00 Introduction
A disclaimer upfront: my experience in ops might be slightly different from yours because my brain has a lot of quirks I constantly have to learn and relearn to navigate. I’m sharing these insights so you can learn from both my successes and mistakes. This is by no means a conclusive list, but are some helpful insights off the top of my head.
I’ve worked for two years as a part-time Operations Director for MIT AI Alignment (MAIA).
01 Overengineering
I’m perhaps organized and systems focused to a fault — to the point where I sometimes will spend more time on organization and processes than time saved or quality, and sometimes will neglect more important tasks or possibilities as a result. This is something I feel I have gotten better with over time, but still have some ways to go.
02 Key Feedback Loops in Operations
02.01 Solution Adoption and Value
When you solve a problem, observe the responses/vibes from those engaging with your solution (typically other people in logistics). Do they actively engage with your solution or do they use it sparingly? Are they getting as much value from it as you do? Are people aware of your solution? How much time did you spend on a solution versus how much time is it saving and how much extra value is it actually producing.
Your solutions are as good as the value of the people using them. (Ex: you make a spreadsheet to track something, you use a Notion page for meeting notes, you create new communication channels for a particular purpose, etc.). Any solution you create requires buy-in. You’d be surprised how few people engage with even the simplest organizational systems and end up duplicating effort and confusing others.
!!!Tip: Keep things as simple as possible and lean much heavier on one-on-one communication.
02.02 Communication Patterns
In communications tasks, reflect on the reaction of those you are communicating with and the reflexive responses from the organization. What are common patterns of confusion? What are common miscommunications? What can you do to reduce back-and-forth communication costs? What are common worries? Learn the culture and adapt your behavior to that. Meet people where they are and not where you want them to be.
02.03 Value Alignment
Compare your tasks with what the organization values. Are you often working on things people actively care and talk about? Are you doing administrative tasks that no one thinks about but without them you feel like the organization would collapse without their completion? How much time are you spending on increasing quality of efficiency in one area as opposed to doing basic tasks in another?
Some hard lessons I’ve learned:
- Selectively care about things when others don’t — I’ve seen organizations where leadership wasn’t very worried about financials and that lack of concern was absorbed by the operations director that was later hired — it was never discussed and responsibilities deemed higher priority by the leadership dominated. This lead to issues down the line.
- Be careful about deceptive value indicators — I spent time creating professional packets from readings, which started as a way to save ~3 hours each week, but as I improved them, more time was sunk into the design and automation of their creation. Despite constant positive feedback, I later learned that these weren’t valued and that the team would have preferred time be spent elsewhere.
- Don’t assume your responsibilities I kept the plants watered and office clean, assuming it was fundamental to my role, but learned this wasn’t something the organizers particularly valued.
- Allow things to get worse — I had a strong distaste against backsliding on quality. If communications were previously fantastic or (from my previous bullet point) the packets I produced were gorgeous, I would draw that as the standard going forward. This just leads to assuming more and more responsibility and less flexibility to chase better opportunities. Instead of making sacrifices, I tried to get extra time by automating away the processes, but I don’t think this was appropriate in most cases.. This is similar to but not identical to “avoid the sunk cost fallacy.”
I realize these may sound sort of contradictory and that’s part of the point — getting a read on what’s important is hard and you can only improve alignment by talking with colleagues.
02.04 Personal Well-being
Check in with how you feel about the work you are doing. Do you feel respected? Do you think you are doing meaningful work or do you feel like you’re doing grunt work and cleaning up after the messes of others? An operations role can easily turn into a “things I want done but don’t want to do myself” dumping ground.
03 Don’t rely on introspection
Talk one-on-one with people in the org as the primary mechanism for feedback. In ops, it’s especially hard to introspect and easy to develop distortions about your performance, goal alignment, and responsibilities.
04 Operations Philosophy
Think of ops as systems engineering where you can solve problems by:
- Building tools
- Changing culture or expectations
- Designing processes
- Not building systems at all
That last point typically amounts to lots of communication, which is the right approach about 70% of the time you encounter a significant task.