Operations: Delivering Business Results Through People, Process, & Technology

Finding Your Framework for Operations: OpCo

My passion for operations and delivering on customer needs started while in high school, spending summers and breaks, working at a small electrical controls business. This interest grew sharply as I worked in automotive, heavy truck, and industrial environments while servicing staffing and recruitment needs for clients I managed. My focus always started with the people or talent needs, and quickly gravitated towards a holistic program operations approach, and discovering how I could help deliver a full solution, not just people to fill a gap.

Growing up earlier in my career, so much of the organizational mindset was geared towards a high growth sales environment, and I felt there was a lack of formalization or context of what operations really was, or maybe it was my own inability to understand and align with what I excelled at, and for which I was unknowingly growing as a specialization. I found a niche without seeking it, but by giving the work my full attention and immersing myself in the business I led, or was involved with in some way, I learned the business at a deep level to understand the full story, not just where my role plugged into that story.

I have been fortunate to work with teams responsible for some amazing results, delivering on expectations, driving internal and external results, or against significant odds. Below are a few to share as examples:

• Checking 1000+ assembled vehicles parked outside in 30 degree weather for a part underneath the vehicle, in the dark

• Taking on a fully outsourced maintenance department, delivering higher quality work at a quarter of the cost

• Hiring 50+ niche sales reps in less than 6 months across Europe, against all odds given by internal or external stakeholders

• Stabilized and accelerated a program with more than 10,000 hires per year

• Established customer satisfaction within Germany at a remote manufacturing plant by delivering on hourly manufacturing talent

• Upgraded and formalized a decentralized coast-to-coast multi-site SOW-centered set-up, transformed to a structured consolidated program with a unified mission

I share these achievements as examples of teams coming together to produce great work, delight customers, and deliver real business results. These teams were experts at their craft, and when I started leading these teams, I was an expert at none of these. How does that work? What allows this to happen where someone who isn’t the most knowledgeable, doesn’t have the most experience, and has so much to learn, to be a part of engagements delivering these significantly improved and sustained results?

Operations.

Yes, technology, leadership, investment, account management, project administration, all play a role, but it all comes down to Ops and making the business run with all of these different areas considered. What makes up Operations? It comes down to People, Process, and Technology, drilling down further to Customer, Culture, Talent Development, Business Management, and Productive Performance. The list goes on of what makes up Operations, what is closely tied to Ops, or is fundamental to Ops, but these are a start to get you thinking in the Ops world. Operations is different across industry, product, service, application, areas of focus, etc., but many of the principles are transferrable and apply seamlessly in other areas.

Operations requires a strong methodology to continue elevating business to the next level. Building a sustainable fully scalable operational framework, is something I will reference as Performance Operations Culture. This framework encompasses the core of so much within Ops:

• Performance | Results, Metrics, Profitability

• Operations | Delivery, Productivity, Quality

• Culture | People, Mission, Purpose

When assembled together, it gives you the ability to deliver on business and build something special. I love the critical aspects of performance, ownership, accountability, motivation, and that each day is different. Numbers show the performance facts, and much of the story comes from the people, culture, and customers together proving the value from those operational results.

Others may dream it or sell it, but Operations makes it happen. If you’re a strategic and proactive, solutions-minded, both process driven and creative, a leader of execution, if you are all about getting the job done right the first time, or you know how to fix or lead through the toughest of challenges, you may be an operator at heart, and you may not even know it yet.

In Operations, perfection is not attainable, but having perfection as the target keeps you moving in the right direction. Below are a few resources for anyone looking to learn more about Ops.

Operations Resources

• COO Alliance

• OpsSpot

• Operations Nation

• Simple Scaling

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- Mark Twain

OpCo: The People Ops Blueprint — Operations | People | Culture | Opportunity

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