside the brief, it makes for awkward conversations.
7. If you’re not happy with how a project is going, share this sooner rather than later so your agency team can course-correct efficiently.

The first thing to do here is to agree as a cross-functional client team that this is the case and to document real examples of ‘wonkiness’.
Some questions to check as a client team are:

• Have you been clear on the key deliverables, timings, outputs, clear scope, internal processes and internal stakeholders to consult?
• Have you given your agency team all the available guidance and materials to do its job?
• Have you connected the key agency team members with your internal team members? Is everyone working together happily? (Or are there pockets of ‘wonkiness’?)
• Do you get the sense that you have the A-team working on your account? And the supporting resources to deliver at speed and quality? (Don’t be afraid to ask who this is.)