The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

The work we produce gets all the attention.
But the real question is: what’s happening behind the scenes that makes that work possible?
In this episode of The Handbook, Harv sits down with creative operations expert Nicky Russell, co-founder of WDC, We Deliver Change, and chair of the Creative Operations Summit in London. Together they explore the discipline of creative ops – the systems, culture, and leadership required to help creative teams do their best work. 
What starts as a conversation about creative teams quickly expands into something bigger: how operations leaders create the environment where great work can actually happen.
Here’s what we dive into:
What creative operations actually is – and why it’s becoming a strategic role inside agencies, brands, and consultancies
Why ops is fundamentally about culture – not just processes, workflows, and systems
Why happiness and psychological safety matter more than most leaders realise when it comes to producing great work
How creative ops and business ops are converging as technology and AI reshape how work gets done
How learning to speak the language of different stakeholders is often the key to unlocking real influence.
Whether you work in a creative environment or not, the themes in this conversation will resonate with any ops leader trying to build a healthier, more effective organisation.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Nicky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicky-russell-989a4719/
🌐 WDC London: https://wdc-london.com/ 
🌐 In-House Agency Leaders Club: https://www.ihalc.com/ 
🗓️ Henry Stewart Creative Ops Summit London, 19th March 2026: https://henrystewartconferences.com/creative-operations/ 

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 
📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity 
📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook 
➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Have you heard of The Handbook: Breakfast Sessions?
These are intimate breakfast roundtables where we dive into big operational topics with leaders from forward-thinking agencies and consultancies.
The next one is coming up on 19 March in London, and the theme is:
Run like you’re looking to sell. Even if you’re not.
I’ll be joined by Dom Hawes. Dom has led 11 acquisitions and scaled his marketing services group to £22m in just 30 months, so he’s seen first-hand what makes a business attractive when someone starts looking under the hood.
Whether an exit is on the horizon or not, the disciplines that increase valuation are the same ones that make a business more profitable, more resilient, and easier to run.
The Breakfast Sessions are intentionally small to give everyone space to contribute, and they operate under Chatham House Rule to encourage open conversation.
If you’re leading a 25+ person agency or consultancy and want to see your firm through a sharper lens, this one’s for you.
Request a seat:
bit.ly/handbookbreakfastmarch

Your numbers might look healthy.
Revenue’s up. Projects are flowing. The pipeline feels… fine.
But underneath? Margins are eroding. Cash is tighter than you’d like. And no one’s totally confident in the data they’re using to make decisions.
In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra sat down with finance and business ops advisor Robert Patin to unpack what’s really going on beneath the surface of many professional service businesses right now – and why operational maturity is the difference between surviving and thriving.
Here’s what we dive into:
📉 The financial red flags leaders consistently overlook – especially around forecasting, cash flow, and margin erosion
📊 Why revenue is a vanity metric if your gross profit assumptions are wrong
🧐 How to turn project postmortems into a pricing engine that actually improves over time
🔄 The link between operational maturity and financial performance – and why finance and ops can’t sit in silos
🧩 How data fragmentation creates “business whack-a-mole” and makes AI harder, not easier
🤖 Why AI will increase pricing pressure – and how to get ahead of it before the market catches up
This conversation is a practical look at how to level up your maturity across finance, systems, and decision-making – so you can scale with confidence instead of guesswork.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/creative-agency-success 
🌐 Robert’s resources for The Handbook listeners: https://creativeagencysuccess.com/handbook   
👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 
📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity 
📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook 
➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

AI is moving fast in professional services firms. 
And while most conversations focus on efficiency gains and new tools, the harder questions are around risk – ownership, liability, and what happens when AI use goes wrong.
In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra is joined by Sharon Toerek, a leading expert on IP and legal risk in the creative and consulting space, to unpack what AI really changes for operations leaders – and what needs to be in place to protect your business
Here’s what they dive into:
📄 What actually happens to IP when work is human-created, AI-assisted, or fully AI-generated
🔐 The data privacy risks agencies and consultancies often underestimate
🧭 Sharon’s five-step framework for building an AI-ready workplace
📝 How contracts, policies, and client conversations need to evolve as AI becomes operational
If you’re an ops leader trying to balance innovation with risk, this episode is a practical reminder that AI governance isn’t a legal edge case anymore – it’s part of running a mature, well-managed operation.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Sharon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharontoerek/ 
🌐 Check out Sharon’s website: https://legalandcreative.com/ 

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 

📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity 

📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook 

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Most service businesses don’t stall because of a lack of talent or ambition. They stall because the business quietly outgrows the systems it was built on.
In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra sits down with Jason Swenk – agency founder turned advisor who’s spent two decades helping agencies and consultancies scale with more confidence and less chaos. 
After building and selling his own eight-figure agency, Jason codified the patterns he kept seeing into an eight-system framework for predictable growth.
We unpack why so many leadership teams feel stuck, what actually breaks as businesses scale, and how operators can help reset the foundations before things start to crack.
Here’s what we get into:
Why clarity, positioning, and offering are the foundations everything else depends on
How to move from reactive growth to a more deliberate, scalable operating model
The difference between prospecting and sales – and why skipping steps causes pain later
How delivery, ops, and leadership systems protect margins and give leaders time back
What it really means to transition from founder mode to CEO mode
Whether you’re an Ops Director, COO, or part of a leadership team trying to break through a growth ceiling, this conversation is a strong reminder that maturity isn’t about working harder – it’s about building the right systems at the right time.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Jason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonswenk/ 
💻 Jason’s website: https://jasonswenk.com/  
🎧 Jason's podcast: https://www.agencymastery360.com/podcast 

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 
📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity 
📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook 
➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.