When does combining account management and project management stop working?

A lot of agencies start with one person doing both account management and project management. I've been that person. And I actually liked it.

So I don't think combining AM and PM is inherently a bad idea. In a small agency, with relatively straightforward accounts and projects, it can make perfect sense. One person knows the client, knows the work, knows the team, and can connect all of those dots without adding another layer of communication. The problem is what happens when the work gets more complicated.

I recently sat down with Jenny Plant to talk about this ahead of AM:PM, the event we're hosting in Atlanta this September with David C. Baker. We started with a question Jenny had previously asked David: When does combining account management and project management stop working?

David's general benchmark was around nine employees. I see the signal a little differently.

Delivery almost always wins

A project manager and an account manager are looking at the same client through slightly different lenses. The PM is thinking about delivery. Can we do this? Do we have the right people? Are we within scope? What's at risk? What needs to happen next?

The AM needs to be looking further out. What's happening inside the client's organization? How strong is the relationship? What aren't they telling us? Where is their business headed? Where could we help them next?

Both matter. But when one person is responsible for all of it, delivery has a pretty significant advantage: delivery has deadlines. The client needs an answer. Someone on the team is over capacity. A deliverable is due tomorrow. There's a scope problem. Something needs approval.

Meanwhile, nobody sends you a Slack message at 3:47 p.m. demanding that you think more strategically about where the client will be six months from now. So it gets pushed.

That's why the signal I'd watch isn't necessarily headcount. It's whether the demands of delivery are consistently preventing someone from managing and growing the relationship.

What are you actually asking the role to accomplish?

Jenny brought up another important factor: what the agency is trying to become. An owner trying to aggressively grow an agency has different needs from someone intentionally building a small, senior-led consultancy.

If growth is the goal, asking one person to simultaneously protect delivery, manage scope, develop the relationship, uncover opportunities, understand the client's business, and grow revenue is a lot.

There's also a question of proficiency and preference. Someone who is exceptional at the details of delivery won't automatically become great at commercial conversations because you've added "account growth" to their job description.

Separating AM and PM doesn't magically solve that problem either. The two roles still have to work together. But it does give each person the space to optimize for something different while working toward the same client outcome.

Then there's AI

This is where the conversation gets more interesting. Jenny and I both see AI taking administrative work out of these roles. PMs can spend less time creating updates, summarizing meetings, documenting decisions, and managing information. AMs can use AI to prepare proposals, analyze conversations, develop ideas, and bring thinking to clients faster.

We're still figuring out what that actually means for agency roles. But I'm less interested in the five hours AI might save someone than what they do with those five hours.

For a PM, maybe it's spending more time with the team, spotting problems earlier, improving morale, and creating the conditions for better work. For an AM, maybe it's understanding the client's business, developing ideas with the team, preparing for better conversations, and finding new ways the agency can help.

AI might make the hybrid AM/PM role more viable in some agencies. Or it might make specialized AMs and PMs dramatically better at the parts of their jobs that matter most. Either way, the opportunity is to make more room for the human parts of the work. And that's a much more interesting conversation.

Join us in September!

Jenny Plant, David C. Baker, and I will be digging into questions like these at AM:PM, September 29–30 in Atlanta.

We're bringing agency owners, account managers, project managers, and operations leaders together to talk honestly about growth, delivery, AI, client relationships, and how these roles need to work together.

Learn more and register at theampmevent.com.

T L ; D R Combining account management and project management can work, especially in smaller agencies. The problem starts when the demands of delivery leave no time to actually develop and grow client relationships. AI may free up some of that time, but the real opportunity isn't doing more work. It's creating more space for the human parts of both roles.