# hehrmann.com · notes

> First-person case studies by Erik Hehrmann, fractional COO for creative agencies: named employers, real numbers, the operating move that fixed each problem. Newest first. Every note has a Markdown twin at its URL plus index.md, or append .md to the URL.

## Notes

- [Agency Ops Overhaul](https://hehrmann.com/notes/agency-ops-overhaul/): agency ops playbook · Composite · An ops audit and overhaul playbook scoped for a hypothetical 10 to 50 person advertising agency. Six pain points diagnosed, eight initiatives proposed across mindset, decision rights, performance metrics, utilization, intake, documentation, client satisfaction, and automation.
- [Ad Pros · Operating cadence and channel mapping](https://hehrmann.com/notes/ad-pros-operating-cadence/): leadership cadence · Ad Pros · Apr–Jun 2025 · Built the leadership operating cadence: Monday pod huddles with month-to-date client performance, an explicit channel mapping between Slack, ClickUp, and synchronous huddles, and a quarterly ops cadence migrated from a spreadsheet into the work system itself.
- [Gold Front · Fractional ops for a category design studio.](https://hehrmann.com/notes/gold-front-fractional/): fractional ops · Gold Front · May–Aug 2025 · Hardened the delivery spine at a small category design studio ahead of an Executive Producer handoff: a team-wide listening tour, a rewritten project briefing and kickoff SOP, variance tracking in ClickUp, and a roles-and-responsibilities framework for the incoming partner to own.
- [MX · Work Pillar and the collaboration measurement](https://hehrmann.com/notes/mx-work-pillar/): work pillar · MX · Apr–Nov 2024 · A company-wide pulse put cross-functional collaboration satisfaction at only 11%, down from 50% the prior July. I initiated and led a task force to improve it: baseline survey, theme analysis, scored idea pipeline, five-phase rollout, and a cross-pillar coordination rhythm. A repeat survey with a 10-percentage-point improvement target came in at 2x that.
- [BNY Mellon · SLA matrix across 20+ deliverable categories](https://hehrmann.com/notes/bny-mellon-sla/): sla architecture · BNY Mellon · Dec 2023–Mar 2024 · I rebuilt the SLA for an in-house creative center of excellence at a large financial services firm. Afterwards, stakeholders could plan against a matrix instead of negotiating many of their requests.
- [Celtra · Studio build from 15 to 45](https://hehrmann.com/notes/celtra-scaling/): studio build · Celtra · 2020–2023 · I took the small in‑house creative arm of an AdTech SaaS company and built it into a global studio with a departmental structure, assigned leadership areas, a hiring pipeline, and a cadence of weekly, monthly, and quarterly operating rhythms.
- [How I Eliminated Role Ambiguity in a 30-Person Creative Team](https://hehrmann.com/notes/rolecards/): people management · MX · Jun 2023 · I inherited a career ladder and role cards format from my predecessor, which my team found to be ambiguous and hard to understand. Every other department also used a separate, unique framework. I set out to standardize and simplify my department’s career framework, and to set an example for the rest of the company.
- [Timesheets Will Never Be Accurate](https://hehrmann.com/notes/timesheets/): business intelligence · Composite · Oct 2022 · Asking employees to track time spent against certain clients, projects, or task types often appears to be the logical solution when one wants to evaluate the profitability of their agency’s services. But does it yield reliable data?

## Also

- [Notes index as Markdown](https://hehrmann.com/notes/index.md)
- [Services and pricing](https://hehrmann.com/services/): seven engagement tiers with public fees, [pricing.md](https://hehrmann.com/pricing.md) for the table alone
- [About](https://hehrmann.com/about/): the career ledger behind these notes
- [Contact](https://hehrmann.com/contact/): the screened form, two free thirty-minute calls first
- [Site guide](https://hehrmann.com/llms.txt) · [every page in one file](https://hehrmann.com/llms-full.txt) · [developers](https://hehrmann.com/developers/llms.txt)