I have an answer for this now: line functions and staff functions. Line functions do the core work on the organization, while staff function “supports the organization with specialized advisory and support functions.”
My vague impression is that this labelling/terminology is fairly common among high-level management types, but that people in general likely wouldn’t be familiar with it.
Most organizations do not divide tasks between core and non-core. The ones that do (and are probably most similar to a lot of EA orgs) are professional services ones
I think there isn’t a single term (although I’m certainly not an expert, so maybe someone with a PhD in business or a few decades of experience can come and correct me).
Finance, Marketing, Legal, Payroll, Compliance, and so on could all be departments, divisions, or teams within an organization, but I don’t know of any term used to cover all of them with the meaning of “supporting the core work.” I’m not aware of any label that is used outside of EA analogous to how “operations” is used within in EA.
This feels wrong to me in every non-EA company I worked at, fwiw. E.g. Google doesn’t even have a COO for the whole org, the COO for Google Consumer Hardware is the closest role I can find on a quick search.
I agree that this is weird. In EA operations is something like “everything that supports the core work and allows other people to focus on the core work,” while outside of EA operations is the core work of a company. Although I wish that EA hadn’t invented it’s own definition for operations, at this point I don’t see any realistic options for it changing.
Is there a word in the rest-of-the-world that means “everything that supports the core work and allows other people to focus on the core work?”
I have an answer for this now: line functions and staff functions. Line functions do the core work on the organization, while staff function “supports the organization with specialized advisory and support functions.”
My vague impression is that this labelling/terminology is fairly common among high-level management types, but that people in general likely wouldn’t be familiar with it.
I took a minute to think about what sort of org has a natural distinction between “core work” and “non-core-work”.
A non-EA example would be a Uni research lab. There are usually a clear distinction between
research (core work)
teaching (possibly core work, depending on who you ask)
and admin (everting else)
Where the role of admin seems similar to EA ops.
Most organizations do not divide tasks between core and non-core. The ones that do (and are probably most similar to a lot of EA orgs) are professional services ones
I think there isn’t a single term (although I’m certainly not an expert, so maybe someone with a PhD in business or a few decades of experience can come and correct me).
Finance, Marketing, Legal, Payroll, Compliance, and so on could all be departments, divisions, or teams within an organization, but I don’t know of any term used to cover all of them with the meaning of “supporting the core work.” I’m not aware of any label that is used outside of EA analogous to how “operations” is used within in EA.
“administration” ? but that sounds quite unappealing, which is why I think the EA movement has used operations.
Administration definitely sounds less appealing, but maybe it would be more honest and reduce churn?
This feels wrong to me in every non-EA company I worked at, fwiw. E.g. Google doesn’t even have a COO for the whole org, the COO for Google Consumer Hardware is the closest role I can find on a quick search.