Operations Manager

Job description

Agency Operations & Traffic Manager

Location: Lusaka, Zambia

Company: Giraffe Creatives

Employment: Full-Time | On-Site

About the Role

Giraffe Creatives is looking for a highly organised and proactive Agency Operations & Traffic Manager to take ownership of how work moves across the agency.

This is a central coordination role responsible for ensuring that projects and tasks are properly planned, prioritised, assigned, tracked and delivered on time across multiple departments.

You will work closely with Heads of Departments and management to maintain visibility over workloads, deadlines and priorities, while helping allocate resources according to team capacity, urgency and business needs.

Most importantly, you will be the owner and champion of ClickUp, our project management platform, ensuring it becomes the single source of truth for tasks, deadlines, ownership and project progress across the agency.

Key Responsibilities

Traffic & Workflow Management

• Coordinate the flow of work between departments and ensure smooth project handovers.
• Maintain visibility over all active projects, tasks, priorities and deadlines.
• Identify potential delays, bottlenecks and conflicting priorities before they become problems.
• Follow up consistently with task owners and Heads of Departments to ensure commitments and deadlines are met.
• Coordinate urgent requests without unnecessarily disrupting existing priorities.
• Ensure dependencies between departments are properly identified and managed.

Resource & Capacity Coordination

• Work with Heads of Departments to understand available capacity and current workloads.
• Support the allocation of tasks and projects based on capacity, priority, urgency and deadlines.
• Flag teams or individuals who are overloaded or underutilised.
• Help management make informed decisions when resources need to be shifted between projects.
• Improve visibility of upcoming workload and resource requirements.

ClickUp Ownership

• Take full ownership of the agency’s ClickUp environment.
• Ensure every relevant project and task is properly created, assigned, prioritised and given a deadline.
• Maintain clean and accurate project boards, workflows, statuses and dashboards.
• Ensure teams consistently update their tasks and use ClickUp correctly.
• Create dashboards and reports that give management visibility into progress, workload, overdue tasks and upcoming deadlines.
• Continuously improve how the agency uses ClickUp to manage its operations.
• Train and support team members in using the platform effectively.

Project & Deadline Management

• Monitor project timelines from initiation through completion.
• Conduct regular reviews of upcoming and overdue deliverables.
• Escalate risks, delays and unresolved blockers to management when necessary.
• Coordinate across Account Management, Creative, Social Media, Production, Video/Motion and other departments.
• Ensure that agreed priorities are clearly communicated across teams.
• Maintain accountability without becoming the person responsible for doing every team’s work.

Operational Improvement

• Identify recurring workflow problems and recommend better processes.
• Help establish clear SOPs for project initiation, briefing, approvals, revisions and delivery.
• Improve communication and handovers between departments.
• Support management with operational reporting and planning.

What We’re Looking For

We are specifically looking for someone who has previously worked in a role involving structured project management and coordination across multiple teams or departments.

The ideal candidate should have:

• Previous experience in project management, traffic management, operations, project coordination or a similar role.
• Hands-on experience using a project management platform such as ClickUp, Asana, Monday.com, Trello or similar.
• Experience coordinating work across multiple departments or teams.
• Strong understanding of task prioritisation, deadlines and dependencies.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Strong follow-up skills and attention to detail.
• Confidence working with Heads of Departments and holding people accountable for agreed deadlines.
• Strong organisational and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to identify bottlenecks and escalate issues early.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment where priorities can change.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience within a creative agency, marketing agency, production environment, technology company or other project-driven organisation would be an advantage.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means:

Everyone knows what they need to do, who owns it, when it is due and what takes priority.

Management should have clear visibility of what is happening across the agency, Heads of Departments should have better visibility of their team’s capacity, and deadlines should be proactively managed rather than chased after they have already been missed.