There is a species of agency report that makes me want to go outside and stare at a tree.
You know the one. Lots of verbs. Optimised, refined, enhanced, reviewed. Every slide looks terribly occupied. By the end you know that somebody spent time, but you aren't quite sure what became easier for the customer.
I have written versions of that report. The tree would be justified.
My problem is not that routine work is worthless. A correction to a product feed might matter. A boring check might catch something expensive. The problem is pretending that a quantity of activity explains its value.
Sometimes the most useful observation of the month happens after the click, in a place the report never visits.
The email nobody put on the slide
Picture a shop advertising a straightforward delivery arrangement. The page sounds reassuring. The checkout sounds reassuring. Then the customer gets a confirmation email written years ago, which says something vaguer and slightly different.
They ring. The person answering explains the actual arrangement. The customer wonders why the website didn't simply say that.
Meanwhile, the advertising review is discussing a headline experiment.
That's not a crime. Headline experiments can be useful. But, bloody hell, priorities.
The confirmation belongs to the same experience as the advertisement. A customer does not divide the company into attribution windows. They remember a promise and expect the next message to fit it.
I would rather find that mismatch than present twenty small account changes as evidence of a heroic month's work.
It might take a day to sort out because several people need to agree on what happens. It might involve no clever campaign setting at all. In a report obsessed with activity, it can look embarrassingly modest.
One email corrected. One promise made consistent. No triumphant arrow.
The uncomfortable retainer conversation
Here's the view that gets freelancers invited to fewer dinners: work should not become complicated merely because a monthly fee needs defending.
If a campaign is steady, the page is clear and the business can handle the enquiries, a quiet review can be an honest result. We can inspect, explain and recommend a next question without inventing an emergency to perform competence.
That does not mean “do nothing and send an invoice.” It means show what you checked, what you found, and why you are or aren't changing something.
There are months when a big intervention is necessary. There are months when touching everything makes the picture harder to read. Treating both as a contest to produce the longest change log is daft.
In the delivery example, I want to know which messages differ. I want the person who runs fulfilment to confirm the correct arrangement. I want to test a fresh order and read every message, including the awkward one when an item is delayed.
Only then would I call the fix complete.
This may improve confidence in a purchase. It may reduce an avoidable call. It may simply stop us confusing people. I would not promise a magical uplift just to make the slide more exciting.
Useful work can be measured without pretending every improvement has a neat causal number attached.
Give me a report that says what the customer sees now, what uncertainty remains and what we intend to examine next. Leave room for a quiet month. Leave room for an observation outside the account.
And if we discover the automatic email is still talking about an offer that ended ages ago, fix the fucking email.
The tree will wait.
A thought worth keeping?
