Questions
- Where to begin when joining an early-stage startup that's pre-MVP, as an operations leader (Operations Manager, Head of Ops, COO)?
- What systems/processes should you strive to put in place as early as possible?
- What should your first 90 days look like as an ops leader at an early-stage startup?
- What are the dynamics between other leaders (e.g. COO/CEO/CTO)? Where do ops responsibilities end and theirs begin?
- What are the tools or products that supported you the most in your first year? What purpose did they serve?
- COVID-19 bonus: How do you commit to working with someone you've never met in person? How to best manage expectations when we're working remotely?
- What are typical KPIs/metrics?
Attendee pre-submitted questions:
- Best technology investments to make
- What are the key things to have in place?
- How much should I plan ahead? For example with 10 people, not many things are needed. When will I need more things in place?
Notes
Where to begin?
- Get operational metrics in place first of all - you can tweak later
- Think about the lifecycle of the companyâs operations - how does the company take a lead and convert it to a paid invoice and what do you need to do to make that happen.
- Itâs an exercise in communication - ask a lot of questions to the founder(s) and/or CEO. Understand what they find important or where their focus lies. What do they expect from you? What do they want you to bring to the table?
- Pick up where the problems are - build from there
- Where the inefficiencies are
- Most challenging bits is if you're not one of the founders is getting people to understand why it's important to have an ops function
- A few other things to think about
- Asking what their vision of what you should be doing is
- How do we go about vendor onboarding?
- Whatâs the journey from lead to active customer
- Draw out the customer lifecycle
- Define the tools and processes needed for every step of the way
- Define all the moving parts
- Realise that some processes are too early to build
- Go as you grow - strip out processes to a lightweight approach as they will change a lot
- How do you navigate joining an operational role in a completely different sector/industry?
- Initially, in a young company all the policies should fit on a post-it note - no need to overcomplicate things
What should the first 90 days look like?
- Peterâs spreadsheet: list of all the problems and issues, impact evaluation (how aggressive that person feels against that issue = the score), etc. -- you see who cares about what the most, what the perceived impact is, etc. Then you can categorise it all into themes and build a strategy off the back of that. But first confirm with the e.g. founders that you have understood the business correctly
- First 90 Days (book exec summary)
- The first 6 months you donât even do any actual operations, it could be just about filling in the gaps. You might find yourself more in product/marketing [operations] because pre-MVP thereâs no operations really!
- Empowerment: let other people focus on the bits that theyâre really good at.
Systems and processes to have in place from the beginning (beyond culture):
- System for sharing information / documentation - do a knowledge transfer exercise from existing team
- Version control, ordering dates, format
- Good filing systems and archive in place
- Format how you save the documents :)
- Mission, Vision, Values
- Communication:
- Introducing a good level of communication (1to1s, standups, all-hands), consistent agenda, the right cadence
- Cut out unimportant / unnecessary meetings (never have a meeting if you donât have an agenda)
- Approach meetings proposed by team members with: âWhat's the objective, the expected outcome and why am i neededâ
- Communicate these unwritten rules about how to do meetings, how to store documents in new user onboarding.
- Have an onboarding and offboarding checklist
- Dashboards: no matter if itâs automatic or manually updated; ticker on the dashboard. Looker, Google Sheets
- Focus on the customer/product: whatâs gonna get the amazing product out?
- Whatâs the product process? Do you have a backlog? System for monitoring feedback? How do we do customer success? How do we record and track the data? Are the product ideas tracked? Etc.
- How do you learn?
- In the first days youâve got an excuse to ask every single stupid question you can (lots of leeway). The learning thus is really fast.
- KPIs/OKRs implementation
- Setting them early can be challenging but they keep everyone on the right track if done right
- Less is more - focus. Start small. Overambitious KPIs can be disheartening if not met. Account for the unknowns youâll encounter in the way
- Be mindful of unrealistic expectations and views
- Ensure to roll across the organisation not just sales or product.
- Get people to understand why theyâre important - the secret to making them stick
- Lattice - https://lattice.com/library/okr-101
Where do my responsibilities end and CEO/CTO begin?
- Founders tend to micromanage - itâs difficult for them to let it go (âtheir way is the best wayâ)
- Spend some time observing how founders interact with each other - strive to become part of their dynamic.
- COO: internal; CEO: external. Ops role is doing whatâs needed internally. Go with the flow - it changes so much from pre-MVP to scaling up.
Tools/products:
- Peterâs matrix
- Miro (mind mapping, whiteboard platform)
- Google Sheets
- Notion
- Airtable
- Front (email interface for teams, common inboxes for e.g. support teams) - https://frontapp.com/
- HR platform (e.g. CharlieHR, etc.)
- Clubhouse (project management)
- Zapier
- Hubspot
- Streak (CRM sitting on top of the email)
- Looker, Tableau, Heap
- Mammoth (analytics)
- Important: utilising the tool properly/fully - ensuring that we achieve 100% of the toolâs capacity. Build the culture of fully adopting a solid system, set it up properly; this will ensure you donât jump from one tool to another every 2 weeks.
- Have the guardians for the tools or data whoâre responsible.