Operations Manager - Agency Operations & Traffic

Overview

Giraffe Creatives is seeking an organised and proactive Agency Operations & Traffic Manager to oversee the efficient movement of work throughout the agency based in Lusaka, Zambia. This key position involves meticulous coordination to ensure that projects are planned, prioritised, assigned, tracked, and delivered on schedule across several departments.

Primary Duties

• Manage the workflow between departments ensuring smooth transitions and handovers.
• Maintain up-to-date visibility over active projects, tasks, priorities, and deadlines.
• Detect potential delays, bottlenecks, and conflicting priorities early to prevent issues.
• Consistently follow up with task owners and department heads to meet deadlines.
• Handle urgent requests efficiently without causing disruption to existing priorities.
• Coordinate dependencies among departments carefully to avoid conflicts.
• Collaborate with department heads to assess workload and capacity.
• Support task allocation based on urgency, priority, capacity, and deadlines.
• Identify overloaded or underutilised teams and individuals and provide alerts to management.
• Enhance the visibility of future workload and resource needs.
• Take full ownership and maintain the agency's ClickUp project management system as the single source of truth.
• Ensure all projects and tasks in ClickUp are properly created, assigned, prioritised, and tracked.
• Maintain clean and accurate project boards, workflows, statuses, and dashboards.
• Drive consistent and correct usage of ClickUp across teams through training and support.
• Create dashboards and reports providing management with insights into progress, workloads, overdue tasks, and upcoming deadlines.
• Regularly review project timelines and escalate issues, risks, or blockers to management promptly.
• Coordinate closely across Account Management, Creative, Social Media, Production, Video/Motion, and other teams.
• Ensure priorities are clearly communicated and accountability is maintained while respecting team autonomy.
• Recommend improvements for recurring workflow challenges and contribute to establishing clear SOPs for project management processes.
• Facilitate better communication and seamless handovers between departments.
• Assist management with operational reporting and strategic planning.

Qualifications and Experience

• Prior experience in project management, traffic management, operations, or project coordination roles.
• Hands-on experience with project management software such as ClickUp, Asana, Monday.com, or Trello.
• Proven ability to coordinate work across multiple teams or departments effectively.
• Strong understanding of prioritising tasks, managing dependencies, and adhering to deadlines.
• Capability to handle multiple projects concurrently with excellent follow-up and attention to detail.
• Confidence in engaging with department heads and ensuring accountability for deadlines.
• Excellent organisational, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Aptitude for identifying bottlenecks and escalating concerns timely.
• Experience in fast-paced environments where priorities shift frequently.
• Background in creative agencies, marketing, production, technology, or other project-oriented settings is beneficial.

Success Indicators

Success in this role is when all team members clearly understand their ownership, deadlines, and priorities. Management enjoys transparent oversight over agency activities, department heads gain precise insights into team capacities, and deadlines are managed proactively. The ClickUp platform becomes the central operational hub that supports efficient agency workflows.