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ON #009 ・ A newsletter for everyone who shares our passion for the wonderful but wily world of startup and scaleup operations.
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CELEBRATE ● Two Years ON!
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Happy belated New Year, Operations Nation! We hope that your 2022 is off to a great start. As for us...we're kicking off the year by celebrating two years of working together!
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On the 4th of February, 2020, the three of us co-hosted a live event (remember those?) called "So You Want To Be a COO?". Our panellists were five startup COOs, all at varying phases of their leadership careers, who shared their incredible advice and wisdom.
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This first joint event between Ops Stories (founded by Astrid and Aušrinė) and COOhort (founded by Charlene) marked the beginning of a journey we didn't yet know we would embark on.
So inspired by the synergy that blossoms when ops geeks geek out on ops together, we decided to co-found Operations Nation, with the mission to help all operations professionals (not just the ones in our respective communities) to DISCOVER more about operations, GROW in their ops careers, CONNECT with like-minded ops folks, and BE CELEBRATED as the amazing changemakers whose generalist skillsets are often undervalued.
Now that Ops Stories and COOhort have grown to over 700 members across the globe, we are exploring ways to harness and amplify the incredible range of experience, knowledge, and expertise to extend beyond our communities, united under the broader Operations Nation umbrella.
If you are already a member of one of our communities, please stay tuned, as we will certainly be reaching out to solicit your ideas, feedback, and contributions so we can define and shape the nation within Operations Nation together with you.
Lops of love from your ON team ♡
Astrid, Aušrinė and Charlene
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OPS SPOTLIGHT ● Rowan Bailey, Co-Founder of Workbounce, Former Head of Revenue Operations at Peakon
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When we started ON, we vowed to ourselves to put a spotlight on as many operations people as we can. And so we were excited to start this year by speaking with Rowan Bailey, Co-Founder of Workbounce and former Head of RevOps at Peakon.
Here's an excerpt of our conversation. Read the full interview here.
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ON: What are some of the biggest lessons you have learned in your ops career?
ROWAN: Without getting too philosophical, I think the biggest changes in my thinking have occurred in my approach to problem-solving. As with all impactful lessons, there’s nothing like learning the hard way.
Don’t confuse people problems with tech problems. If your reps aren’t getting replies to their messages, buying a new engagement tool to scale their efforts won’t help. Tech can all too easily gloss over or distract from a fundamentally flawed approach. This buys time and a nice scapegoat when ultimately things don’t improve, but meaningful change comes about when first principles are constantly under the microscope. The opposite is also true. Throwing new hires at missing or poorly leveraged tech is expensive.
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"If a system isn’t being used, a process adopted, a data point used to make better decisions, be a hero and get rid of it.” - Rowan Bailey.
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Take a breath, and listen. The urge to start solving a problem straight away is strong and hard to ignore. This seems to be a familiar trait across other ops pros I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with. Jumping into solution design on a solo hunt for an answer and a dopamine hit is tempting, but deliberately slowing down and listening helps you triangulate, prioritise, and sharpens your proverbial axe. Building slack in the system to allow for this is essential to give yourself the space to listen, manoeuvre and get creative.
Keep things simple. This is probably the biggest one for me, and easier said than done. Debt compounds fast, and it becomes increasingly difficult to resurface. Not all problems require additive solutions, most of the large and most satisfying advances stem from subtraction. A quick Google yielded the quote I’d half-remembered - "Great design is eliminating all unnecessary details." - Minh D. Tran. If a system isn’t being used, a process adopted, a data point used to make better decisions, be a hero and get rid of it.
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NEW OPS BLOG ● Opserved by Sarah Touzani
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Sarah Touzani, COO of London-based fintech startup Creditspring and one of our community members, started a new blog called Opserved (see what she did there?). Sarah says:
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“Ops roles tend to be hard to define... which makes them harder to benchmark or to prepare for... Momentum is slowly building up and it finally feels like it might be time for Ops people to be put in the spotlight.
This blog is part of that. It's the blog I wish I had found when first started on the job. It's the blog that makes you feel less alone in the struggles you are facing because others have been there. It's the blog that shines a light on the hidden side of start-ups, Ops.” - Sarah Touzani.
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We couldn’t agree more that there needs to be more people talking about what operations roles actually entail, and how they differ from company to company. That’s exactly why we founded Operations Nation!
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NEW OPS PODCAST ● Modern Business Operations
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“Given the make-up of this group, I thought many of you would find the content interesting and informative. Every Thursday, come learn from leaders in the operations and IT space as we discuss the future of business operations."
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Check out their most recent episodes:
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NEW PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS ● Reclaim Your Time
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The three of us religiously use Calendly for scheduling meetings, and we’re thrilled that it recently launched Meeting Polls.
This feature allows multiple people to vote on preferred times to meet. Thank goodness, those Doodle ads were getting quite annoying!
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A tool Aušrinė swears by, to the point that everyone thinks she works for the company, is Boomerang. With its browser extension, you can send emails later, pause your inbox, schedule emails to come back to your inbox at a specific time (with a note, so you remember why), and get reminders if you don't hear back, which makes following up with people a breeze.
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Boomerang's cherry on top is its one-click calendar scheduling without even leaving your email. You can effortlessly insert your Magic Live Calendar and suggest the best times for you which will disappear if your availability changes. No more double-booking, ever! That is...if you managed to connect all your calendars properly. Which brings us right to the next point.
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We were figuring out how to juggle visibility across all of our personal and work-related Google calendars when we discovered Reclaim. Not only does it sync all of your calendars regardless of the domain or workspace, it uses smart scheduling to help you manage your recurring and ad-hoc meetings more efficiently. It's been a game-changer for us! #productivityhack
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NEW SNOW ACROSS THE GLOBE ● Snow Ops (SnOps?)
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Charlene spent the first couple weeks of 2022 visiting her in-laws in the mountains of Chilliwack, British Columbia and found herself analysing the most efficient ways to shovel snow.
Snow removal is actually a great metaphor for ops. When you don’t have enough people, systems and processes, operations feels like you’re shovelling with a spoon, by yourself. When you have a well-aligned team with sufficient investment in tools, operations feels...good :)
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Operations Nation ● Switched ON and Powered by You!
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Operations Nation is an independent project bootstrapped by its founders and supported by hundreds of operations professionals across the globe.
If you are passionate about operations, let's build Operations Nation together!
You can contribute by sending us your suggestions, favourite operations content, writing your own, sponsoring us, or getting involved in any way you like. All you need to do is drop us a line.
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Stay tuned as we keep exploring the operations landscape.
If you liked our newsletter, please spread the word and share it with everyone who you think will find it interesting!
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See you again soon! 
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