5 Essential Skills for Operators
If you ask 10 people how they define operations, you'll probably get 10 different answers. To me, good operations feels like a train running on schedule; due to the hard work of countless individuals behind the scenes - if you show up at your station, you can expect to make it to your destination on time. Operators are the train operators, the crew ensuring the tracks are safe and litter free, the station workers herding people into crowded trains during rush hour, and more. Most of us don't think about all the work it takes to transport millions of people every day, but it doesn't happen by chance. And similar to this analogy, good operators must master a mix of technical and soft skills in order to be good at their jobs and deliver value for the companies they work for (with most of it happening behind the scenes as described above). I've been lucky enough to work with some fantastic operators over the course of my career in startups and scaleups and these are the skills that made them stand out from the rest.
1. Business Acumen
"Fake it till you make it" is a fine mantra *sometimes* but I'm here to tell you that you can't fake good business acumen. If you work in an Ops function and haven't familiarized yourself with core business concepts, add it to the top of your to do list. Generally speaking, when I say core business concepts I mean things like "what are bookings vs. revenue?" "what the heck is a gross margin?" "what is retention?" "what are common business killers?" "what are effective cost management strategies" "what are recent trends in my industry?" "what are market forces?". If you don't have a command of business fundamentals, you won't understand what role you play in **positively impacting business outcomes**. If you're not confident in this area, the great news is that there's a ton of great resources out there to help you strengthen your business acumen. I learn by reading books, so here are a few of my favorites:
2. Effective Communication Skills
If you're in Ops, you likely are in a position where you have to communicate with many different stakeholders (internal and/or external) in your day to day. Having great written and verbal communication skills are key, because your stakeholders need to understand your instructions, be compelled to read your documentation, understand and process your feedback, and be willing and open to collaborating with you. As if that's not enough, the very best operators understand how to adjust their communication style for the right audience.
Here's a common example. If you're a great executor, known for producing high quality work - you probably excel at communicating effectively with your peers. You understand the ins and outs of your domain and your peers think of you as a valuable partner. But when it comes to dealing with upper management, you might hear that you're too in the weeds, you're not strategic enough, or that you lack executive presence. If you haven't receive this feedback but notice that executives openly lend you their ear but don't look to you for advisory or seek your expertise - you should work on your ability to communicate up effectively. Try this: focus on the big picture (this is where good business acumen comes in handy), share how you plan to solve the problem at a high level, and be clear about how they can help. Exude confidence and clarity of purpose.
3. Problem Solving & Data-Driven Decision Making
Operations and encountering problems go hand in hand. If you hate problem solving, operations is probably not the career path for you 😄 Great problem-solving skills enable operators to handle unexpected situations, identify *the right* root causes, and implement corrective action when needed. The best operators also have impeccable intuition (which is probably just excellent pattern recognition) - they spot problems before everyone else and solve them before an issue even crops up.
There are no shortage of problems to solve on any given day, great operators leverage data to decide which problems are the highest priority/most impactful to tackle. I've found this simple framework helpful when deciding which problems to tackle:
Are customers negatively impacted? (Fix now)
Are internal team members unable to do their jobs (Fix now)
Will solving the problem save us money? If so, will it save us in the short, medium, or long term? (If short-term, address now, medium and long - plan and execute later)
Will solving the problem create an opportunity to generate revenue? If so, can we make money in the short, medium, or long-term? (If short-term, address now, medium and long - plan and execute later)
Is it an optimization? Will it help our internal team members operate with greater clarity, more efficiently, with greater velocity? (Not urgent, nor is it on the top of our priority list - but we should do it. The exception being you can quantify that this optimization will save significant costs in the short-medium term and not disrupt other priorities.)
4. Ability to Adapt and Learn
This one is self explanatory but it's easy to miss when you're bogged down in the day to day. Personally, my experience has been in tech and at rapidly growing scaleups. The very nature of tech is that it's ever changing. Being adaptable, flexible, and not only willing to but excited to learn new things was a necessity. Embracing an adaptable mindset means that you're able to navigate challenges effectively and continually learning means that you're always approaching your work with efficiency in mind. Right now, you're probably overwhelmed by all the new AI tools cropping up - but you should be equally excited to explore which ones could make you execute more quickly or innovatively. Here's a few of my favorites to get you started:
Capsule - seamlessly create videos (internal or external) without time consuming editing
Jasper - powerful AI content generator (beneficial for marketing use cases, think blogging, brand documentation, etc)
Canva (new Magic Studio) - Canva is just so great, I’m not a designer and with Canva I never have to touch (read: struggle with) Photoshop ever again
Scribe (new AI documentation generator) - Scribe’s documentation functionality impressed me from the start and I genuinely love companies that are taking a proactive approach to leveraging AI to make their customer’s lives simpler, which is exactly what Scribe AI does
5. Action-Orientation
There's a chance that you read this last one and thought "duh". Me too 👀️, but I promise that action-orientation deserves a spot on this list. It's not a skill, it's a mindset. I know we've all been in meetings where the attendees produce a laundry list of reasons why something *can't* be done or on the flip side, come up with a laundry list of requirements that must be true before a project can be delivered or a problem can be solved. Neither of these approaches prioritizes action-orientation. The best operators are calculated doers, they understand what it takes to execute and also accept accountability for the results (whether good or bad). Action-oriented operators are constantly seeking ways to make their teams more efficient, productive, or to ensure customers have the highest quality of experiences. I wouldn't be me if I didn't have a book for this:
Have you noticed any common trends among operations superstars that you’ve worked with?
About me: I’m Ashley, a former tech executive turned consultant and coach. I help companies achieve profitability and create performance cultures through middle manager coaching and implementing scalable cost management strategies (through people, process, and tooling).