So you want to do operations [Part one] - which skills do you need?

Somewhat controversial personal opinion: when thinking about this space, my null hypothesis is talented people are actually abundant, and the bottleneck is on the side of EA organizations and possibly in culture.

Reasons could be various: for example, I can imagine

• organizations are ops bottlenecked, and hiring is another ops task
• historically, founder's effect & difficulty of finding/identifying ops people if you have very different mindset
• homophily&trust networks based hiring
• misaligned filtering (potentially great ops people being filtered early on criteria like not having CVs impressive in the right way, in a later stage people with the most impressive CVs actually not being good fit, or not that interested in ops)
• prestige
• risk-aversion on org side

Upvoted for choosing an important topic and conducting original research.

Having a short "key points" section at the top of the post (and future posts) would be valuable; I think the core insights can be collected in a couple of lines. What I took away: some skills are innate, but most are acquired; there's no clear consensus on which skills are most important, but answers emphasized broad experience; we'll learn in the next post how to measure your skills and acquire new ones.

Also, I wish that this post featured more examples. Phrases like "attention to detail" and "leadership skills" are very common in the business world, but it's often hard to understand what they look like (especially since mainstream writing on career skills is generally very nonspecific), or how a top ops person's use of them might differ from what we think of as "normal". There's clearly a difference between the way Tara Mac Aulay attends to detail and the way an average office worker does, but what exactly is that difference?

Following on that: Did your survey ask people to give examples of times when a given skill was useful to them, and what the skill looked like when it was in use? If not, future surveys should.

Finally, I wish that we could access respondents' answers directly. Given that only five people responded to the questions, I don't think linking to answers would overwhelm readers, and we'd get some nuance that's hard to express in a summary — though I understand if the actual text of answers needed to be kept anonymous!

My Background : Master of social science, having worked in admin / projects in business & startups (Australia)

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Firstly, Some Personal Observations / Notes (in response to supporting @Raemon’s commentary)

A Note on Knowing Your Organisation’s Goals & Structure:
Startup | Running Lean, Ownership & Burnout
Ownership and responsibility will differ in different organisational contexts:
In a startup, you can gain 100% ownership of your role (Product / Operations Manager etc) as startups run lean and tend not to have a large operations staff - ie. everybody’s doing it to some degree, and / or it’s resting on one person only (including other roles). This is great if you want to run cheap and fast if you have an AGILE / LEAN goal of getting your product / service out at a certain deadline (with the thinking that you can rest a little after that) before the next work sprints.

And sure, this is a way to run fast and light when aiming for a specific goal (product v0.2 launch, securing stage funding etc). However burnout - as @Raemon points out - is a feature, not a bug in lean startups. We have to account for being human and needing a more balanced approach (especially if your whole organisation isn’t dependent on these ‘break or bust’ deadlines).

If I am correct in surmising, we want to continue to develop and value EA aligned members as long-term value adding capital; treating them/us as disposable components to the organisational ecosystem (which can happen in the startup world) may not help the movement.

However, taking on organisational startup principles, tools and frameworks are a good thing in my mind.

Lean Organisation | With Sustainability as a Core Goal
In a more stable, incremental growth organisation which is planning to be around for the longer term, a filled out operations team is necessary. That’s so team mates can work together, be clear on responsibilities, be able to break down tasks and requirements together and keep a stable, consistent quality of work (ie. running the organisation as smoothly as possible), and be able to healthily support the core purpose of the organisation. This then, is where most of our funding will end up - as human capital naturally requires it. Of course, tools and platforms & automation of tasks mean we can still run with a relatively lean team (as opposed to needing 50 or so operations staff in years past). It also means that team mates can support, mentor each other and work together when a gap or point of lag is identified.

In my mind, we still have to think business in terms of human capacity, using tools and frameworks and in planning and forecasting. The beast is different, but it still needs the relevant body parts and systems to run on the savannah, so to speak.


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My Notes: On the ‘Remaining Questions’ section of this Article

• How to best test if you have the necessary innate traits?

Nature Vs Nurture | Talent Acquisition
I also think it will be a 50/50 on nature and nurture with ‘innate talent’ and experience in new hires. I’ve found that in operations, if you have a good mentor and motivation, the art of it can be learned - especially paired with the feeling of being able to ‘own’ your role and be allowed to make reasonable decisions - and to correct course when an issue or mistake occurs. Knowing your organisation’s purpose and aligning deeply to it’s causes also helps when you are elbow deep in repetitive work on a Thursday afternoon, and you need to remind yourself why you are doing this work (having belief & valuing your organisation is paramount). NFP’s and organisations with higher level causes tend to retain their staff longer because of this (as opposed to simply having ‘make more profit’ as their core purpose).


• How to test to what extent you have the acquirable skills?

Personality Tests | Not Quiet Scientifc
When thinking, ‘what else’ could I add to this question, I would say that there are numerous online personality tests which are supposedly able to give you insight as to what sort of a potential worker and role you may fit. I have heard the science of these tests vary greatly and are more likely to be bunk. However, I have been tested by such online tests in the past for employment prospects, many organisations rely on these tests quite heavily in HR decision-making. I would surmise that, when faced with a healthy median of applicants, you generally won’t know how someone will ultimately perform until they are in the role itself. Perhaps these online personality tests help to give hiring managers more of a psychological support in their decision making, if not in finding actual, replicable results.

Office Experience
If you are lucky enough to get some office experience under your belt, and be able to find a mentor or more senior colleague who can take you under their wing, then you may have a higher chance of operations / admin success.

Culture Eats Good Intentions
I do want to point out that in this example, your plans to learn can be eaten up by bad company culture. Sometimes even the best potential candidates may suffer and learn little if the organisation itself doesn’t have a relatively healthy employee and culture mix. So there’s a degree of uncertainty (which most employee candidates face) outside of trying to find the obvious red flags from tools such as Glassdoor and industry news publications.


• What are the best ways of acquiring new skills valuable for operations roles?

Best ways of acquiring operation roles skills is, in my opinion, getting the chance to work directly in almost any business in an operations / admin role. In a SME, you may get a better chance to get your hands dirty across most aspects of an operations role - a larger organisation may be more rigid in its roles, and an individual may not get the chance to develop overall operations experience.

This does present a chicken/egg paradox to undergrads, especially if the quality of their academic learning and output is time intensive (it can be difficult to know whether a university job on the side will ultimately help or hinder active students).

However, as Tara Mac Aulay stated succinctly (EA Podcast) in her own story to the part of operations management - working in a fast food business can be a brilliant experience in learning the operations of a business. And if you strip away the differences in values and business goals of most organisations, good operations will be a key factor in any organisation’s success.

Otherwise, showing up for projects, discussions and events in the EA or other movements shows a can-do attitude which not only helps the individual, but an organisation in assessing a potential candidate’s probability of doing well in a given role.


• What should promising candidates do to signal their fit and experience to potential employers to help smooth out the costly recruitment process?

Signalling | Possible Qualification for Potential Hires
MBA / Business Graduates. If we wish to think further, delving into connecting with business graduates with a need to align their values to EA organisations could be a brilliant area to investigate (which I understand has been noted in previous EA research). It may be interesting to see how many business graduates are compelled to work with an EA aligned organisation - to take on work at a significantly less salary in return for values alignment. I would surmise that not every business graduate wants to automatically become a McKinsey / PwC analyst - Or perhaps would be interested in EA orgs after a stint as an analyst.

Signalling | Operations Individuals from a non-EA Background with Interest in the EA Movement
Someone who has had proven experience in operations / admin in a non EA business will give a guarantee of experience to offer. I understand that the question has been posed as to the effectiveness of hiring people from non-EA backgrounds. However, I would generalise here again and say ‘on a case by case basis’, many young/mid-level professionals would jump at the chance to work within the EA movement if their own internal compass is desiring a refocussing on career purpose and on doing their part in tackling larger, existential issues of which the EA Movement encompasses.

Signalling | Technical Certifications and / or Willingness to Learn / Gain:
Whether we are looking at business graduates, non-related disciplines and/or existing EA members and undergraduates, a potential hire could go for the following certifications to bolster their skills & experience:

- PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification - the international gold standard of competence and tested ability for building business project management chops: https://www.pmi.org/certifications

- Spreadsheet certifications are also an excellent signal of admin competencies. The office unicorn is often the spreadsheet whiz. Data science, stats & maths undergrads may have the heads up in this area as well if they wish to grab certification to embellish their degree.
Excel certifications - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/office-certification.aspx.
Google Sheets - https://gsuite.google.com/learning-center/products/sheets/#!/

- Cloud Certification - as orgs can run cheaply on cloud-based platforms, knowing or having certification in, say, the popular Google Cloud / G Suite platform - https://cloud.google.com/certification/gsuite.

- SQL certifications are also a help - especially if running databases and documentation standards are of value to an organisation.

- Amazon Web Services (AWS) is also an excellent direction for finding very useful and relevant certifications on the more technical / programming side of business operations - https://aws.amazon.com/certification/

- Business analyst or audit certifications surely help in building overall understanding of a business, as well as being able to zoom down into the granular workflows, databases & policies.

- Financial - Experience with the following key living business ledgers:
1) Balance Sheet
2) Profit and loss statement
3) Cash Flow Statement
These are also used to balance funding and grants and usually sit within a spreadsheet application / platform.

- Proven experience working in admin / operations / project management within a company / office. The willingness to learn should also be taken into account with someone who may not have such experience as yet; which brings me to the last point:

- Sociability, commitment & consistency, having a growth & problem solving mindset, respect for on-the-job learning, value alignment in EA movement and the belief that supporting, running & maintaining the ship is key to being able to have it complete it’s raison d'être.

I’d also note that some people could come in on a technical, research or other discipline in an organisation and later find a penchant for good operations management.


• Given the answers to the questions above, what can local and national groups do to find and train potential candidates and help in the recruitment process?

EA Org Self-Audit | Requirements and Needs | Building out a Roadmap
I would recommend an EA org act as their own business analysts and to sit down and write out all the requirements needed in their organisation (leaving nothing out - including daily tasks) - Including how often they need certain tasks done with some projection into the next calendar year. These tasks could be broken down and assigned into roles needed to be filled in an organisational structure chart.

This can all be a part of building a larger roadmap in this area, which may even be able to be utilised by other EA aligned organisations in the future (as an open-source resource).

Leveraging HR Industry Knowledge | Reinventing the Wheel?
I would suggest we could find in our first & second degree networks; HR managers who are willing to give their input into how they discern good operations potential and company fit. We could also cold-contact HR organisations with great track records for advice. An HR manager may also benefit from a pro bono consultation with the EA movement as their charitable giving component of their own resume. There are also whole HR CRM’s (including powerful platforms such as LinkedIn) which have been developed with making a HR person’s job easier. EA could stand to benefit from using these platforms & tools - as well as helping existing EA members build up to future possible roles with EA organisations.

If there are HR groups in the network or someone able to be contacted, then I say this could warrant an investigation.

There are also business groups and networks dedicated to standards of excellence in operations, projects & management. NFP’s are often given free mentoring and resources from commercial industries, which could be an interesting area to investigate. This also includes contacting NFP & NGO hiring organisations.

Partnering with Commercial Organisations in developing a professional HR stream or an EA HR group.
I understand it’s been noted before as a possible project / organisation to establish or partner with. An HR group who could be devoted to solving these problems or at least giving healthy and standardised pathways in HR and EA Movement building. Either as a partnership structure, a standards group or people with the HR skills and experience who would be able to help EA aligned orgs in their HR requirements. This could be not only useful in working with the existing EA network of members, but also in being proactive in bringing more operations professionals into the EA Movement.

As with the MBA / Business analyst signalling in candidates - Perhaps there could be a partnership stream with such companies? This may be a potentially challenging project to tackle, however you have another layer of proven experience in potential candidates from such a talent pool, so in terms of investment, even one good hire per year into the EA network from such a partnership may be a project which justifies and pays for itself.

Building from Our Current Findings | A Continuing Team Task group Opportunity?
As with the stellar work done by @Eirin and @Jorgen in this series of research and publications, this direction of inquiry is a rich field to continue delving into, not only for tackling the EA Operations Management bottleneck, but in further developing the EA Movement’s ability to assess our new and existing members, as a large human resource capability and assistance network.

If not already done so, an EA aligned working task group could be assembled in order to further support Eirin & Jorgen’s work on this topic.

Continuing to develop reporting in this series ranks highly in my personal understanding of the EA Movement’s needs. Building on what we’ve learned, can then be generated, and the findings used to help guide decision making in the future and suggested next steps.

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Side Note | Startup / LEAN Tools for Academic Use
I am gaining awareness from EA literature that academics in general could also benefit from an interdisciplinary set of frameworks & tools from operations management / startups for use in their own field of academics. No doubt, most academics would also benefit from having executive and virtual assistants as a common practice, but I digress - funding constraints et all. It would be interesting to see how, (as a non-academic) cross-pollination of these areas can be used to help the field as a whole. Perhaps academics who wish to take on better operations & project management tools could gain from startup culture lessons and tools. But that’s another sandwich to discuss.

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Was any of this helpful in any way? I'm working on being active in the forum this year, however I would rather refrain from adding non-useful / irrelevant noise to the mix.

context: I work in an operational capacity for a startup and have for several years

To me this misses what I consider the most important thing to success in operational roles: total responsibility. Just about anyone can learn to do stuff, and lots of times operations is treated as the function of the organization that does the stuff no one else wants to do, but to me this isn't exactly right. It's more about being responsible, probably heroically so, and being willing to do whatever you have to do to take care of the things you care about. Another person I know describes it has "holding parental mind" for something, which I think helps point at the breadth and depth of what operations is really all about.

This is not to say all these other things are not important, you can probably get along okay with someone who can just do stuff, and no amount of responsibility can overcome all other skill deficiencies, but to my mind great operational competence only arises when a person takes radical, total responsibility for the thing they are charged to protect.