The 3 Roles in the Content Factory
Just like in a factory setting, our digital marketing agency divides our employees into three main roles:
- The Factory Worker
- The Manager
- The Architect
Each role has a clear set of duties, and if one fails to deliver, it affects the whole chain of work. Each level determines what you need to know (Knowledge) and what you need to do (To-dos).
To be successful in the organization’s ecosystem, people have to move up through the levels, until finally reaching the level of a P&L owner or entrepreneur.
The Factory Worker
This stage might be the most fun and exciting stage in the hierarchy.
Your role as the factory worker is straightforward. All you have to do is simply execute the tasks allocated to you.
For example, in the assembly line model of factory work, a worker might just be assigned the task of putting the front left tire on a Ford Explorer and that's it. If there are no more productions on that day, you will have to sit back and wait for the rest of the factory workers to play their part.
The level of understanding you have to be familiar with is limited to you fixing the tire, ensuring the PSI is correct, that there are no leaks, and the tire is fastened tightly to the axle.
If an agency attempts to teach a factory worker management or strategy, most likely they will end up overwhelmed and frustrated due to the weight of the job.
In this context, your level of expertise is limited to what the manager or the client wants. In simple terms, you deliver according to their instructions.
As a Virtual Assistant, executing these Level 1-3 jobs comprehensively and diligently signs you up for the next level. In that case, we do attempt to teach the VAs what to do rather than directly allocating tasks to you. The main aim is to look for practitioners that are willing to learn, do, and teach (#LDT) from experience.
How do you do that?
Beginner’s Tips For Seamless Execution
Execute tasks within the given time frame.
Follow your to-do list comprehensively.
Give a daily affirmation of the tasks you have done.
Provide quality work without too many follow-ups.
This is entirely about impressing your clients and managers. As you will see in the remaining part of the blog, the issue of having to ask questions about tasks allocated is what drags the organization down. Eventually, there is a slow flow of work and that obviously spells doom!
If we had to pick our one main “pain point” it would be in creating content. Incredibly, the bulk of the content that includes courses, training, webinars, articles, and posts are produced by just one person who does it only a couple of hours a day.
You can clearly see the potential of what could be done if we could get folks to focus on their appropriate level so we could pull in other figureheads to produce more content. We’d get 100X our power easily, right?
The Manager
We have a large team relative to the amount of work being done. But communication is very important to keep our assembly line moving and sometimes VAs end up violating that by taking days of silence. This, of course, ends up in a double whammy, with these folks eating up valuable time for you as the manager and also for the company.
As the manager, note that if a VA who is allocated with the task of the Ops tracker fails to update the Team Roster or other documents, they end up creating a cascading waterfall of problems.
Your job as a manager is to ensure that all the standard processes are followed. Some of your to-do’s will include:
- To-do daily check-ins with the virtual assistants to ensure they are well
- Ensure the VA’s are up to task with their to-do’s
- Keep in touch with the clients.
For an easy sweep through the roles and responsibilities within this organization, you can go through the Operation Processes Guide.
Note, there are several courses that will enlighten you on how to handle different situations when handling both the clients and the VAs.
The courses will equip you well to handle different scenarios, because more times than not, new situations will always arise from both parties. After all, more power comes with more responsibilities, right?
You’ll not need to be conversant with everything in order to take action, but that doesn’t mean you will skip the steps in the leveling system.
What is expected?
The main issue to overcome here is a lack of execution which creates a build-up and more work for the managers and owners to micro-manage every single detail.
Instead of worrying about prioritization for VAs which is more like shifting uneaten veggies on the plate, you will have to make sure that they follow level 1 (#DDD) which is reliably responding and executing.
It is the most essential way to avoid ignorance, procrastination, or requiring intervention at every step.
The Architect
Climbing up the ladder, the information now comes from you. Strategies and skillsets for various entities and entries for different tasks are designed by you.
It’s more like how an architect or designer comes up with a concept and builds it from the ground up. Only in this case, you build strategies for your managers and VAs that would in turn benefit the clients.
In case you are wondering, this stage is where you come up with courses for your subordinates. Well, it makes sense since you’ve gone through the previous stages.
Through levels 7-9, you are able to orchestrate operations, software branding, financial planning, and deal-making. How cool is that?
From whichever approach you decide to take this, the heaviest burden now lies on you.
Your main focus at this stage is helping grow the brand. With your experience, you will be able to come up with plans and strategies that would be essential for the organization’s growth.
The mistake our organization wants to avoid is turning owners into VAs, which is having them micro-manage communication at each step of a task. This explains the dire need for reliability.
When things build up, we lose track of events, and that could be disastrous!
Conclusion
With the various roles explained, you can clearly see the importance that each role plays in a business. The responsibilities are distributed evenly throughout, but the impact they have are completely diverse.
When not much work is being done, and there is no communication, work stacks up creating a false “too busy” or prioritization issue. Hence, people, quality, and management are so vital.
Eventually, everyone needs to play their part in ensuring the company works seamlessly. With every role done perfectly by everyone, the potential that lies in the organization is MEGA!