Our methodology isn't just a theory; it's a practical, proven playbook for achieving clarity and efficiency across all levels of your organization. The 1-3-5 Formula systematically evaluates your processes, helps create a plan to reduce inefficiencies, and works with your team to implement an effective solution.
One Goal: Clarity for All
Let's start with the core objective: clarity. In our experience working with 3,000+ different firms, we've found that the root of most operational inefficiencies—and reason your project management system isn't working—can be traced back to a lack of clarity.
Whether it's confusion about business metrics, team performance, or individual responsibilities, clarity is the solution. Our goal with the 1-3-5 Formula is to eliminate these ambiguities, ensuring that everyone in your organization knows precisely what they need to do and how their work contributes to the broader objectives.
Now, to truly achieve operational clarity, you need to focus on three critical components: tools, processes, and habits.
Use the right tools
The right tools can dramatically enhance your agency's efficiency. All gold-standard operations have a core operating hub that serves as their single source of truth. And that hub is tied into the rest of their business tooling, and they have an intentional design to make it as efficient and effortless as possible for their team, while providing the key reporting that leads to better decision-making.
Execute the right processes
Consistent, well-defined processes are the backbone of any efficient operation. They ensure that work is completed in a standardized, predictable manner, leading to reliable outcomes and making it easier to scale your agency's operations.
A gold-standard operation is able to turn individual expertise into company knowledge. Their standard operating procedures (SOPs) are documented, up-to-date, and shared by all. And importantly, their team follows those SOPs because they've made the process live where work gets done. Nobody is chasing down a random Google Doc to try to find the process.
The adoption and execution of your tools and processes depend on the habits of your team. Cultivating a culture of excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement is essential. It's about ensuring that your team not only understands the tools and processes but also excels in utilizing them to achieve your agency's goals.
Gold-standard operations spend time setting crystal clear expectations and rules of engagement, training their team on exactly how work is done at their firm, holding their team accountable to those rules of engagement, and coaching and improving their most valuable assets - their people.
Truly world-class businesses excel at all three of these aspects. It's the magic combination of these three that enables them to build and maintain a great culture and great profits while scaling quickly.
Our structured, five-step process brings the 1-3-5 Formula to life:
Step 1: Design
Clarify your goals, decide on your behavioral standards, outline your necessary processes, and design a technical blueprint.
This stage is about ensuring everyone on your team can close their eyes and envision the same end state of operational excellence while also having clarity on how you'll get there.
Step 2: Build
With a clear vision and structure in place, you now need to construct the tooling and processes. This isn't just about setting up tools; it's about integrating them into a cohesive tech stack that supports your agency's unique needs and requirements.
Step 3: Train
Next, focus on training your team. Effective training goes beyond just showing how tools work; it's about instilling the right habits and behaviors, ensuring your team is equipped to utilize the new processes and tools effectively.
Train your team on the tooling, but also on the expectations.
Step 4: Launch
This phase is where the rubber meets the road. After launching your new system, you need to hold your team accountable to your new standards, fostering the development of healthy habits and ensuring that your new processes are followed.
Step 5: Optimization
Finally, you enter a continuous cycle of optimization. Using real-life data (now that you have lots of it!), refine your operations and make iterative improvements to further enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
This process is never over. And this is where the real fun begins!
By focusing on clarity, leveraging the right combination of tools, processes, and habits, and following a disciplined, step-by-step approach, your agency can not only overcome operational hurdles but also set a foundation for scalable growth.
Over the next few months, we'll guide you through our proven playbook to streamline your operations in ClickUp.
Step 1: Blueprint
We begin by auditing your systems, processes, and project management to uncover the hidden operational bottlenecks hamstringing your agency. From there, we'll design a technical blueprint and implementation plan that will make your agency an incredibly efficient, well-oiled machine. This includes:
Goal setting and success measurement
Together, we'll begin by defining and documenting your key success metrics, whether it's boosting productivity, enhancing team collaboration, or improving project delivery.
Surveying your team
We'll then send an operational team survey to understand what's working and not working in the eyes of your team.
You'll be provided with both quantitative and qualitative feedback from the team to help guide conversations and decisions.
This will provide much needed clarity on what the team thinks is working well, not so well, their daily work habits, and what their ideas are to improve day-to-day operations.
Understanding your operational architecture
After we've gathered and discussed your team's feedback, it's important to thoroughly understand and evaluate your agency's current state across all core operational areas.
We'll audit your onboarding experience, handoffs, client management challenges, team habits, and project management methodology to grasp where greater clarity and alignment are needed organizationally.
Customized system design
Our experts will then design a tailored technical blueprint for your agency—showcasing the appropriate ClickUp hierarchy, views, custom fields, processes, automations, and integrations to streamline your workflows and enhance visibility.
Strategic implementation plan
You'll then receive a detailed implementation plan, crafted to unite your team around a shared vision for operational excellence, ensuring a seamless transition to new workflows.
By the end of this short process, you'll have a comprehensive blueprint that not only identifies areas for improvement, but sets a clear, actionable path forward.
Next, we'll take the Blueprint we designed together and build this exact structure inside ClickUp—saving you hundreds of person-hours and months of work. After your system is live, we'll train your team on how to use it and get you fully onboarded in just a few weeks.
Fully configured ClickUp workspace
We'll bring your Blueprint to life and equip you with a ready-to-use, fully configured Workspace populated by ZenPilot.
Your ZenPilot configured Workspace will include spaces, folders, lists, views, custom fields, automations, and dashboards you need to run your agency.
Custom views for every user
Views are the most exciting but also the most daunting features in ClickUp. That's why we'll build custom views for every role on your team—making it much easier for them to navigate the workspace and do their jobs.
Process library creation
In addition to getting access to our massive library of 200+ agency-specific and operational templates, we'll work with your team to turn your entire business into plug-and-play, reusable templates that make creating and managing work simple and stress-free.
1-on-1 coaching and support
You'll get personalized, 1:1 support building and installing your company’s ClickUp system via scheduled weekly calls with a ZenPilot Coach.
Full team training
We'll train your entire team live so that you can be sure your team is fully prepared and ready to thrive in the new system.
ZenPilot training center
Your entire team will gain access to our extensive library of tutorials covering the ins and outs of ClickUp, building and deploying templates, migrating client work in to the system, and managing workload.
Private client community
You'll be invited to join our ZenPilot community to collaborate and share ideas with peer agencies. Additionally, you'll be able to join weekly "Office Hour" calls to learn from agency and ClickUp experts.
By the end of this process, you'll have a fully operational, custom-configured ClickUp environment and a fully trained team ready to elevate your agency's productivity.
Lastly, we'll continue to help you leverage the full power of your newly implemented system for reporting, ongoing optimization, and strategic decision-making—providing advanced reporting and continuous workflow enhancements, automation builds, and custom solutions to improve team productivity.
Profitability reporting setup
We configure detailed reports to provide deep insights into key performance indicators like profitability, resource utilization, budget pacing, timelines, and team efficiency.
Your leadership team will now have the correct data and insights they need to make crucial decisions around staffing, pricing, service lines, and client strategy.
Custom automations & workflow improvements
We'll continue to work together to identify operational bottlenecks and provide you with advanced automations and workflow enhancements to continue to ramp up team productivity—saving you time and money.
Advanced ClickUp builds
We'll continue to build advanced solutions in ClickUp to continuously improve your operations and build a more productive, profitable, and healthy team.
Continued training & support
We'll provide ongoing training, education, and coaching to help your team excel in their respective roles.
As we continue our ongoing partnership, we'll be building a culture of data-driven decision-making and continuous optimization that keeps your agency competitive and agile.
Since becoming our first partner in 2018, ZenPilot has stood out as the go-to solution for agencies who want to get the most out of ClickUp.
Their commitment to truly solving for the customer and providing the best customer experience is perfectly aligned with our mission at ClickUp - and it shows up in their results and the feedback we consistently hear about ZenPilot.
Zeb Evans ClickUp Founder & CEO
Dealing With Agency Chaos? Stop.
We work with you one-on-one to help you cancel chaos and replace that chaos with clarity.
You’ll boost profit margins with smarter decision making
We'll help your leadership team have the correct data and insights they need to make crucial decisions around staffing, pricing, service lines, and client strategy—leading to a much more profitable agency.
You’ll slash client churn with better expectations
We'll help your project managers have clarity into your team's workload and a completely accurate, live view of every campaign, deliverable, and task for their clients to help them build better, more realistic timelines.
Your team will do better work, faster. Guaranteed.
We'll help your individual contributors have clarity into exactly what is on their plate every day and all the details of your agreed-upon process to complete that work flawlessly without an endless cycle of revisions.
You’ll give clients the clarity they’ve been asking for
We'll help your clients love you even more because they'll have clarity into your exact roadmap and strategy for how you've helped and will continue to help them surpass their goals.
Delegating and creating work will be the easiest part of your day
We'll help you build a plug-and-play process template for everything you do—making work creation, setting timelines, and assigning tasks take seconds instead of hours.
You’ll have a scalable system that your team actually uses and loves
We'll help you create a project management system that is easy for your team to use and adopt—ensuring you won't have to continue tool hopping and spending months on end trying to make it work.
There is very little guessing work once you’ve set up the recommended hierarchy that ZenPilot customizes for you during the Blueprint process.
Less energy is spent on trying to remember little details or wondering what tasks should take priority. We’ve shifted from reactive to fairly proactive. I have confidence in my team’s ability to get work done, and if I have any doubt, I have full visibility. It allows for a lot of peace and open space to think deeply.
ZenPilot is hands down one of the best investments we’ve made as a business. They help us live up to our value of excellence. If you have any doubts, leave them at the door and jump in!
Rebecca Nash Beam Content
ZenPilot Testimonials
Our team is more efficient, productive, and healthier. I was always wary of how much of our work could be put into processes, but this has completely changed my mind. If you want to take your agency to the next level, ZenPilot is a must!
Kyle Harms
Digital Hot Sauce
They provided the tools, processes, and in-depth knowledge to allow us to successfully migrate our entire business to ClickUp in just a few weeks. We would recommend ZenPilot to anyone considering a move to ClickUp.
Andrew Cole
Fat Earth Media
They saved us a lot of time and trouble, and we've had many amazed comments from clients and colleagues about how organized our process is now.
Arianne Foulks
Aeolidia
Since following ZenPilot's strategy and best practices,our team is saving hours per team member every week. Communication has improved across the team and we're able to give our clients better visibility in their campaigns. Margins have increased because of the efficiency as well.
Chris Dubois
Lean Labs
Leadership now has a clear view of bandwidth and capacity, the staff understands exactly what is expected of them when they sit down every morning, and our clients have improved visibility into their deliverables.
Kevin D'Arcy
ThinkFuel
We are more efficient than ever and have streamlined our communication so it's organized and on task, vs having a huge Slack channel or Slack mess.
Josh Crouch
Relentless Digital
ZenPilot has been the most impactful agency operations investment we’ve ever made. They understood our situation, know ClickUp inside out, and led our team to a successful implementation. If you’re serious about scaling your agency, you need to talk to ZenPilot - they transformed how we work and led a 300% improvement in efficiency.
Michael Lisovetsky
Co-founder JUICE
ZenPilot came in with a framework, implementation, and training resources to move our agency through a lot of change in the way our 30 member team does things....change management that is super hard like task and time tracking! They really know ClickUp, and we do some crazy complicated things in there. If you need help scaling and measuring operational performance in your agency, ZenPilot is a great partner to get it done.
Ben Labay
CEO, Speero
Our agency has tried many project management tools over the years, but when we migrated to ClickUp we finally felt like we got it right. But hiring ZenPilot to help us implement it was an even better decision -- easily the best investment we made in our agency's growth. In the year since implementing ClickUp, our business has doubled, and our project management systems and structure have been able to adapt and scale with us
We've guided thousands of agencies to successfully increase their productivity and profits. Book a call to see how we can help you navigate the 1-3-5 Formula.
Book a Call with an Efficiency Expert and Build Your Blueprint
We analyze what you're doing now and find the highest-impact opportunities for growth based on your specific goals and situation, then make a plan to address them.
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