The Wize Way

Episode 81: The Role, Responsibilities & KPIs of a Senior Production Manager

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 1 • Episode 81

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In this episode of The Wize Guys Podcast,  Brenton Ward and Jamie Johns discuss the roles, responsibilities, and KPI's of a Senior Production Manager. Based on the ideal team structure, learn how traffic flow should work for your senior production manager, what to look for when hiring a senior production manager, and their job description to determine their KPIs.

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Jamie Johns:

You've got to master leading yourself. So that's about self-discipline, that's about experience, that's about controlling your feelings. So you've got to lead yourself.

Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-pull practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Brenton Ward:

Interestingly, we've focused on the topic that we're going to look at today the roles, responsibilities, and KPIs of the Senior Production Manager. One of the reasons we are focusing on this topic and just this role alone today is we've gotten quite a few questions on it in the last couple of weeks, be it on the tribe, so we thought it would be a good idea to kind of lift the hood on this role, look at what it actually is, look at the DNA of these people and then give you guys the opportunity to ask as many questions as you possibly can in the hour that we have together To set the scene and give us a little bit of context as to how we've come up with this role and what importance it plays in the ideal team structure. Talk to us a little bit about the issues that we face when we don't have this role in place and when we don't have this structure in place.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, well, thanks, Brenton. I'll probably quote Mr. Ed Chan, and Edward always says we need to set the context, wouldn't he, Brenton? So you know, the context of this whole discussion is around team design, and so when we all start out like I did and some of the viewers is that we start out by ourselves and we do everything. We basically do everything, and back in the old days, I was the receptionist, the accountant, the client manager, literally everything. And then once you scale your practice to, you know 100,000 in fees, 200, 300, 400, 500, you know things have to change and if they don't change, you'll just end up, you know, in hospital, as I actually did we shouldn't laugh about it, but actually did end up in hospital from stress and you can just get out of control.

Jamie Johns:

And you get out of control with all the traffic, and all of us watching know what that traffic is. And what the traffic is is particularly the communication with the clients. So traffic with the clients comes in emails, it comes in appointments, it comes in sales meetings, it comes in telephone calls. These days, you know, I used to get traffic and I think the guys get traffic at Sky, even on Facebook Messenger text messages, so you're just bombarded with this traffic and the more clients you get. All of us like to keep clients and we never like to stay no to new clients. So we just keep getting all this traffic and then that's traffic from the clients. But once you've won the client, and then you actually have to do the work. Now, getting the work done is obviously, you know, doing the bookkeeping, doing the bank rec, doing the payroll, preparing the financial statements, doing the tax returns, and that's the type of production work. And so what you find is, if you don't hire people and delegate effectively, you will, you know, get out of control, it'll be chaos, it'll just be chaos, and a lot of us have been there and done that.

Jamie Johns:

And again, that's where I got to the point where I reached out to Ed and said Ed, how do you do this? How do you structure your team so that you get your life back? And so what you do, Brenton, is you get to the point where you hire people. But then the question then becomes well, how do I structure that team? Like, do I just keep adding accounts of bookkeepers one after another because I've got more work?

Jamie Johns:

And you know I ended up with this really flat sort of type team and in the early days. It would be almost like every accountant does the same thing. So every accountant that I hired yes, they communicated with the clients and they did the work, and so they were almost like a clone of me. But that didn't really work because the communication traffic ended up sort of going all over the place. There was no sort of rhyme or reason around it. Who looked after the clients, who had the portfolio clients, who did the production work. So even though you add more people, it can still end up in chaos.

Jamie Johns:

So you end up with Brenton and what Ed always says is a really wide and flat team and so there's no leverage in that. So everyone has to know everything. So every accountant or every bookkeeper has to know everything about bookkeeping and everything about tax because that's what the client demands. But then they also need to know you know, have all the production skills and the knowledge to get the work done and also the sales skills. But we all know that we're not all wide like that, we're all different.

Jamie Johns:

And then that's where Ed comes back to the context of you know grinders, minders, and finders, and each person plays their role in the team, and so what that comes down to is what you've got up on the screen now, which is what we developed.

Jamie Johns:

It was mentoring, as you know, Brenton, after lengthy discussions with Ed around this whole concept of a deep and narrow team and where the traffic goes. So, in terms of today's discussion, when we look at that traffic quadrant, we're talking about the top right- hand corner, the senior client manager, and you can see there that you know the traffic complexity is high- level traffic. It's a more complex type of traffic. But we also see then on the vertical axis that it's production traffic. So if we zone in on that senior production manager, it's all about production- type work. They deal with production work, but they deal with the high-end work in helping the production team get the work done and that's where they sit on the team, and from that, you can tell the type of traffic and the questions and the work that they need to do.

Brenton Ward:

Okay now, once we sort of look at the traffic flow as being one of the biggest issues that firms face when they're growing because of all the things that you just mentioned there, and then we decide that, okay, we're going to get our traffic flow in check and we do that by starting to build out this ideal team structure. But the ideal team structure and getting the resource mix right doesn't happen overnight and it's not something that we can just automatically fill these seats in this ideal team structure straight away because it's going to depend on our fee levels, it's going to depend on the people we have, the resources we have at the time. So, talk to us a little bit about getting this resource mix right and then moving towards understanding. Well, when does the senior production manager role come into play?

Brenton Ward:

I mean, yeah even at Sky, you guys have to work your teams out, so talk to us a bit about that.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, it's a great question and there are a lot of you- know questions about this in the WizeT ribe on in Facebook. And just to explain it, what happens depends on your fee level. So if you're at a fee level of, say, three, four, five hundred, then often the senior accountant is the senior production manager. In that sense, you might have someone else who is a budding or up- and- coming assistant client manager and and a senior accountant because of their personality, because we know that the finders have to have high- end interpersonal skills. So you're not going to put in place a senior production manager or an assistant client manager until your fee level warrants it. But it starts kicking in at around 600,000 in fees, which Ed has always said and we know. From 600,000 to a million is where the barriers to growth are. But if you don't put these senior roles in place, you as the owner or the partner can start getting out of control, losing clients, getting chaos and you stop growing. That's the best way to explain it.

Jamie Johns:

I've had countless conversations with accountants over the years that they've been at 600,000, 800,000 the same level for 20 years even. Yeah Right. So the key is to recognize that in the early days, the senior accountant, for example, or the senior bookkeeper, is also the up- and- coming senior production manager or even assistant client manager. Now, which one you go to depends on who you've got in the firm in terms of the resource mix. Now, if you've got someone who's a senior accountant right, Brenton and they're fantastic at talking, they've got really good interpersonal skills, social intelligence, they call it as well Then you know your next step might be. You know what they're best to be the assistant client manager. So don't promote them into a seat that doesn't suit them, whereas you might have someone on your team who's a senior accountant. You've got $500,000 in fees or 450, say, and you know that you're growing quite fast and you're thinking ahead.

Jamie Johns:

Okay, well, this person doesn't really have that good interpersonal skills, they're not really that sales type of person. But I tell you what they're really output people. They don't talk much because they just get the work done and it ends up in my desk 95% done. Now they don't fulfill that role totally and just do review work until you get to $6,000, $7,000, or $800,000 in fees and then they push the work down. So you hire another accountant, you hire another bookkeeper. They slide in underneath the senior production manager.

Jamie Johns:

Instead of doing the work, Brenton, they start reviewing the work, right, and then it's really important for the senior client manager or the partner or the owner not to bypass them, right? So this bypass policy comes in to play again at that senior production, at that mind level, because you don't want to undermine them and their role is what's their role? Their role is to review the quality of the work and help the senior accounts or senior bookkeepers, you know, do their work and manage the production team. So at the end of the day, depending on the fees that you've got, yes, some people do have to wear two hats, but as you grow and add more fees, then you promote that person fully into that role and you tell them, you guide them and you show leadership of what their role is now, what the no bypass policies, in, what they're accountable for, what's their KPIs.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely so. Jamie, you made some really interesting points there, because I think they're points that a lot of Wize members when they join. This is arguably one of the hardest concepts and the hardest things to get implemented and also to come to terms with possibly implementing it in their firm. Because, one, we're dealing with people, two, we're dealing with people with change, and three, it's kind of well, how do we transition to this? Because it isn't going to happen overnight. So I think, having that sort of understanding that you can't just fill the ideal role with the ideal person straightaway, some people are going to wear multiple hats for a long, long period of time, but as that team grows and fee size, then the ultimate is to have each of those roles filled by the right person.

Jamie Johns:

That's right, yeah, and the thing is it's got to be led by the owners. It's got to be led by you guys, having meetings with your team and going through these videos and studying how the team structure and design needs to be what we're saying here so that we get leverage. It's all about leverage at the end of the day, and I always come back to Dr Stephen Covey's book about delegation. Effectively, what we're looking at here is a deep and narrow team and what it does is give the senior client manager who's responsible for the client portfolio. It gives them leverage. It gives them leverage to do what they need to do, and that's obviously service the clients. And then the senior production manager gets the work done, reviews the work of the production team and at its highest level.

Jamie Johns:

It's this type of teamwork, that is this interdependence. It's so critical to come back to that, Brenton that if you're not working at the highest level of maturity as a team, then you are lacking. So you've got to work in interdependence and that's the senior client manager recognizing that. You know what I'm going to have to delegate the work. I'm going to have to delegate the production work and push the work down to someone else, and sure there's going to be mistakes. Don't be a perfectionist.

Jamie Johns:

But the alternative is that you do 100% yourself and you get six, seven, 800,000 of fees and you're trying to do everything yourself. It cannot happen. So you must put these team members in place, have the team meetings, show the leadership, and then delegate effectively. No, don't abdicate. Study what true delegation is and what the best concept of true delegation is.

Jamie Johns:

I come back to what Dr. Stephen Covey says in the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People because the alternative is you really want other people doing 80% of the work and you finish off the 20% as the senior client manager or even the senior production manager. The alternative is you do everything yourself and you will never grow and you will never scale your firm. So you've got to be let's say, at the outset, you have to be an extremely good leader as a senior client manager or partner or CEO, and you've got to like people and you've got to influence people and direct them that this is how the team works and then put the right people in the right seat. One of the worst things is to promote the wrong person in the wrong seat in this team design.

Brenton Ward:

Okay, so let's drill into it, put the magnifying glass on the senior production manager role and I welcome everyone to start asking questions whenever you like from this point on because we'll try and filter them in through the content. I'm sure a lot of it's gonna be. We hope to cover as much ground as possible, but we're sure there are gaps that we need to fill. But, Jamie, let's talk about I really want to sort of look at some of the DNA and the aspects of the, say, the personality profile of this senior production manager and then also how we recruit them and some of those areas. So talk to us about the ideal profile of a senior production manager for everyone listening.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, in terms of the profile, we'll just go through some of those dot points but then I'll sort of speak freely. But basically anywhere from five to eight plus years of experience. Now you have to gauge yourself at what level that person is technical because ideally, the person who's the senior production manager has to have a fairly high level of technical knowledge of how to prepare the work because they have to review the work of others. Now full-time, five years to eight years plus. Some people are quite good. After five years They'll pick up things really quickly. We all know the type of people where we show them things once and then they get it. We've got staff like that. We show them once and then they understand it. For other people, it can take maybe eight years for the penny to drop to really understand, say in the tax environment, what all the entities are, what all the structures are that we have from companies and trusts and different aspects and all the technical experience. So you have to gauge that for yourself for what level they're at technically. That's the first point. The other point is this senior production managers, do not need high interpersonal skills. The senior client manager and the assistant client manager they're the people who need to be able to talk and change the tone and change the gauge when people come in because they're dealing with people naturally. So the senior production manager doesn't need to have these interpersonal skills. They don't really need to talk much but, mind you, when they're given a job they know how to do it and they'll give it to you when it's 95% done, with a letter done and everything. So they're really high in output. People I've mentioned that they don't need to have the sales skills Come back to that technical knowledge. They need to have the ability to be able to look at a trial balance or a set of financial statements and to be able to quickly identify the discrepancies almost a little bit like six cents. And I think everyone knows the type of people, knows the level of school you got, that if you can look at a set of financials and know, oh, hang on, the revenue is different last year, the GP is different last year, and investigate that, you sort of need that level of six cents in terms of looking at the figures and knowing better. Have a look at that better, investigate that, and fix that.

Jamie Johns:

In terms of the technical quality, some other really big factor there is they really need to be team players. The senior production managers that we've got at Sky are very mindful of helping others, you know, even being kind and being patient, particularly being patient in training and reviewing the work of the accountants who they're in charge of, of the production staff they're in charge of, because if they're not a team player and they just wanna do the work themselves, you know, and just wanna keep the work to themselves, then they're not in that role because, we have to remember, they want to be able to manage. Some people don't wanna manage other people. They might just wanna do the work and get the work done. That's not this person. This person that we want has a high level of technical skills and basic interpersonal, so it's not sales, but they wanna have the ability to be kind and helpful and patient, to train the accountants underneath them that they're in charge of to do the work.

Brenton Ward:

So I think there's an important point to make there, Jamie because when I looked at that initially in terms of doesn't need great interpersonal skills, but then, on the other side, needs to be able to manage and encourage team members, I thought, well, there's a bit of a conflict there in terms of you know, the person who just looks down and does the work. Typically they're not necessarily the best managers, but what you're saying there is, when we're talking about high interpersonal skills, it's more so the ability to get in front of a client, a potential client, and deliver a sale or whatever it may be.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, I'll touch on that. I mean, when you're a senior client manager, a sister client manager, you have to have the ability to deal with and cope with a broad range of people from society. Every client that we come in, either via their marketing or referral, they're a totally different person with a totally different set of individual circumstances. Now, not everyone can help a broad range of people like that and you need to have the ability you know if a bill in the air walks in, that you can change tone, change level, and match their communication level, the same as if you know a builder or a tradesman come in high-end. So interpersonal skills are what I'm talking about there. Whereas a senior production manager may be in charge of three, four, or five people at maximum, and the same people day in, day out. So you know they needed least the ability to form good, solid relationships with the team that they're managing, but the same team that they're managing day in, day out. So it's a whole different level to being a client manager and dealing with the communication traffic.

Brenton Ward:

Great, that makes perfect sense. So talk to me a little bit about this different sort of personality mix or role mix, Jamie, between getting it done, getting it right, getting along, and getting appreciated. We often refer to this when it comes to different roles and the mix that a certain role requires. So talk to us about the senior production manager and a lot of us.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah. So I first came across this when I started working with Ed as my mentor, and Ed would go on and I wonder what he was talking about at the start until he sort of showed me this, but he's always going about getting it done, get it right, get along and get appreciated. To put this in context, you can see the other roles there and you know we deep- dived into this sprint and we're there, didn't we? And at the end of the day, you know, if you look at the green there, the senior production manager, the highest waiting is getting it right. Other people like, say, for the accountant, for example, they're only 20% get it right, whereas you know, get it done, they're 70%. You know, because what you don't want is you don't want your bookkeeping or accounting production staff being perfectionists and just getting it blocked up in the production room and not getting it to the senior production manager because that's their job. Their job is the highest waiting is to get it right. That's what their job is.

Jamie Johns:

So you know, I remember when I was actually a client manager, I used to love my senior production manager at the time and they would give me the job like 95, 99% done on my desk, job after job, and I would just finish off the last 3% to 5%. It was a brilliant team because I was good at selling, bringing in the work, getting the work organized, and then giving it to the team and the senior production manager, and it was complementary skills. That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about complementary skills. I was always slow in getting the work done. I was always, you know, slow, whereas other people rock faster than them. T his gives people context around. You know the highest waiting in terms of the senior client manager, you know, get it done 20%, get it right 50, get along. You know 25%. Obviously, they got to get along with more people. So it gives context to the DNA of the person who is a senior production manager, Brenton.

Brenton Ward:

Okay, so let's talk about the recruitment process and kind of what to look for when we're trying to fill the seat, whether it's internally or from the broader market. Talk to me about the ideal candidate. What should we be looking for in this recruitment process when it comes to the right attitude and getting the work done?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, recruiting is a massive area and we all have to do it, with our teams growing and then finding the right people. But some of the absolutely critical things to look out for are when you're hiring a senior production manager. You don't want someone with like a stack of ego, someone who's not going to be directed by yourself as a senior client manager because they've still got a manager and their manager is the senior client manager. You know they need to be able to work closely with the senior client manager and someone that you know has an ego that, oh, I know everything, I'm not willing to learn, I'm not willing to delegate. You have to avoid those types of people. They have to be open to learning. They want to manage people. So if you interview someone and they're not open to managing people, that's a warning sign. They've got to be able to want to step into a leadership role and have a history of that if possible.

Jamie Johns:

You know, another point you've got there is to take feedback productively. We all have to take feedback at times, but we don't want people sort of, you know, being so thin- skinned that you have to walk on eggshells when you say, look, can you fix this job for me or we need more training in this area. So they've got to be able to take feedback. They need to be able to contribute to the company's goals, not just their own goals but their own goals of growing the fee base in the team they're in, which is the company's goal.

Jamie Johns:

That's the other thing. You know some of the points we've already touched on are eagerness to work with coworkers. You know like you've got to have a mentality of you're happy working in a team and communicating in a team, but not just in a silo. You just want to work in a silo. You know that's not this person. This person has to interact with their co- managers and their production team. The other really important thing, the other point there is and we've all seen it that when people have a concern or have a complaint, they raise it with the senior client manager directly, not just sit on it and stew over it.

Jamie Johns:

You know, and we've all seen people who just sit on it and stew over it. They talk about everyone else, but the person they should be talking about with it is their manager. I stress that these three roles are the senior client manager, the assistant client manager, and the senior production manager. They need that level of maturity that's above most people in terms of going for this job. So, when I say maturity, if they've got concerns, they've got enough courage to go directly to their manager and raise that concern. And the other point there is obviously being motivated, as I said earlier, by helping other people educate and train the people under you. Not everyone can do that, not everyone wants to do that, so, again, you have to have that type of attitude.

Brenton Ward:

How do you recruit attitude? Often very hard because everyone's going to put their best foot forward in their interview stage. But how do you try and cut through that to find out what the real situation is?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, look, as Ed said, it's not an exact science to recruiting. You know, if you follow the steps that we've put out over Ed's experience and my experience, it's not an exact science, but if you follow the steps you should get 80% of it right. And in terms of the attitude testing, someone might interview fantastically. We've all seen that where we interview someone and we think, oh, they've got a fantastic attitude, and then when they start the job, it's like they're a different person. So I think we've seen that the only thing you can do is do your attitude tests. There's one that I use on mine tools and workshop tools, and there are a lot of different types of attitude tests out there. I'm not a massive fan after I've been through all these personality tests. Part of the solution, then, is one of the things that Richard Branson actually promotes and Ed in his experience and years of experience about it is to have a look at the history of promotions. So when you're hiring this person, what's the history of promotions in the one firm? So try and avoid the job hoppers. You know, like even me, I was a job hopper because I was so entrepreneurial I just couldn't settle down, I couldn't find my place until I probably started my own firm. So look at the people who want to work in a team that has a history of promotions in the same firm. If you can find those people, fantastic. We found a couple of those people in the last two months but that was because we focused on that and you know people get disheartened when they can't find people.

Jamie Johns:

You know some of the stuff as the CEO and say, as the partner, you know one particular guy I was talking to for two years, two years. I was talking to this particular person from the Philippines to recruit. I had known him that long and he had a history of promotions. So you've got to be developing these networks and these contacts for weeks, months, years. The most recent senior client manager that we hired I'd been speaking to her for two years. You know we just hired an assistant client manager and that took three months, you know. So I've got people in the coaching club asking me after two weeks and they're panicking Jamie, there's no one out there.

Jamie Johns:

You have to give it time. So you know the key thing is the history of promotions. Make sure you test them. It always says give them a job and those tests are also timed. So you know there's a score and they're timed and by all means, check references with people as much as you can. And what I like to do with the references is like the candidate to call their old boss or whoever they work for and organize the appointment. So I like the candidate to call their old boss and organize the phone call with me because what you want to do is cut to the truth. You want to get the truth syrup because in the interview it's easy for everyone to sell themselves.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely Alright, Jamie, talk to us a little bit more than about hiring someone who's been promoted internally and I guess it makes that I was thinking about this with our most recent highs in the firm here and it's somewhat harder to do with junior roles, right in terms of grinding roles, because you know, their work experience may be a little bit more difficult.

Brenton Ward:

Their work experience may only span sort of a couple of years, whereas when we're recruiting for a senior production manager they should have, by virtue of what we said of the DNA, a good sort of five to eight, 10 years experience. So we should be able to clearly see that internal promotion history there. And you know what better, easier way to do that these days than just go straight to LinkedIn, most people update their LinkedIn profile fairly proactively these days and I always find it quite interesting to see how much someone's LinkedIn profile matches the CV that they send you, because there's normally a few tweaks made here and there on the Word document that you get in the application, but they don't necessarily update their LinkedIn profile. So a little tip there, if that works. Now the million dollar question, Jamie, and it's a really hard one to answer specifically, but approximately what sort of pay should we shouldn't experience senior production manager get?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, it's a good question and one that comes up quite often though, Brenton. So you've got to look at the location where you are, Brenton. So if you're in, you know, in a capital city, in a major metropolitan city, then you know salaries will often be higher than they are in the regional areas. So you know, you just really need to do your research and have a look at some of the jobs that are advertised. That I say is likely, or matching the senior production manager you've job got. Another one is the Hays salary guide. I've looked at that extensively. I know others have a salary guide as well in terms of experience, qualifications, and the whole works so, but you really just need to do your research in terms of what that market salary is. It's the market salary at the end of the day.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely. What are your thoughts on the senior production manager role being offshore Offshore versus onshore senior production manager?

Jamie Johns:

Look at the same thing. People were happy to get to our website now and we've actually got team Paul there. Now there is a video actually on this Brenton I can't remember what the video is but so we've had Donita, who's been with us five years, next month and she's our senior production manager and she's based in the Philippines. So there's a classic video in the Wize Vault where I interview Paul, who's the senior client manager, and at the time just be mindful I think we've called Danita a team leader, but obviously that senior production manager. So, yes, that certainly can work. And the senior production manager in the Philippines. She reviews the work of, I think there's the other accounts and even the book paper as well. So, yes, that can work. Again, it comes back to how good they are technically and all the things that we've already spoken about. So, yes, quite possible. And I think we've actually got two senior production managers that have been with us quite some time.

Jamie Johns:

So five years is a long time in terms of educating and having that one-on-one time with their senior client manager over five years. You certainly picked up a lot in that time In terms of training the senior production manager. It should be the senior client manager. So hopefully they've got 80% of the skills that you need, and the senior client manager may only need to fill in 5, 10, hopefully a maximum of 20% of what they're missing.

Jamie Johns:

And part of that process is you should make sure that the senior production manager has got their checklist. In terms of when jobs are presented to the senior production manager, they should be aware of what they need to check. Now that would include the working papers in your firm done correctly. A lot of the times what you'll find is sometimes the junior staff really want to get the job done quickly and they'll have it done and they'll pass it to the senior production manager and a lot of the working papers may not be done or there might be shortcuts made. So it's important that you have your systems and processes in place around the checklist, like even the simple bars. Have these particular accounts been reconciled? Even the integrated client account, are they reconciled? So you've got to have your checklist.

Jamie Johns:

There's no doubt about that. There's actually some of those checklist Liz in the wise vault in there to look at as well, and I can direct you to those.

Brenton Ward:

Who's meant to review the job and also send queries out? So you've covered the job review part, but then also sent queries out.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, it's a good question. So if there are queries around the production side of it, what should happen is you should have your daily huddle and then what are you stuck on? Should come up and the senior production manager will say well, you know what, I'm stuck on? These three jobs because of X, Y, and Z. Then the senior production manager should touch base with the senior client manager because the senior client manager is communicating with the client all the time and from time to time throughout the year, or they've bought a rental property, whatever, and so the senior client manager will often know the answer Brin Okay, but that should filter out via the daily huddle.

Jamie Johns:

If the senior client manager doesn't know often what we will get to do, we will actually get the senior production manager to draft the email for the senior client manager or the assistant client manager to go to the client. So they'll do all the hack work. They'll do 95% of it and draft the email and say dear Joe, we need this. X, Y y, and Z, blah, blah, blah, and then they'll email to the client manager and they'll shoot it out. You're going to get leverage In some cases where our senior production manager even Donita, for example, had her in Australia and she met some of the clients. Now she got to a point where she was so good that she would email the clients for the production work, not communication traffic, but for the production work and she would CC the client manager on the queries. So again, that's Lee Ridge and the client would just say, yes, well, this is what you need to do the job.

Brenton Ward:

So hopefully that makes sense. Yep. So, Jamie, talk to us a little bit about some of the points of the job description, of which we've covered a lot, but yeah.

Jamie Johns:

So we've probably covered a lot of those things and everyone can have a quick read of themselves. What I'll probably cover is down there. The last point you know will not be required to see clients face to face certainly will be asked to help the manager with you know. So what do you want? You often want the senior production manager because of their skills and knowledge. You might want them to help you, as the senior client manager, to prepare for, you know, an annual general meeting or a strategic meeting. You might even want them to help you with software selection.

Jamie Johns:

You know sometimes a senior production manager will have a lot of knowledge about software. As you know, a couple of hours do and even if you are doing that, some of that advisory type work or virtual you know CFO work it's great to have the senior production manager helping prepare the figures. You know, for example, if you're having a monthly meeting or quarterly catch-up in a board meeting environment, it's really good that the senior client manager can walk into that meeting and have all the figures done, you know, and be able to review them a day before the meeting and even strategic tax planning and structuring advice. You know it's good to work as a team because often a fish can't see water. You know it'd be good.

Jamie Johns:

As a senior client manager or the assistant client manager, go to the senior production manager hey Joe, what do you think? You know, what do you think of this type of advice or structure? And you know often the senior production and you might say, oh, you know, we could do this, we could do a bucket company or something. So again, it's just working in that team and utilizing their knowledge, utilizing their skill to get the best outcome for the client.

Brenton Ward:

One of the main things we wanted to point out with this is there are two very, really helpful resources in the vault, one of which is a very detailed position description, which covers a lot of the things that we've discussed today, which you can use in that recruitment process and onboarding process of your senior production manager. The second part of it is actually the performance appraisal of the performance review template, and I can even vouch for this actually, with the senior production manager we have in the firm here who wanted to do a six- month review with her a couple of weeks ago. Jamie and she just went straight to the WizeV ault and downloaded that template and it actually formed the basis of such a good conversation and really made her feel valued in terms of the structure and the format of that performance review template. So highly recommend it. What do you see as the next step for a senior production manager in terms of career progression, Jamie?

Jamie Johns:

It's a great question. Look, the answer to that is if you've found someone who you've put into the role as a senior production manager, right, and they're really ambitious, they've probably got interpersonal skills that may or may not be there, but what can happen is you can find someone who is really ambitious and they know in their mind that they actually want to be a senior client manager. Now you've got to be careful with that, because that type of person, if you don't promote that type of person, then you can lose them. So another way of saying it is if you put, say, a finder in a grinder or minder role forever and they really want to be a finder, that's when you have the risk of losing them. So that's the first answer. The next part of the answer is what the solution is, you know.

Jamie Johns:

The question is why do people leave their jobs? And they tend to leave their jobs? Because of two reasons. One they'll leave. Most people leave their jobs because they're disengaged and they don't like their manager. The second reason they leave their job is because they're not in their flow. And when you're not in your flow, you're just not happy. And if you're not happy, you'll tend to leave.

Jamie Johns:

So if you can find the personality type in terms of the DNA that is happy in that role, then they won't want to be promoted to a senior client manager. So if you think about the promotion path, what is the promotion path? Well, you know what? You could go to an assistant client manager, then you could go to a senior client manager. So that's the career path, but that's not for everyone, and Ed often tells a story where he had a particular account I think he mentioned this, Brenton but they were a senior production manager or a senior account, you might recall and they kept saying to Ed I want to be a senior client manager.

Jamie Johns:

Anyhow, they became a senior client manager and Ed found out now this is a really important point the only reason that they wanted to be a senior client manager was because of the salary. They thought that their salary would be higher because of that role. It turns out she did that role and that particular person wasn't happy in that role because they just didn't have the DNA for it. And so if you incorrectly promote people, you just set them up for a full. You'll notice that by the fact that they won't win clients, they won't be able to keep clients, and all the statistics around. When you're managing, you'll see the statistics come through. So it's important that people understand what their flow is. It's important for you, as the leader, to understand what their best and highest contribution is, and it may not always be a senior client manager. They might be best suited to a senior production manager because that's working in their flow, where they'll be most happy, and they probably don't like working with hundreds of different people. Some people hate people. They don't like dealing with people.

Brenton Ward:

So, Jamie is an important one in keeping the senior production manager accountable for their role. What are the main KPIs we should be focused on and if you can give a bit of a gauge as to what the benchmarks might look like?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah Well, in terms of productivity, obviously, in the wise philosophy, whether you are a time billing model, whether you've got fixed price agreements, or whatever it is, you still should do time sheets for internal management. There's been some firms that have joined us that I've spoken to and they haven't kept time sheets, for example. We're not going to get into that debate now, but certainly, you can't look at a productivity level without keeping time sheets. So with a productivity percentage of a senior production manager, look anywhere from about 70% to 80, 85% around that gauge, and the reason is they still, if you've got a full team of $700,000 and scaling to $1 million, the senior production manager still has to manage that team and that will still take time. It's different that if you're just sitting there yourself and solely focused on production work day in, and day out, you won't be. You'll be actually helping, guiding, and coordinating the work. So around 78% with their productivity percentage.

Jamie Johns:

The other one that you can have is XPM. So your time tracking system. We use XPM with a link with a different system from with some guys from New Zealand called Link Reporting. So you should look at your net billable hours after write-offs and that should then sort of time, your capacity plan. If you've had a look at step seven everyone in terms of the capacity plan, which shows you, you know, productivity, charge out rates which are then based on the gross profit, a factor of the person's salary, so forth, and so forth, then you've got your capacity plan as the goal and then you should have a look at your net billable hours. Now we say net billable after write-offs, because anyone can load their time shape up to 100%, but that doesn't mean it's recoverable, and so every time you have a write-off it affects your gross profit.

Jamie Johns:

The next point there is, you know, technically correct, and so you don't want the senior production manager to have really low or sloppy technical skills, because what's going to happen is all that production traffic will hit the senior client manager's face. You don't want that. So they've got to have a level of technical proficiency for sure. The other point there is they need to be able to manage people. You need to be able to train and support the production team. So they've still got to have a level of ability to work with people in a team environment.

Jamie Johns:

But again, that's not for everyone. So you need to tease that out and make sure that they're doing that. The final one there is really just preparing, you know, just being aware of directing the team to do the jobs in the budgeted hours, do the jobs in the time frames. You know you can help, guide, and lead the production team around that with systems like Karbon, for example. So you know budgeted hours. So if you can do the jobs in the budgeted hours or do it under that, then fantastic. So they're the type of things that should be measured.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, a metric that could be managed there is the net promoter score of that person's team. I'm assuming, Jamie, yeah.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, Internally it is. That's right. Another one is the net promoter score, which should have reflected the overall. What we've got to be clear is that Brenton, the senior client manager is still responsible for the entire team.

Brenton Ward:

Okay.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, I've said it before in the WizeV ault there have been questions around this that you know. Is the senior production manager doing the performance reviews of the accountants and bookkeepers? Well, the answer is no, but the senior client manager can certainly have the senior production manager sitting in the interviews on the performance appraisals Now, whether they're quarterly, six- monthly, or yearly. You know, particularly with the production staff, the senior production manager can be there and help with the performance review, but someone who is the senior client manager is responsible for their entire team and the net promoter score often reflects that entire team as well.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect.

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