The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

Most leaders in professional services are making decisions every day that come back to the finance – but no one ever actually taught them the numbers.  In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on the financial foundations that every leader needs to get a handle on, whether you're running a team, managing projects, or sitting in the hot seat at the top. Rich Brett is a FinOps consu...

Most businesses will go through some kind of change management challenge – a new tool, a restructure, a rebrand. But what does it look like when you're doing that across eight acquired businesses, each with their own people, systems, culture, and way of doing things? Jonathan Healey is Group Technology Director at IDHL, a 500-person UK digital agency group that has grown through eight acquisi...

Most professional services firms are generating revenue. But somewhere between producing a quote and issuing the final invoice, profit gets eroded. And more often than not, the root cause runs deeper than you'd expect – it's that nobody in the business ever properly understood the numbers in the first place. In this special episode, Harv is joined by FinOps expert Rich Brett to introduce...

The data is in – and it's not pretty. After surveying 303 agencies and consultancies through the Business Maturity Quiz, we've launched The Maturity Gap Report , revealing just how wide the gap really is between the firms where operations is a strength and everyone else. In this episode, Harv is joined by operations consultant Manish Kapur and FinOps expert Rich Brett to walk through the...

Growing a professional services business often starts the same way: scrappy teams, generalists wearing multiple hats, and a lot of momentum driven by energy rather than structure. In this episode of The Handbook , Harv sits down with Alex Bodini , CEO of Spin Brands, to unpack how Spin evolved from a grassroots social media shop into a multi-entity group of 100+ people . Rather than waiting for a...

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...

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 o...

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 cha...

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 eig...

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿 "Ballpark" is a dangerous word. Especially when Sales sells the dream, and Delivery is left living the nightmare. In this Quickie, Harv shares a real story from a consulting session with a 100+ person agency. They had the headcount and the revenue, but behind the scenes? It was pure chaos. We're talking manual spreads...

When your business feels busy but the numbers don’t back it up, something’s off. Agencies and consultancies often confuse effort with progress – and today’s guest has the data to prove it. In this episode of The Handbook , Harv Nagra sits down with fractional CFO and Trimline founder Michael Wark to unpack why so many service businesses hit revenue ceilings, run on thin margins, and stay stuck in...

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿 Flat demand, tighter budgets, squeezed margins. And AI is adding uncertainty on top of it all.  But the real risk? It’s flying blind.  If you don’t know what’s profitable, where time’s going, or what’s around the corner, every decision is a gamble. In this Quickie, Harv lays out how visibility and control de-risk your business – and...

Most teams treat annual planning like a spreadsheet exercise. Finance builds the numbers. Everyone else nods along. Then the plan gets filed away until next year. But real planning isn’t about producing a static budget – it’s about creating a rhythm that connects finance, operations, and delivery all year round. In this episode of The Handbook: The Ops Podcast , Harv sits down with Adam Cooper, fo...

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿 So many acronyms, but what do they mean!?  This one’s for anyone wondering: what’s the difference between a PSA and an ERP? And which one does your business actually need? Harv breaks down how both systems bring your operations together – but are built for completely different worlds.  ERPs power product-based businesses with invent...

AI has stopped being a side project – it’s rewriting the rules of how professional services businesses operate – and – stay competitive. Luke Alexander, Chief Digital & AI Officer at Four , has led an ambitious AI transformation in his business. From rolling out Microsoft Copilot across 300+ staff to launching client-facing AI services, Luke’s approach to embedding AI is bold, practical, and r...

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿 This one’s for anyone curious about the next big shift in how AI connects with the tools you already use: MCP. Model context protocol. Harv breaks down what it is (a universal connector for AI), why it matters for ops leaders, and how it could turn your favourite LLM into the control center for your business systems. He also shares...

Ops isn’t just about keeping the lights on anymore. As Aušrinė Keršanskaitė, co-founder of Operations Nation, puts it – today’s ops leaders are expected to drive growth, protect culture, and build resilience. And if you’ve ever felt like the “glue” holding everything together without always getting recognition, this one will hit home. In this episode of The Handbook: The Operations Podcast, Aušrin...

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿 This one’s for anyone who’s ever looked at their jumble of spreadsheets and apps and thought: “Is this normal?” Harv explains why the state of your tech stack is actually a mirror of your business maturity – from The Chaotic Era where everything’s buried in spreadsheets and copy-paste is your main 'process', through The St...

Touch the same piece of information more than twice – fix the workflow. That’s the kind of CFO-meets-COO thinking we get into in this episode of The Handbook, where Harv sits down with Lindsey Head to connect the dots between finance, ops, tech, and people – and what really changes when you standardise how the business runs.  Lindsey helped scale a PR agency from 5 to 125 people and $750k to $25m...

Ops Quickies – we're back with another snackable episode. 🍿 This one’s for anyone who’s ever wondered: Is my business actually set up to scale – or are we just surviving? Harv breaks down: 👉🏽 Why business maturity matters 👉🏽 What it really means (hint: it’s not about headcount or revenue) 👉🏽 Why most service businesses get stuck at the early stages 👉🏽 And how you can quickly benchmar...

When businesses talk about “productizing,” they often picture cookie-cutter scopes and rigid templates. But according to Brian Kessman, that’s missing the point. Brian is the founder of Lodestar Consulting, and he’s spent 25 years helping agencies and consultancies scale without burning out teams or eroding margins. His approach isn’t about productizing services – it’s about productizing value. In...

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿 This one’s for anyone who’s ever asked: How is a PSA actually different from a project management tool? And does it even matter? Spoiler: it does. Harv breaks down how project management platforms and PSAs serve very different purposes – and why the difference becomes more obvious (and more valuable) as your business grows. If you&a...

From the outside, M&A can seem like a clean transaction – a new parent company, a logo change, a cheerful announcement. But inside? The reality is messier. Integration. Culture clashes. Reporting headaches. And a long list of decisions that determine whether the deal actually works. Dom Hawes has lived both sides. After his own agency was acquired (badly), he went on to build Selbey Anderson –...

New series alert: Ops Quickies — snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿 We're kicking off with a big question wrapped in The Clunkiest Acronym: what the heck is a PSA ... or professional services automation platform? Harv explains why the name’s a problem, what this kind of platform actually does, and why service businesses need to start paying attention. If you've got any qu...

Your ops might be ticking along just fine. But what if your founder got sick tomorrow? What if your top client left? What if you had to make a big decision with zero visibility on the numbers? You might not be planning to sell your agency – but you should run it like you are. Because when you adopt that mindset, you zoom out. You stop firefighting. You start building a business that runs without y...