South Africa, Sept. 11 -- Most agency owners can tell you how busy the team feels. Far fewer can tell you what that busyness is worth. There is a gap between a full calendar and a healthy business, and the two numbers that close it are utilisation and recovery rate.

I have run a creative agency for about twenty years, and for a long time I tracked neither properly. We were busy, everyone was stretched, and I assumed busy meant profitable. It doesn't, not on its own. Busy tells you the hours got used. It says nothing about whether those hours turned into money.

Utilisation tells you the hours were used

Utilisation rate answers one question: of the hours a person had available, how many went to billable work? A person contracted for 160 ...