challenge
4x the work — same number of people
Our creative team was a victim of its own success. As the business grew, our small but mighty team became a reactive, overextended design shop drowning in requests. Our workflows were unsustainable, timelines were shrinking, and we were facing a choice: either lose our sanity or scale our entire creative function without sacrificing quality.
strategy
Built to bend, not break
My approach was to transform our creative team from a reactive service into a high-efficiency in-house agency. I led a full process overhaul, bringing order to the chaos by implementing a project management platform and defining operation models and the project intake framework. This overhaul wasn't just about speed; it was about sanity. We instituted regular traffic meetings to keep projects flowing smoothly, which enabled the team to produce more high-quality work without burning out.
key takeaways
Creative doesn't scale itself — but it can be scaled
The big lesson? Scaling creative services isn't just about doing more work — it's about building a system. By focusing on operational rigor and creative enablement, we built a sustainable model that lets our team deliver high-quality, on-brand work without burning out.