Ops professionals are the dexterous and dynamic unsung stars of their organizations and fields, the ones on the frontline of the effort to find better, more efficient, and more enjoyable ways to work. They’ve never been more important to their organizations than today, in the wake of changing market dynamics and unforeseen social disruption.

The work these folks are doing could mean the difference between survival and long-term success. Yet ops teams still somehow don’t seem to receive the recognition they deserve.

That’s why this year we launched our first ever AdaptivOps Top Ops Superstar Awards. We asked the greater operations community to tell us who is doing the most innovative and influential work within the operations space. The nominations poured in, and from them, five finalists were selected.

This year’s winner from that group of five: Penny Penati, Head of Operations at Helm!

Penati began her career as an Operations Specialist at Apple. After diving into the world of startups, she quickly worked her way up to Head of Operations at Helm. She has held multiple Chief of Staff positions and is now a mentor to many.

We wanted to get to know Penati and learn how she found her way to a career in operations, how ops is different (or the same) in massive companies versus startups, why mentorship is so important to her, and more.

AdaptivOps: In addition to your full-time role as Head of Operations at Helm, you also mentor multiple people and were nominated for an award for Mentor of the Year from City University. Why do you devote your extra time to mentorship? Why is it so important to you?

Penny Penati: Mentorship is extremely important to me. As a lost individual in school, and consequently in university, I was surrounded by my peers who knew exactly where they wanted to go into — and it was only in one area: banking.

I went to career fairs at university that were centered around big corporations in finance, leading me to just follow the pack and convince myself that this was the area I wanted to build my career on.

After interviewing at banks, and of course being rejected, I was demotivated, confused, and had no one to turn to. Whilst my peers were getting jobs at big banks around me, I still didn’t have an idea of what I wanted to do, and was “left behind,” which takes a toll on your confidence.

Through my own research and hard work, I then made specific decisions that would ultimately lead into the startup world and finding my passion. I’m able to confidently say, “I love what I do and what I’ve built my career on.”

I know that there are other people out there that may be as lost and confused as I was, not knowing where to start or where their passion lies, and ultimately their confidence would be at rock bottom. With this, it’s my mission to try and help as many people as I can, because I can sincerely empathize with how they are feeling.

AdaptivOps: What initially drew you to a career in operations?

PP: I began my startup career working as an events intern at Startupbootcamp FinTech. I loved working on all types of events, from hackathons to workshops to events that had 500+ people. I learnt an incredible amount, including how to operate a truly successful accelerator whilst managing and exceeding expectations of multiple stakeholders.

During my time as an intern, there was one person who was a true inspiration and ignited this passion of operations in me: Edwina Johnson, at the time COO of Startupbootcamp FinTech. She was running the programme (from managing the startups, partners, mentors, and investors) smoothly and efficiently, with the utmost calmness. It felt as if I was watching a conductor of an orchestra, and it was at that point that I knew I wanted to go into operations.

AdaptivOps: What is one thing you wish you knew earlier in your career that you know now?

PP: Ask questions, be curious, and challenge. Great ideas come from everywhere, no matter if you are one of the most junior people in the business, or the most senior.

If the answer is, “We’ve always done it this way,” question it. Is it still the best way to do [x], or is there an even better way? The world is continuously changing, and no business wants to be left behind, so always question.

AdaptivOps: You’re an active member of several operations communities. Why do you think they’re so important?

PP: A couple of different reasons: Firstly, there’s a tendency that startups don’t invest heavily in operations as much as they do marketing or engineering (understandably so). Therefore the community is there to help you solve a problem you are currently going through by providing a different perspective or making you think about it in an alternative way.

Secondly, it helps you stay up to date with what others are working on. As an example, an operator in a 50-person startup may be working on something that isn’t relevant to you as of yet because you are in a smaller company, but you know that when you hit a certain mark, that is something you should be aware of.

Lastly, I’m a big fan of learning and developing, so being surrounded by absolutely brilliant minds makes me continuously stay on my feet and grow.

AdaptivOps: You went from a giant, very public company to startup land. What’s different about ops in those environments? What’s the same?

PP: Two completely different worlds, I must say! Of course, in a company like Apple, their processes are remarkable, and it’s something to admire. However, there are various similarities to working in ops in two different worlds: always iterating and improving, and keeping in mind that operations is the backbone of a company.

AdaptivOps: Let’s talk nuts and bolts: What’s your best tip, trick, or hack that’s helped you in your operations roles?

PP: Write everything down, conduct retros, and read articles and listen to podcasts.

Part of working in operations (amongst many) is: process optimization and change management. Process optimization is probably the “easiest” out of the two, and a recent article from The Smooth Operator has outlined it perfectly. Change management is the harder of the two: questioning and poking holes in their process, potentially getting them onboard with a new software, and changing the way they operate whilst not stepping on people’s toes.

It’s not easy, but as operators, the team are your customers, as they are going to use the “end product.” Therefore, get their buy-in, embed them into the process, let them lead on the imperfections, and stay quiet and listen. Retros are a good way to get their feedback, and so you continue to iterate until they are happy with the end product.

AdaptivOps: What’s next for you? What does the future hold?

PP: COO is the dream, and whilst I’ll continue my journey on getting there, my mission still remains to help as many people as I can. So if anyone is struggling to either kick off their career or get to the next level of their career, in either operations or data, feel free to reach out to me.

Penny Penati is the Head of Operations at Helm and the first recipient of the AdaptivOps Top Ops Superstar Award. Find and follow Penny on LinkedIn, and join the AdaptivOps Community to stay in touch with your operations peers!

Get to Know Your Top Ops Superstar 2022: Penny Penati was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Learn how these leaders are making an impact in the operations community by sharing their success, knowledge, and mentorship.

An ops leader who is also the author of an upcoming book on RevOps.

An ops pro who doubles as a mentor for the next generation of ops professionals.

A “superhero” COO who understands the problems vexing ops teams working inside organizations today — and solves those problems with an approach that’s not only creative and collaborative but thoroughly compassionate.

These are just a few examples of the kind of professionals who populate the large and ever-evolving community of business operations: the dexterous and dynamic unsung stars of their organizations and fields, the ones on the frontline of the effort to find a better, more efficient, and more enjoyable way to work.

This effort has never been more important. Ops professionals are execution experts. They’re crucial to the growth and success of every kind of business. But market dynamics and unforeseen social disruption have over the last several years thrust an even greater level of importance onto ops professionals.

For their organizations, the work these folks are doing could mean the difference between survival and long-term success. For society writ large, it could mean the difference between properly equipping our organizations to effectively tackle the world’s biggest and most crucial challenges, or not.

Ask someone within the ops community, and they’ll tell you that this is all pretty well established and understood. Yet more broadly, ops teams still somehow don’t seem to receive the recognition they deserve.

And that’s why this year we launched our first ever AdaptivOps Top Ops Superstar Awards. We asked the greater operations community to tell us who in their world is doing the most innovative and influential work within the operations space. The nominations poured in, and from them, five finalists were selected.

We’ve provided a preview of who these Ops Superstars are below. Read on to learn more about who they are, what they’re doing, why they were nominated — with words directly from the nominators themselves — and why these folks are such important and inspiring leaders to watch in 2022 and beyond.

Check out the 5 Operations Leaders Who Are Making an Impact in 2022

Penny Penati, Head of Operations at Helm

“Penny is an active mentor, helping the younger generation into the ops world and teaching them how to navigate their careers. She is always around when you need help, will never ask for a favor in return, and genuinely wants to help people.”

What They’ve Accomplished

Penny Penati started out her career as an Operations Specialist at Apple. Then, she delved into the world of startups, where she quickly worked her way up to Head of Operations at Helm. She has held multiple Chief of Staff positions, and is now a mentor to several startups.

Here’s what her nominator had to say about her.

How They Help the Operations Community

“I couldn’t think of a better person to nominate than Penny. Penny is an active mentor, helping the younger generation into the ops world and how to navigate their career: from upward managing C-suite and founders, progressing to the next step, tips and tricks on how to always be ahead of the game, and leveling up in their career. She is always around when you need help, will never ask for a favor in return, and genuinely wants to help people.”

How They Serve as a Mentor for fellow Operations Professionals

Penny demonstrates that no matter how busy you are, she will always make time for someone in need, because she knows the importance of having a mentor to hear your thinking, bounce ideas off, and otherwise help you progress in your next career stage. She understands that mentoring is so important and so crucial because mentors can give you those tips and guidance that they won’t give you in an academic lesson, or that people might be reluctant to give you at work, for fear of you stepping on their toes and taking their job. I can’t thank her enough for all the help she’s given me, and would love for her to be repaid with an award.”

Anne Pao, Vice President of Revenue Operations & Enablement at Maven Clinic

“Anne created the RevOpsVillage jobs board, which helps hundreds of ops professionals who got laid off or are looking for their next challenge find a new role. The impact she has had in the space is unquantifiable.”

What They’ve Accomplished

As a 5X startup operator with 20+ years experience running revenue operations and managing big data, Anne is a force to be reckoned with. In addition to her current role as VP of RevOps at Maven Clinic, she runs a RevOps community to help those emerging in the field find their way through mentorship.

Here’s what her nominator had to say about her.

How They Help the Operations Community

“Anne created the RevOpsVillage jobs board, which helps hundreds of ops professionals who got laid off or are looking for their next challenge find a new role. The impact she has had in the space is unquantifiable. ”

How They Serve as a Mentor for fellow Operations Professionals

“Anne has created a community for RevOps professionals with office hours, weekly forecasts, job boards, etc. helping bring the RevOps community together.”

Patrick R. Krill, Founder and Principal at Krill Strategies

“Patrick is tackling a subject that is rarely talked about in Legal Ops but one that has led to severe burnout and depression among legal ops professionals and lawyers.”

What They’ve Accomplished

An academic turned founder, Patrick Krill founded Krill Strategies in 2016. Krill Strategies takes a systems approach to problem-solving that demonstrates an appreciation and understanding of the complex nature of behavioral health in the legal profession.

Here’s what his nominator had to say about him.

How They Help the Operations Community

“Patrick founded Krill Strategies out of the recognition that the legal profession needs help to improve the well-being of its members. Patrick’s research and strategies show what life would be like if Legal Ops aimed to enable lawyers to spend more time using their skills as opposed to being more productive.”

How They Serve as a Mentor for fellow Operations Professionals

“Patrick is tackling a subject that is rarely talked about in Legal Ops but one that has led to severe burnout and depression among legal ops professionals and lawyers.”

Aušrinė Keršanskaitė, Head of Operations at Reframe Technologies, Inc.

“By co-founding The Operations Nation community, Aušrinė provides members with opportunities to share experiences, expand knowledge and network in the operations space.”

What They’ve Accomplished

Aušrinė Keršanskaitė describes herself as an “ops person, always in startups” and her career backs that up. Her lengthy career showcases a history of operating as a COO for startups to get them off the ground successfully — whether that means getting them to an acquisition, a steady revenue stream, or both. In addition to her Head of Operations role, she currently runs a burgeoning community of operations professionals called Operations Nation.

Here’s what her nominator had to say about her.

How They Help the Operations Community

“By co-founding the Ops Stories/Operations Nation community, she provides members with opportunities to share experiences, expand knowledge and network. She is very dedicated and helpful in every project she is running.”

How They Serve as a Mentor for fellow Operations Professionals

Aušrinė has dedicated her hours outside of her Head of Ops role to running Operations Nation full time, which provides mentorship to hundreds of operations professionals daily. In addition to facilitating this, she is always open and willing to mentor and engage herself, no matter how busy she is.

Jen Bergren, Sr. Operations Manager at Remotish

“In addition to being a mentor, Jen is a contributor to the HubSpot RevOps certification, the first free RevOps certification to help elevate this newly defined area of ops, which makes it accessible and possible for others to improve their knowledge and grow their career.”

What They’ve Accomplished

In addition to writing a book on RevOps (coming this year!), Jen Bergren’s mission is to educate the world about Revenue Operations in order to pave the way for those looking to advance their careers in the emerging field. In her current role at Remotish, she aids B2B SaaS companies using Hubspot.

Here’s what her nominator had to say about her.

How They Help the Operations Community

“Contributing to the HubSpot RevOps certification as a guest professor, the first free RevOps certification to help elevate this newly defined area of ops, which makes it accessible and possible for others to improve their knowledge and grow their career.”

How They Serve as a Mentor for fellow Operations Professionals

“Aside from appearing in the certification, Jen has also been a mentor at Pavilion for several people, and writes about operations and career transitions into operations in order to inspire others to pursue this career earlier.”

How You Can Make an Impact in 2022

In operations and looking to make an impact in the operations community? Join AdaptivOps to give and receive mentorship from other ops professionals.

5 Operations Leaders to Watch in 2022 was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re proud to announce the launch, on January 19th, of Modern Business Operations — the first podcast dedicated exclusively to the rapidly changing world of business operations.

Each week, hosts Sagi Eliyahu, Co-Founder and CEO of Tonkean, and Briana Okyere, Community Lead at AdaptivOps, will be chatting with leaders in operations and IT about the trends, technologies, priorities and problems driving change and innovation in the operations space — and, with it, the enterprise.

Topics will include how operations are driving enterprises to become more agile; how technologies such as low-code/no-code and automation are changing the nature of operations work; what forces in the world are everyday turning ops teams into mission-critical components inside their organizations — and more.

Episodes already available include conversations with Lindsay Crittendon — Vice President of Growth Initiatives Hippo (and formerly of Headspace) — who dishes on the importance of having a generalist and multi-disciplinary background in operations, as well as Mary O’Carroll, CCO of Ironclad, who chats about how she once built Google’s Legal Ops department from scratch.

Briana and Sagi have also chatted with Venketesh Iyer, Head of Analytics, Business Planning, and Operations at Meta. In the episode, Iyer shares his thoughts on project management and the importance of goal-setting, communicating with stakeholders throughout any given process, and what key investments every operations team should make in order to be successful.

Additional upcoming guests include:

• Ravi Malick, Global CIO at Box
• Frances Pomposo, Senior Director Legal Operations and Chief of Staff at Workday
• Tim Jones, Former VP of Business Operations at Epic Games
• Mark Znutas, Vice President of GTM Strategy and Operations at Hubspot

That’s just the beginning. The world of business operations, along with the enterprise more broadly, really is on the brink of revolutionary change. The way innovative organizations of the future operate will look vastly different than the way they do today. Business operations departments of tomorrow will be more agile and function with more independence, creating and managing their own solutions using composable techniques, and taking on more responsibility and leadership in change-making initiatives more broadly. Ops roles internally will continue to elevate in importance and esteem. And partly because of all this, ops teams will in turn take on larger roles in solving big problems not affecting their organizations, but the world writ large.

It’s an exciting time, and we’ll be with you every step of the way.

You can find everything you need to know about where to stream or download Modern Business Operations, what episodes have already aired, and what’s coming up next, on the podcast’s homepage.

Introducing the Modern Business Operations Podcast was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

AdaptivOps recently sat down with Lindsay Crittendon, Former Senior Director of Strategy and Operations at Headspace, to discuss her experiences and how Ops professionals can advance their careers.

At AdaptivOps, we have had the pleasure of speaking with Lindsay Crittendon on multiple occasions, spanning a wide range of topics relevant to Operations professionals. In our most recent interview, we asked Lindsay to expand on her career trajectory and what advice she could offer other people in the world of Ops looking to progress and advance in their careers.

Can you tell us a little bit about your career prior to working at Headspace?

15 years before starting at Headspace, I was working in Market Research and Consumer Insights, a very niche part of the world of R&D. I took this route because I wanted to learn as much as possible about how to use business data and challenge myself to think creatively on a daily basis. Looking back, I really appreciate all of that experience because it helped me learn how to ask the right questions. I believe that the best Ops people don’t just deliver an important piece of data; they ask questions, discover why that piece of data matters, and figure out how it can be used with a certain intention.

Over the years, I worked in various departments, including sales and marketing, but consistently found myself pulled into the realm of Operations. This piecemeal introduction to Ops actually served me well because I think that the best Ops people can see both the forest and the trees. They can keep one eye on the big picture while also getting into the details and understanding how to operate the machinery of the business.

Thus, I found that, if I wanted to make the biggest impact in my organization, I couldn’t just stay in a singular role; I needed to be cross-functional. Somewhat ironically, if you have the motive or drive to make an impact outside of your group or department, you are far more likely to end up in an Operations role.

You’ve been in the Ops game for about 7 years now — how has it changed over that time?

When I first started in Operations, it was even more ill-defined than it is now. There were essentially two types of Ops roles; you had the Systems & Data persona who didn’t really have a say in strategic decisions and wasn’t meant to speak up much, and you had the persona of someone who was given an Operations title because the company just didn’t know what to do with them. They needed someone who could fulfill a “catch-all” role and take on a wide range of projects and responsibilities within the organization.

Fast forward to today, and the biggest change is identifying what “Operations” can mean and the importance of defining it. I’ve seen much greater intention when defining operational roles in recent years. For example, a company might assign a title like “Revenue Operations,” which speaks to the multi-dimensional aspects of Ops, as opposed to a title like “Sales Operations,” which is only tied to a single department.

In short, there is a greater definition of the role of an Operations Director and Operations in general. This has allowed for Ops-minded professionals to actually have room for career growth, as well as greater definitions regarding their roles within companies.

What skills should operations professionals be honing in order to gain an advantage in their careers? What are companies looking for?

When someone is first getting started in Ops, there is a lot of power in being a generalist. One of the best ways to do this in a credible way is to work in a number of different disciplines. I believe that for Ops professionals to be really good, they should have a cross-functional and multi-disciplinary background. Why? Because most Operations roles require you to put yourself in the shoes of the people with whom you’re working.

So first, start out broad and absorb as much information from the people around you. And second, really work to understand and experience different disciplines that are touched and affected by Operations. This way, when it comes time for you to be the glue that holds the company together, you can be the glue with a much greater sense of credibility.

This isn’t to say that being a generalist will make your career easier. In fact, it could make it harder early on. Many hiring managers will want specialists with a lot of experience in one specific area, as opposed to someone who has some experience across a broad range of disciplines. But over the long term, I honestly think that being a generalist will help you become a better Ops professional and advance your career.

Why do you think operations is a somewhat “unsung” role within an organization? How can we as a community advocate for that to change?

Many Ops professionals don’t like to talk about themselves. It can feel safe (in the moment) to focus the conversation on specific issues or other departments, but this only contributes to the lack of understanding surrounding Operations. Instead, Ops professionals should work to explain exactly what they are doing within the organization.

For example, working on roadmaps (both within the Ops department and for the entire organization) can continuously provide insight into what an Ops person does. An Ops professional doesn’t just sit in the back of the room and answer difficult questions from time to time. Ideally, an Ops professional is a strategic guide and partner who helps people within the organization get through some of their toughest moments. But if an Ops professional doesn’t talk about what they do, stakeholders won’t always see them as a strategic guide or partner. Consequently, Operations people have to take a page from marketing teams and learn to talk about themselves and what they are doing more often.

As an added bonus, this strategy can help energize employees because it alerts them to the fact that management is aware of day-to-day issues and is actively working to solve them. If your company is not running well operationally, the people who feel it the most — aside from your customers — are your employees. They see the problems, they want to raise their hands and do something about it, but that’s not their job.

However, if you have Ops professionals within your company, it can be their job. So if Ops is actively working to improve the company operationally, it builds credibility and trust with your employees. The employees can feel that their employer is investing in making their jobs better and easier.

In Ops we tend to be a “catch-all,” which can lead to burnout. How do you prevent overextending yourself when your skills are in high demand?

This is actually something that I have struggled with a lot. It is also why I have worked very hard to define what Operations does and define the responsibilities given to my team. In doing so, it can help prevent a business from using Ops as a “catch-all” department.

So, what are we accountable for and what are our roadmaps? Once you answer these questions, make sure that these roles are over-communicated. This way, when someone comes to you with an unrelated problem to solve, you can appropriately remind them of your duties as an Ops professional within the company.

This isn’t to say that you can’t solve their problem, but you can show them how it fits into your roadmap and timeline. It’s not always easy to say “no,” but if you have conviction in your roadmap and remit, you can easily look at different requests and identify which ones fit within your responsibilities and which ones do not.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. For everyone who wants to find out more about you online, where can they go to look?

Thank you for having me! It’s always great to connect with the community. And while I’m not really active on Twitter anymore, people can always connect with me through LinkedIn!

Want to learn more from experts in your field? Connect with skilled professionals today through AdaptivOps!

Progressing Your Career In Operations: Q&A With Lindsay Crittendon was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

AdaptivOps recently sat down with Thomas Grenet, Portfolio Finance Director at EmergeONE, to discuss his experiences helping finance and operations work together.

Today, Thomas Grenet is no stranger to the world of finance, but that wasn’t always the case. After graduating from business school in Paris, Thomas worked as a marketing intern. However, he found the work a little dull; he wanted to pursue something more intellectually stimulating. So, despite having zero experience in finance, he ended up working in leverage finance and he was immediately hooked.

The work required a mix of legal and financial expertise, as well as a strong work ethic and communication skills. In a matter of weeks, Thomas could get to know a company or sector inside and out. It was both exciting and challenging. Unfortunately, just nine months after getting into the industry, the housing crisis of 2008 sent global markets into a free fall. And his job shifted from helping closing new deals to restructuring defaulting loans..

Suddenly, Thomas was much closer to the business the bank financed, talking almost daily to the management team in some cases. The position was at times awkward — after all he was a banker, not an investor — it was also extremely insightful for Thomas of what the role of finance inside a company is all about.

Making the Jump to Startups

After years working for finance organizations, Thomas Grenet decided it was time to get his hands dirty and help new ventures grow. Since then, Thomas has served as the head of finance for two startups, and is now a consultant for seed-stage companies in London.

At first glance, Thomas Grenet’s experience would make him seem like an attractive asset to startups. However, he claims that the fit is not that clear-cut. Why? Because banking and finance for startups require very different skill sets. Operationally, in particular as a first finance hire, Thomas had to get right into the weeds — e.g. reconciling invoices, producing (and not analyzing) monthly management accounts, laying out billing and payment processes, etc.

Meanwhile, at a more strategic level, a finance lead together with the management team is setting KPIs, OKRs and allocating capital for the team to grow towards building a sustainable business. This requires building procedures generating solid and consistent data across the company.

Thomas came from a top-down mindset and suddenly moved to a bottom-up environment.

Thomas’s Advice for C-Suite and Ops Managers

As someone who has worked directly with ops from the perspective of a finance lead, Thomas has a few pearls of wisdom to help operations managers and company heads get the best of both worlds.

1. Ensure proper alignment and consistency. It’s a matter of sitting down with the funders to make sure everyone is tracking the same thing and speaking the same language. Be especially clear about the definitions used across the entire operations team and organization. Additionally, take the time to make sure the data is well structured and understood.
2. Communicate and be transparent. Don’t try to hide things from finance, because, at the end of the month, they will see where the money is going. If the money is misspent, i.e. not in line with the roadmap, trust will be damaged and the finance lead will put you on a short leash. Plans often need to change however, in which case alignment with your finance lead is just a conversation away. The more you communicate with them, the more they can support you.
3. Scale before you need it. Most bottlenecks arise from missing processes and software, which are generally inexpensive to implement. Simply scaling early on can help you avoid workflow problems between finance and ops as the organization grows.
4. Demand empowerment. Without delegation tools, we create bottlenecks and dilute accountability.T With KPIs, OKRs and a budget clearly defined, ask in addition for signing and spending delegation privileges for key team members.
5. Think of the finance team as an enabler. Finance is mainly here to support the growth of the business. A critical part is about allocating resources to test new growth hypotheses. Provide finance with a clear case: what you want to learn, what resources you need, what metrics will you use to measure its success (e.g. additional sales it will generate, man-hours it will save), what return it would generate.

Want to learn more from experts in your field? Connect with skilled professionals today through AdaptivOps!

Expand Your Toolkit: A Crash Course in Finance for Operations was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sarah Touzani, COO at Creditspring, May Ong, Business Operations Manager at Hofy, discuss standardizing ops.

AdaptivOps recently had the pleasure of speaking with two highly-respected professionals in their field. Our first expert, Sarah Touzani, COO at Creditspring, has a strong background in banking consulting, though she has been working in startup operations for more than three years. And our second expert, May Ong, Business Operations Manager at Hofy, has worked in business ops for years, and her current position has her helping remote organizations improve their processes. In today’s post, both Sarah and May will share their best practices for standardizing operations across departments while mitigating change management.

3 Problems to Anticipate When Enforcing Change Without Change Management

During new process implementations, there are three main problems that you will have to overcome. Identifying these kinds of problems early on is vital for ensuring the success of organizational changes and new implementations:

Managing a lack of adoption by stakeholders

Recently, May Ong encountered this issue while implementing a new CRM system. Due to poor experiences the stakeholders had with a previous CRM system, their engagement level was pretty low. They were not convinced that the new process was going to provide them with a significantly better experience. This was especially problematic since the new system required more engagement to ensure better data quality. As a result, May and her team had to address the issue quickly, otherwise, the system would have become completely redundant.

Different departments wanting their own features

During a scoping session, it is the standard operating procedure to gather everyone’s input. While this is great in theory, if it is not managed properly, the requests from a scoping session on a new project can get out of hand very quickly. You essentially get a “wish list” from every department of want they want to see in the new system. So, during those scoping sessions, it is best to set very clear expectations for the stakeholders right from the start. If you put together an action plan for how those requests will be prioritized, and department heads are aware of these priorities, the entire process will be much easier to manage.

A lack of consistency across departments

It is extremely common to experience a lack of consistency across departments when it comes to the ways in which they use a new system. Everyone had different interpretations of what they could (or should) do with the new process. For example, May Ong worked with salespeople who had different ideas of when a conversation with a client should be registered as a new lead in the system. The best solution was not to try to control their behavior, but rather to work with each department’s leadership team to establish how the system was intended to be used, and how those intentions could be implemented within their existing processes. This allowed for greater consistency without taking agency away from the sales team.

The Process of Standardizing Cross-Departmental Operational Changes

1. Get Stakeholders On Board — In Sarah Touzani’s experience, if you enter a project with a new team and implement a process without their buy-in, they will stop using the process as soon as you are gone. Thus, it’s important to set up an initial session where you try to understand exactly what the team needs, discuss the issues they have already identified, and demonstrate how a new process can be valuable to them.
2. Consider Upstream & Downstream Impacts — Every process has some kind of upstream or downstream impact. It’s important to map out these impacts early on, potentially before you even have your first session with stakeholders. This ensures that when you roll out a new process, it is one that allows for cross-functional collaboration, rather than a tunnel-vision process meant for a specific problem at a specific point in time. Even if you cannot know the exact upstream and downstream impacts ahead of time, the knowledge that these impacts will inevitably arise helps shape the questions you ask during the initial project scoping meeting. Since there is always room to overlook a potential affected department or stakeholder, May Ong always ends every session by asking the same question: “Is there anyone else you work with who would require this information?”
3. Start With an Iterative Process — Sarah Touzani is a firm believer in starting small and adding layers to a process once it has already been implemented. By implementing a “light” process and ensuring that it actually makes sense for the team or organization, you can have a stronger foundation to build from. If you don’t start small, you could run the risk of overengineering a solution that is going to slow down the team. Introducing a small or incremental change also makes it easier to ensure buy-in from all affected stakeholders and teams, as it is faster and cheaper to implement. Moreover, it allows you to see how the change is used so that you can build on top of the foundational process later on.
4. Keep Messaging Consistent — Consistent messaging is vital, both inside and outside of a project team. If a project team doesn’t have consistent internal messaging, it makes it impossible to deliver a consistent and effective message to stakeholders. May Ong believes that it is good to have a singular “voice” on every team or department who has been involved in implementing the process and understands the central message. This way, you don’t have to worry as much about communications getting lost in translation between different departments.
5. Reassess — After teams have had time to sink their teeth into a new process, Sarah Touzani always goes back and reassesses the process and its workability. If you started with an iterative process, then you likely need to continue adding layers anyway, and reassessing the usefulness and usability of the process is necessary for improving and perfecting the new process going forward. So, assess how Phase 1 went and use the opportunity to look for potential gaps or mistakes that you might have missed the first time around. Additionally, take the time to ensure that stakeholders are still onboard and approve of new layers being added in the future.

How to Deal With the 3 Common Pitfalls of Implementing Changes

1. A Lack of Cross-Functional Collaboration — To avoid this (or cope with it after the fact), increase transparency across your teams. The exact steps you must take will naturally depend on the size of your organization and the nature of the project, however, by increasing transparency at every level, you help users understand how the task you’re doing affects all other areas, teams, and departments. Sharing key data points is an important part of this transparency. In addition, you need to share accountability with stakeholders, which means that you need to get their buy-in very early on, as well as the support of those “voices” in each department.
2. The Process Is Not Being Used — This issue is not always easy to identify quickly. However, it is most common to see when there is a particular incident or human error. In this case, you need to immediately take a deep dive into the reasons for the issue and work to ensure that it is not repeated. Once you can fill in any potential gaps, this leaves you with a good opportunity to reiterate the value of the process to teams and stakeholders. This way, you reduce the risk of low engagement in the future.
3. Difficulty Aligning Across Departments — When dealing with alignment issues, always show empathy and patience. People appreciate being listened to and being shown that their concerns are being taken into consideration. In most cases, we celebrate when teams win, but we’re not happy when their experiments don’t work. Instead, we should celebrate the way they think about those experiments, whether or not they succeed. When you only celebrate the outcome, you may be putting too much emphasis on luck. Instead, focus on the process and the positive intent behind it.

Want to learn more from experts in your field? Connect with skilled professionals today through AdaptivOps!

How to Standardize Operations Across Departments was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Patrick Bosek, Co-Founder and CEO at Heretto, breaks down how Content Operations is a crucial vehicle for scale at any organization.

Organizations have been operationalizing every aspect of business. People Ops, DevOps, Business Ops, Revenue Ops, Marketing Ops, all the way up to Chief Operations Officers. If it’s a function of modern business, chances are an “ops” suffix has been tacked onto it.

And there’s a good reason for it.

Departments began realizing they can’t achieve their goals without considering the operational procedures and systems that make them function properly and lead to those goals.

Organizations have goals, but it’s people and processes that achieve those goals. The better organized those people and processes are, the more efficiently those goals are achieved. That’s the point behind focusing on the operations aspects of business function.

Good ideas don’t come to fruition without careful attention to the details of getting them there. Within those details, we have people, technologies, corporate strategies, and a number of variables that all enter into the vast landscape that is ops.

So, where do ContentOps come into play amongst the crowd?

Content Operations — What Is It?

Content Operations is the systems and processes that efficiently get content from brainstorming to business-facing in a digital-first world.

To quote content confidant, Lucie Hyde:

“ContentOps is putting everything in place that takes you from producing and publishing content as an individual to scaling that across an organization.”

The places and formats that people demand content are growing rapidly. As businesses scale their teams and products, they have to scale the content that surrounds those products. Gone are the days of locking knowledge content in PDF downloads for users to hunt down and dig through (soon to be gone are the organizations that take this approach).

People are looking for easily accessible (and searchable) content that’s up-to-date, relevant, and helpful, and they want it in diverse places. For teams to ensure their content is up-to-date, relevant, consistent, and available across all channels, they need ContentOps. They need to align their systems, processes, and people to enable them to produce content quickly, accurately, and at every touchpoint the users might demand it.

Why Does ContentOps Matter?

Being evangelists for ContentOps for Knowledge Management, we like to start with an undeniable truth: content drives behavior.

An organization fundamentally, from a customer’s perspective, has two jobs: make something useful and make people good at using it. And most of the touchpoints for that customer journey of making someone good at using a product are content.

Product and content can’t be separated because content makes people proficient product users. It helps them learn to glean every bit of usefulness from what you make, helps them solve problems when they stumble, and informs them of uses they might not have thought of on their own.

A product by itself may be great, but it’ll never be whole without accompanying content. It’s rare that a customer can use your product without some manner of instruction. It’s even rarer that your product remains the same today and ten years down the road. Because of this, content plays a pivotal role in keeping users in the loop with the proper knowledge to sharpen them as product users.

In this case, the behavior your content is driving is building proficiency. In order for your content to do that effectively, it needs to be up-to-date, accurate, and relevant to problems or questions your users might have. It needs to be quick and easy to access. But above all, it needs to be trusted. Any problem a customer can solve on their own but doesn’t know how to solve intuitively needs content. And, trust me, they want to be good at using your product!

ContentOps is important because it’s the foundation for providing coverage, trust, and ubiquitous access across channels and use cases. ContentOps matters because it impacts customer experience and employee experience. When your employees have consistent processes and systems in place, they don’t need to think about the “how” of their content getting to people, they can purely focus on the quality of the content that properly constructed Content Operations is designed to deliver.

Effective ContentOps allows your organization to deliver better content experiences over and over again, giving you an edge that turns your content into a competitive advantage.

Content Operations 101: Where People, Process, and Automation Converge was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Konrad Treter, Operations Manager at City Pantry, shares a step-by-step guide to mapping out operational processes.

As the Operations Manager of a London-based B2B food delivery platform, my role is to assist different teams in building, analysing, and improving their processes. For example, whenever we work on a new undertaking, I make sure that we tie a process infrastructure to the product or feature. This ensures that, when the product or feature is launched, we can provide the best customer experience possible. Additionally, it ensures that all of our employees have a good understanding of what is expected of them. To do this effectively, I must map out various processes and identify gaps (or potential gaps) in our operational framework.

What Is Your Process Mapping Philosophy?

Process Mapping refers to activities involved in defining what a business entity does, who is responsible, to what standard a business process should be completed, and how the success of a business process can be determined.

As you can see from the definition above, process mapping is all about problem-solving. Fortunately for me, I love solving problems! Why? Because I don’t actually see them as problems, but rather opportunities to make improvements.

This is where my process mapping philosophy begins. I actively look for opportunities to improve or enhance our processes. This can be done in a number of ways, but I usually begin by interviewing a team to learn more about their existing processes and procedures. In doing so, I can figure out where there might be gaps or opportunities for improvement. From there, I break down these issues into manageable parts, find workable solutions, and work cross-functionally with all the teams in the organization to help staff implement these changes in their day-to-day jobs.

3 Common Process Management Problems

In my experience, the most common process management problem is a lack of processes in general. This is particularly true when a company or organisation begins to scale. For example, at our company, we have a team that reaches out to restaurants. For a while, it was just a two-member team. When you have a really small team like this, everyone has to wear a lot of different hats.

However, when you grow, things change rapidly. Naturally, our company grew and the team grew with it, reaching about 10 members. We immediately ran into an issue in which some team members were using completely different pitches with each restaurant. This often resulted in one team member offering completely different services than another, as well as giving each restaurant owner different “next steps” to work with us. This impacted our ability to provide a consistent service and was a bad experience for everyone that interacted with the business.

Thus, a lack of coherent processes is the biggest issue within a larger operational framework. Moreover, there are three common process management issues that arise from this problem:

• Lack of Governance — This issue arises when you do not take the time to properly map out a process and choose the correct person to manage it once it is formed.
• Inability to Access Knowledge — This issue arises when you don’t take the time to create a knowledge management framework.
• Limited Workforce Engagement — Limited workforce engagement brings process development to a halt because no one is going the extra mile to continually make a process easier and more efficient.

What Are the Steps You Should Take When Process Mapping?

Thankfully, process mapping does not need to be a long or arduous process. In fact, there are really just three simple steps you should take:

Step 1: Implement “Start, Stop, Continue”

This step requires you to communicate with a team so that they can help you help them. Together, you must identify new tasks that they should start doing. Next, you should identify pointless or inefficient tasks that they should stop doing. Finally, you must identify ongoing tasks that they should continue doing. Once these three categories have been thoroughly examined, you just have to implement your “Start, Stop, Continue” process!

Step 2: Map Out a Flowchart

After you’ve finished step one, you need to map out the entire process. I like to draw a flowchart. My flowcharts create a table of different “actors” who interact with our business. Once I’ve identified all of the actors, I draw out a workflow of the entire process, providing a visual representation that says, “this is exactly what we’re doing.”

Step 3: Evaluate Your Process & Cut Out The Fat

After that, you can examine feedback from your Start, Stop, Continue session. This will help you figure out if you need to retrain employees or implement something new. If you do need to implement something new, you can look at your flowchart to see how it might impact different actors. As you look at the entire process, you will often find that it is too “meaty” — which means you’ll need to figure out what you can cut out.

Multi-Department Process Mapping

It goes without saying that process mapping becomes more complex with each team or department that you add to the mix. So, how should you approach mapping out a process involving multiple departments? Though the exact steps will vary with every organization, here are a few tips to help get you started:

• Start With Managers & Stakeholders — When I see an opportunity for process improvement, I usually touch base with my manager first. Then, I try to connect with key stakeholders within each department. This gives me a chance to win them over by selling my story and explaining the reasoning behind the improvements. Typically, when you approach the conversation in a way that shows how the changes can help them, you’re more likely to get buy-in.
• Get One Or More Departments On Board First — A common mistake is creating a process without getting buy-in first. You have to get people on board and make them understand that there is an opportunity to improve their workflow and daily processes. Even though I have a solution for them, I can’t just go in and ask them to follow it. This approach would only create more resistance.
• Don’t Make “Limiting” Policies — Sometimes when you introduce a new process or policy, employees feel like they are being “limited.” You are telling them to do things in a certain way, therefore, they have less freedom over how they do their jobs. Consequently, you need to ensure that your processes are not meant to limit, but rather standardise how the company is run and enable people to do more with less. This is partially a matter of crafting efficient policies, but it also requires you to sell your policies in a way that is appealing to staff and department heads alike.

Tools to Use When Mapping a Process

Finally, I know that many people struggle to find the right process mapping tools to fit their needs. While everyone works a little differently, I’ve had success using all of the following tools on a regular basis:

• Lucidchart — Create flowcharts and diagrams to get your processes mapped out efficiently.
• Sparkboard — Wirelessly present for video and/or audio conferences.
• Niro — Improve flowcharts with simple features like drag and drop, real-time previews, and color selections.
• Google Docs — Collaborate cross-functionally via comments and task assignments.
• Upwork — Hire developers when a certain task is beyond your skillset.

Want to learn more from experts in your field? Connect with skilled professionals today through AdaptivOps!

Process Mapping 101: Identifying Gaps in Your Operational Framework was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rafi Pryntz-Nadworny, Marketing Operations Manager at Heretto, shares best practices for streamlining metrics across multiple departments.

At my job, I ensure that the marketing, sales, and customer success teams are able to maintain and gain operational efficiencies. Basically, I report, analyze, write, and repeat! In today’s post, I want to break down my processes from an insider’s perspective and help others manage their marketing ops across multiple departments.

How I Approach High-Level Marketing Ops

I’ve worked for over 6 years at a B2B SaaS company. Though I’ve had a wide range of roles over the years, my primary responsibility has shifted to marketing and sales operations. I do this by focusing on several important KPIs, including:

• Revenue
• Pipeline Conversion Rates
• Sales Qualified Leads
• Reportability
• Data Believability Score

Naturally, from an operations perspective, I have to look at the entire revenue pipeline — from incoming leads all the way to existing customers that resubscribe. Thus, I analyze the whole funnel to see how the conversions are happening and, perhaps most importantly, identify ways to improve conversion rates at any given step of the process.

Reportability & Data Believability

Reportability serves as a test of your knowledge. If I can’t answer questions about the data, it means I’m missing something. Data believability is closely related, but it’s more specific to the process of presenting data to others. For example, if I create an internal presentation, the team will run it through an impromptu believability test. In other words, they will ask: how believable is this data if you were to present it to someone outside of our company?

I use a lot of different flowcharts for presentations at my job, but when I first started, my flowcharts were pretty simplistic. They showed the leads coming in, the conversions, and how long converted customers were staying with us. Today, my flowcharts have evolved greatly. Now I use roughly 18 different stages to identify pipeline issues, find bottlenecks, and create solutions. This allows me to improve reportability and data believability at the same time.

When I was still new to marketing, I remember getting really excited about data. I would find data that showed opportunities for growth, and I’d take them directly to the CEO. I would say something like, “check this out! These numbers are insane!” And the CEO would say, “you’re right; these numbers are insane.”

Unfortunately, we were using two very different definitions of the word. The CEO would point out that the numbers were unbelievable or “insane” because I had failed to check for certain outliers or mixed data. When I went back to segment and clean up the data, I’d find that the end result was much more believable — and much less exciting. These kinds of experiences helped me improve my process for presenting quality data in a way that is accurate, believable, and readable — even to people who may not be well-versed in reading or analyzing complex data sets.

The Automation Factor

On a personal level, I’m driven by the desire to make everyone’s job as easy as possible. So, if I can automate a process, I will. As an operations specialist, you’ll want to be on the lookout for ways to improve your systems. Always ask yourself the same question: what can we do to reduce manual labor?

For example, if sales representatives need to spend 5–10 minutes finding the right email templates, I could save that time by simply automating the sequence. This way, they don’t even have to think about what kind of email comes next. From personal experience, I know that it’s an uphill battle getting people to track their time and tasks, so rather than trying to measure the frequency of the event (and the total time saved), I just look at the time of a singular event. Then, I set a quarterly goal of saving a total of 1 hour across the board.

While this likely translates into dozens or perhaps even hundreds of hours saved per quarter, I only focus on the time-saving potential of each task so that I don’t have to bother team members about time-tracking or expend a lot of energy trying to track down elusive internal data. However, it’s important to note that when you present these kinds of proposals, you need to emphasize that this is only half of the equation; how much time the new process is saving, but not the frequency of the event itself.

Optimizing Cross-Functional Operations

When you’re working in just one department, you have the goals of that department in mind. Having so much experience in cross-functional operations, I see these differing goals every day. Everybody is working toward the same thing — building success for the company as a whole — but they often have different ideas and opinions on how to go about it.

To help minimize the issue of conflicting goals across different departments, I sit to figure out how “off” a given department’s goal is from the company’s goals. When there is a disconnect between company goals and something that a department wants to pursue, I find ways to bring the department’s ideas or requests closer to the interests of the entire company. This often results in departments getting what they want (more or less), even if it comes in a completely different package. Consequently, having a top-level view of what the company wants is vital for optimizing cross-functional operations.

Want to learn more from experts in your field? Connect with skilled professionals today through AdaptivOps!

Demystifying Marketing Operations: A Lesson in Metrics Across Departments was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A brief overview of the legal language every operations professional should know.

Basic Legal Language: It’s Essential for Operational Fluency

We get many questions about legal language and how companies can better educate their employees about some basic terms. So, we’ve decided to set out some of the basic legal language we come across on a day-to-day basis. This language is often found in company-specific contracts and documents that pass through multiple parties before being approved and signed.

Why do operations professionals need some awareness of legal language?

It can be beneficial for every member of a company to have a basic understanding of legal language in operations as, inevitably, these terms will appear during the daily operations of the organization.

When important or urgent documents are handled by someone without any knowledge of contract types or legal operations, their progression can be stunted as the document sits untouched in an “in-tray” for days on end.

Saving time by understanding the master service agreement

First, let’s examine one of the most frequently occurring legal agreements between two companies. The master service agreement (MSA) is a set of terms and conditions that binds all future transactions and governs the relationship between two parties. This is a popular choice for two companies embarking on a partnership because further alterations can be added without changing the original terms and conditions set out within the MSA.

If your team needs to expand the services or extend the time of a contract, it can be done without needing to amend or agree to new terms and conditions. They only need to sign off on the new agreement or amendment.

How does redlining work?

Redlining describes the process of reading through a contract and highlighting areas that either side would like to change in order to better protect their interests.

There are certain parts of a contract that it will not be possible to amend, so ensure that everyone understands which sections are open to redlining and which are set in stone. This holds especially true when members of your team without a legal background will be going through the contract.

Sharing some basic knowledge about legal ops will streamline your process, saving you time and resources as a result.

More basic but essential legal language

In this final section, we’ll summarize some of the most common legal language you’ll find in company operations.

• Term: A contract’s term refers to the period of time for which the contract will be effective. More specifically, it can detail whether or not the contract is automatically renewed, or if it needs to be agreed upon again by a certain time.
• Termination: A contract’s termination conditions outline the circumstances under which both parties will be permitted to end the contract.
• Consideration: This encompasses everything related to the goods or services the parties in the contract provide to each other during the professional relationship. As a simplistic example, one party could provide a service that is paid for by the other. In this case, the “consideration” is the payment to be received in exchange for the goods or services.
• Assignment: This details whether the responsibilities of the contract can be reassigned if either party wants to transfer the rights and obligations of the contract to another party — usually a subsidiary or parent company.
• Publicity rights: Within a relationship between two or more companies, there may be negotiations about whether one will be able to use the other’s logo, image, and so on. If one company is considerably larger than the other, this might prevent the smaller company from disclosing the fact that they’re working together.

Streamlining operations by improving legal understanding

With this piece, we hope to have illustrated how a broader understanding of basic contractual terms can improve the efficiency of a company’s operations.

A wider appreciation of legal language can help relieve some of the pressure on the legal department. Members of other teams will be more likely to understand how long it might take to receive a response to a query, or whether they need to send a query at all.

If your company could benefit from an increased understanding of legal language in operations, check out AdaptivOps, a cross-functional community for operations professionals.

Legal Ops 101: A Crash Course in Legal Language for Operations was originally published in AdaptivOps on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.