I finally had some space this week to do some vision work around how the Kit Brand Studio team needs to operate in 2026.
We're starting annual planning, so we've got a preview of our company goals for next year. Naturally, I've been thinking about what Brand Studio needs to do to help towards those company goals.
I feel like we have the right roles on the team. Our first motion designer joined a few weeks ago, and with that addition, we've got all the creative skillsets we require to meet the needs of the business. 🙌
But we're still stretched when it comes to capacity.
We're a small company with strict rules around headcount based on ARR per employee, so I won't be advocating to add any new team members to Brand Studio next year. Which means that increase to our capacity is going to have to come from making our systems more efficient rather than growing the team. We need the lower-impact work to happen in a more automated and systematized way so my team can focus their creative efforts on the higher-impact work.
In a conversation with our new motion designer this week, he shared that at his previous company they had "business as usual" work and "innovation" work - different types of work that followed different processes, and sometimes handled by different teams.
That got me thinking about how to more clearly categorize the work we do at Kit, to build clearer processes and systems around the different work type.
So this week I want to share that thinking with you of the three different buckets I see our work fitting into.
Programmed work - This is work that happens on a regular, predictable schedule, like weekly feature release graphics and newsletter images or monthly playbooks that need the same set of assets each time. This work could be handled via templates or by a very clearly defined process (probably a mix!). It cuts out the step of deciding "alright, what do we need to do to get this done?" each time and makes it easier to scope and understand our capacity.
Templated work - These are unscheduled requests that pop up based on events or needs, but they follow existing patterns. Things like hiring announcement graphics when we open a new role or customized sales decks when an opportunity comes in to pitch a new creator. We can have templates and processes ready to go that get used as needed, without happening on a set schedule. Very similar in execution to programmed work, but more reactive.
Bespoke work - This is where the real creative energy should go. It's work that requires strategic thinking and custom creative development - marketing campaigns, brand new sales decks, or anything that involves solving new creative problems. For this work we meet and decide how we're going to tackle the project, designing solutions from scratch, and each one will probably be approached in a different way.
My intention is to have a shared language for grouping work like this with the Marketing team (our most regular collaborators) so that we're working within these systems together and reducing the decision fatigue and project management that comes along with triaging briefs and prioritising work.
And of course I'm hopeful I can train the Brand Studio AI agent I've been talking about in previous issues to be able to recognize and sort incoming work into one of these buckets to route it through the correct process (and maybe even generate an automated template where appropriate like I shared about in last week's issue!)
This is very much work in progress and I'll be sure to update you on whatever we settle on, as well as other things I learn from the new annual planning process our wonderful new COO is leading us through over the next few months.
I'm curious if you've thought about categorizing work like this on your team? I'd love to hear how you approach it.
Talk soon,
