Achieving balance in an agency

An interesting bit of insight about the inherent contradiction of running a business that relies in great part on intangibles like creativity, from Phil Johnson, who blogs on AdAge.com in the Small Agency Diary section. For example, from: Balancing the Billable Day vs. the Creative Way

"A strange truth about the agency business is that it's very difficult to define productivity. An hour on Twitter may lead to a breakthrough idea. Half a day storyboarding a concept may yield nothing useful. . . . I've concluded that the art of running an agency is learning how to inhabit both worlds at the same time."

No mention of how PM's who might help achieve the necessary balance, but nice to see critical issues like this being discussed.

Related to achieving balance in an agency:

What adds more value ?

• The strategically sound, beautifully designed campaign or The PM who does a double check to find and fix destination URL's that were pointing to the wrong pages.
  
  
• The incredibly insightful campaign analysis program developed by a team of geniuses or The PM who notices that the whole application is being run on a PC that is doubling as a plant stand next to a geek's desk and gets the thing ported to a proper server that is backed-up regularly.

Thoughts? Other examples?