Most of us would agree that we can do a better job promoting our in-house agency, but what exactly should we be promoting? Is it the value that we bring to the organization? How about our overall effectiveness and creative solutions? Or maybe it’s our collaborative approach that bridges talent gaps and delivers on-schedule results? Maybe it’s a combination of all of these.

I believe it is critical to know your team’s strengths and weaknesses, and to have a clear vision to guide current and future activity. I recently developed a chart (below) that has proven effective in helping our team hone in on where we excel, determine what areas we need to refine, and provide justification for why we should promote specific services.

First we created a list of all project types that we currently support. These were placed in the “Current Work” bucket.

Next, we moved the project types that we think are suited to outsourcing to the “Consider Outsourcing” bucket. (Yes, I fully embrace outsourcing when it makes business sense, as doing so frees up our talent to work on more important projects.) Producing top-quality work takes time, so my aim is to leverage my team’s expertise to produce work that we are proud of. Having top talent spend hours on projects that require no strategic or creative input is demotivating and wasteful.

Projects that we have to support because of business mandates are moved right, to the “Day-to-Day” bucket. These projects are our bread and butter, so to speak. They need to be managed as efficiently as possible, but still demand effective execution.

The final bucket on the far right is our “Best Work.” This is where we put the projects that enable our team to shine. They build and nurture our reputation and create durable strategic partnerships with our clients. The projects in this bucket represent work and services that we want to promote and do more of because they offer the biggest return on our investment of time and effort.