All About Operations & Careers

In honor of career week, I’ve decided to write up about the operations profession - what it is, who is a good candidate, and some core philosophies about what makes operations important.

What Exactly Is “Operations”?

A strong operations team is the backbone of any organization. Operations specialists are enablers - they lay the foundation for the specialists in their organizations to do their work without being bogged down by logistics. When you have a strong operations team, the rest of your team is able to do better, more focused work, which means that your org has more impact and higher quality.

A good operations team lets you operate efficiently. They’re the hub of the organization. They should be aware of everything that’s going on and proactively supporting everyone and everything in it. Similar to an actual spinal cord, all activities within the organization should point back to the operations team. The operations team literally provides the support and infrastructure for the rest of the organization.

Operations supports the vision. It's a recommended practice to pair a strong visionary with a strong operator – the visionary will bring creative energy and ideation into the organization and the operator will bring it to life. Without the operator, the visionary’s ideation would never come into being.

Different types of operations jobs

Operations means MANY different things. Be clear about what type of “operations” you need when you’re hiring and if you can, label the job description appropriately. Similarly, if you’re looking for an operations job, know what kind of operations you’re good at and look for that. This is a list of the most common interpretations of “operations” that I’ve encountered.

• Administrative support: This type of operations associate will provide general support for those in a more senior level position. They’ll be great with details and love being the power behind the throne.
• Office management: These are the caretakers of the organization. They’re proactively thinking about how to make the workspace more friendly to the rest of their team members. They keep an eye on things like supplies and faulty lightbulbs and take care of it before you even know it’s a problem. They’re willing to get their hands dirty and do the necessary menial work to keep things running well.
• General operations manager: This role usually combines a few of the other operations roles and is often used in smaller organizations where staff members need to wear multiple hats. It also includes all the “random” tasks that come up, like website updates or paying dues. The ops manager is aware of everything going on in the organization and works to streamline processes and support the whole team. Alternatively, a more senior version of this is when there’s a number of operations staff members and someone needs to coordinate and oversee all of their efforts. The most senior iteration of this is a COO.
• Project Management: A project manager is responsible for the success of a program or project. They will stay on top of all the moving pieces and watch the timeline to make sure the project stays on track, on time, and on budget. They will naturally use spreadsheets or project management systems to stay on top of things. To be a good project manager, you need to be good at problem solving and dealing with multiple focus areas at once.
• Event Coordinator: Much like a project manager, a good event coordinator will oversee all the aspects of running an event, from logistics to vendor sourcing to registration and partner collaboration. They’ll be a superstar with details and spreadsheets and highly responsive and adaptable.
• Client Relationship Management: Whether you’re engaging with participants or donors, someone needs to be the communicator and face of the organization. This operations professional will respond to phone calls, emails and general outreach from the outside world. They will be responsible, friendly, communicative, and will follow up on action items requested of them.
• Marketing Operations: This refers to someone who is familiar with social media and marketing principles and pushes out content on social media. They usually work with a marketing expert to advise them on content, since they most often won’t be strong natural marketers.
• Grant Management: Whether it’s grant writing or grant reporting, someone needs to deal with the details. Grant reporting requires skill with data and spreadsheets. General grant management requires the ability to tell the story of the organization in a way that’s attractive to donors using the data to support the message.
• Financial Management: Someone has to make sure everyone gets paid, bills are paid, and that the expenses are in line with the budget. There’s also the matter of bookkeeping and financial reporting. This operations pro will know how to make numbers tell a story, and connect all expenses to the org’s mission. This role is usually rolled up into a different job until the organization is big enough for a full time controller.
• People Management: When it comes to managing people and performance management, these operations pros make sure that the staff is set up for success and has all the tools and support they need to thrive. They can also be responsible for recruiting, screening and hiring. In its most senior position, this takes the form of a Chief of Staff.
• Legal and Compliance: Every organization needs someone to make sure that they’re in compliance with local and state regulations relevant to their entity. This person will be constantly exploring and learning to make sure that the entity stays in compliance; they will have done enough exploration and research to be able to flag any activities that might disrupt compliance and reach out to appropriate professionals to support them.

Again, this is not a complete list of types of operations job requirements – just the most common ones I encounter.

Signs of a good operations team:

• They’re never the bottleneck. If I were ever to write a book, it would be called “Don’t be the bottleneck”. Operations people get things done. If you have someone on your staff who’s on the operations team and they’re holding things up or need reminders, that’s a red flag.
• They’re one step ahead of you. Operations pros should always be thinking about what potential capacity constraints might be and work to resolve that ahead of time so that you don’t actually run into a capacity constraint.
• They’re supportive and adaptable. Egos don’t play a part in a good operations team – they strive to support your mission, and their pride is in the amount of impact they enable others to get done. They’ll learn what they need to and change directions as needed to support the organization’s mission. If you have someone on your operations staff who’s consistently resistant to change, that’s a red flag.
• They’re creative problem solvers. Operations aren’t rigid. There’s no set of rules or algorithms that accompany an organization’s functions. Problems and new situations will always present themselves, and your operations team should be eager to come up with solutions to address them appropriately.
• It looks effortless. The best sign of a job well done is that you wonder why it took so long to do it because it seems so easy. This rule works with pretty much any job out there. It’s a talent to be able to make things simple and straightforward, and if your team does that consistently, that’s great. I’m not saying that everything should take a while – on the contrary, your team should work quickly and push things through easily. It’s the end result – constant, seemingly effortless, turnaround that makes the difference.

How do you know if you should go into operations?

The best operations professionals think in systems. They like organizing things, learning new things, and are adaptable. They tend to be more detail oriented than big picture thinkers. They like to play a supporting role backstage instead of being in the limelight. 

One tool I often use in hiring and mentoring is Gallup StrengthFinders; the premise is that there are 34 unique talents that each of us is born with. It’s the lens through which we view the world. A good operations professional will be high in the execution talents and strategy, with a bit of relationships mixed in. 

As a side note, I do recommend using this assessment for all your final candidates – it’s a great way to assess natural ability to perform well in the job before hiring them.

If you find your natural strengths lie in the other sectors – that’s great! Go pursue your strengths and be the best that you can be – but don’t try for a career in operations; you’ll be frustrated, and your organization won’t thrive as much as it could have. There’s no glory in operations – much of what you do will never be noticed by anyone, so only follow this career path if that thought makes you excited. Otherwise, you’re doing yourself and your prospective employer a disservice.

Hiring a strong operator

People often ask how mission aligned operations pros need to be; my answer is always that good operations professionals take pride in their work of enabling others to do a great job; their primary motivation and job satisfaction will primarily  be in their work, not in your organization’s impact. That’s not to say that mission alignment isn’t at all important – it just means that it shouldn’t be a factor in your hiring decision if the stronger candidate isn’t mission aligned. Trust me, they will very quickly become quite knowledgeable about your area of expertise and will be your biggest champions.

There are a few ways to assess operational competency. These are a few suggestions to include in your hiring process:

• Work test – but be vague! Pick a scenario that you’re likely to encounter in the role, whether it’s event planning, project management or logistics. Don’t provide too much instructions so you can see what they can do without you needing to be involved
• Look for past successes – as mentioned above, operations people get things done. Your prospective employee should have things they did in high school and college to fill their resume. Good operations people like to keep busy.
• Ask for scenarios – you want to hear stories of accomplishments, successes, multi-tasking. You want to hear a story of someone with high aspirations.

How many people do I need on my operations team?

There’s no right answer to this. At minimum, you need a virtual assistant as your admin support. At maximum, you need a whole team. The right answer is the number of people it takes to increase your capacity so that adding in the extra salary creates the equivalent (ideally more) opportunity for impact. The specific metrics you’ll want to track include:

• How much direct impact time / salary cost does this hire increase?
• Who would do this work (relevant to compliance and basic staff support) without this hire?
• What’s the highest and best use of each person’s time? What percentage of their time is spent on doing that?
• Does everyone on my team feel supported with the right tools so that they can focus on their highest and best use?

Next Steps

If you’re interested in exploring a career in operations and want to chat, please use this link to book a time with me – I’m happy to share my insights!

If you’re looking for an operations job, please fill out this form. I do get a number of employers reaching out to me to see if I know anyone that’s a good fit, and I’d love to have you in my database to refer to them.

If you’re looking to expand your operations team, pick a time here to chat with me (it’s free) – we’ll discuss what to look for so that you can make the hire that’s best for your organization. I may even have some connections for you!

If you’re looking to join WorkStream’s executive assistant team, please fill out this form and I’ll follow up with you. Alternatively, if you’d like to benefit from our team of virtual executive assistants, schedule a call with me or submit this form, and I’ll send you information about the program and a link to schedule.

Summary

Operations professionals are the unsung heroes of any organization. We’re the pillars of success and enable a tremendous amount of impact. But it’s not for everyone – there’s a big enough pool of candidates that only those who excel naturally in this area should consider moving into this field. There’s a lot of room for specializing here also, so make sure that if you’re considering a career in operations, that you’re thinking about what type works best for you.

I wish you the best of luck in your career journey!