This is a brief summary of an operations brainstorm that took place during April 2022. It represents the views of operations staff at 8-12 different EA-aligned organizations (approximately). We split up into groups and brainstormed problems, and then chose the top problems to brainstorm some tentative solutions.
The aim of the brainstorming session was to highlight things that needed improvement, rather than to evaluate how good EA operations roles are relative to the other non-profit or for-profit roles. It’s possible that EA organizations are not uniquely bad or good - but that doesn’t mean that these issues are not worth addressing. The outside world (especially the non-profit space) is pretty inefficient, and I think it’s worth trying to improve things.
Limitations of this data: Meta / community building (and longtermist, to a lesser degree) organizations were overrepresented in this sample, and the tallies are estimates. We didn’t systematically ask people to vote for each and every sub-item, but we think the overall priorities raised were reasonable.
General Brainstorming
Four major themes came up in the original brainstorming session: bad knowledge management, unrealistic expectations, bad delegation, and lack of respect for operations. The group then re-formed new groups to brainstorm solutions for each of these key pain points.
Below, we go into a breakdown of each large issue into specific points raised during the general brainstorming session. Some points were raised multiple times and are indicated by the “(x n)” to indicate how many times the point was raised.
Knowledge management
Problems
Organizations don’t have good systems for knowledge management. Ops staff don’t have enough time to coordinate and develop better systems. There is a general lack of structure, clarity and knowledge.
Issues with processes and systems (x 4)
No time on larger problems
Lack of time to explore & coordinate
Lack of time to make things easier ([you’re always] putting out fires)
[Lack of] organizational structure
Line management
Capacity to cover absences [see Unrealistic Expectations]
Covering / keeping the show running
Responsibilities
Working across time zones
Training / upskilling
Management training [see improper delegation]
Lack of Clarity + Knowledge
Legal
Compliance
HR
Hiring
Wellbeing (including burnout)
Lack of skill transfer
Lack of continuity / High turn-over of junior ops specialists
Potential Solutions
Lowering the bar—e.g. you don’t need a PhD to work in ops. Pick people with less option value.
Ask people to be nice and share with others
Best practice guides shared universally. [Make them] available to people before hiring so they can understand the job better before applying, so [there’s] less turn-over.
Database? (Better ops Slack?)
Making time to create Knowledge Management Systems—so less fire-fighting.
People higher in the organization [should have] better oversight of processes/knowledge.
Unrealistic expectations
Problems
Employers have unrealistic expectations for ops professionals. Ops people are expected to do too much in too little time and always be on call.
Lack of capacity / too much to do (x2)
[Lack of] capacity to cover absences [from above]
Ops people [are expected to be] “always on call”
Timelines for projects [are subject to the] planning fallacy, [and there are] last minute changes
Ops team [are] responsible for all new ideas that people come [up] with—could others do it?
Unrealistic expectations about
coordination capacity
skillset
organizational memory
Solutions
Bandwidth (?)
Increase capacity
Have continuity
[give ops staff the] ability to push back on too-big asks
Recognition
Create transparency
Create intra-team comms & strategy
Make the “invisible” work visible
Make the manager aware of the actual size of a task
Clarity
Don’t idealize the really tedious; be upfront about the nature of work
Manage expectations (both ways)
Humanize employees
??? [emotional support]
Hug it out
Make more sense
Emotional support horse
Have a good cry
Suboptimal delegation of tasks to ops staff
Problems
Employers don’t use their ops staff well. Ops staff are assigned tasks that could be more easily done by other staff, or by non-EA contractors. Ops staff have to do tedious, low-skill tasks for which they are overqualified.
Getting people to do things they’re overqualified for (x 3)
Ops staff assigned tasks that aren’t appropriate (x 2) / Employers don’t know what ops means
Tedious [jobs such as:]
Having to “translate” emails to busier people
Refilling coffee/drinks [is] sisyphean
Solutions
[Managers should have] knowledge [about] the task/responsibility.
Understand your team’s capacity + skills → even having a team (something/one to delegate to).
Clarity in messaging + communication.
The “need to know” e.g. can it be outsourced?
Motivate to get good/best results (standards) → [give people] context on why [the task is] important
Mission buy-in.
Inclusivity ([ops staff will] feel it’s mission-critical or valued).
Interim accountability + management.
Stakeholder/management support → No need to worry whether you can access the budget
Autonomy to take decisions to delegate.
Ops culture establishing (respect/reasoning for resources) from the get-go.
Lack of prestige or respect for operations
Problem
Employers don’t respect or appreciate operations work, leading to ops workers not always being (or feeling) included in the organization.
Lack of appreciation or respect (x 3)
Unclear levels of organization/inclusion—e.g. can contractors join the ops slack?
Not being invited to retreats
Recognition only comes when things go wrong
Employers think ops people have zero interest or subject matter expertise.
People have very specific preferences and want the ops people to take care of it so they can be more productive; [there’s an] inherent assumption that the ops person’s time is less valuable.
Poor management leads to low self-esteem for ops people.
Solutions
Make ops people more connected to the organization.
Make sure they’re invited to retreats, dinners, and decision-making meetings.
Show more precise theory of change or path to impact for ops.
Better tracking of hours saved/multiplier effect.
Arguments for why ops people aren’t easily replaceable or outsourceable.
Ops Day of Appreciation to show how indispensable you are.
Ops people should have the power to say no, since people don’t respect their time.
Open Phil mentorship program with someone from a different team.
Managements that build self-esteem.
Make other skills [that ops staff have] explicit for the rest of the team.
Exclusion from decision-making processes
Relatedly, many mentioned that they were not sufficiently informed about or involved in their organization’s strategic decisions.
Limited influence in decision-making x 2
Lack of sufficient overview on org’s strategy/ Working in a silo with limited interaction with colleagues (x2)
Less frequently mentioned pain points
Poor job security for contractors (who always feel like they’re on work trial) and poor work benefits
Bad leadership styles, with one person/group specifying a manager who is too “on my case”
Lack of “training for 10 years from now”
Hiring is time consuming; it’s difficult to find candidates (x2) especially with “geographical restrictions (West coast, Oxford, etc.)”. Sometimes bad hiring decisions are made.
Miscellaneous
Lack of creative outlets
Most tasks are hard to do off-screen
Existential anxiety
Bad events / community building’
(Sometimes) Dead-end: What’s above? Why is that good?
Ops less efficient
Appendix: the full general brainstorms to generate action items
Pain Points Group #1
Lack of capacity / too much to do
Timelines for projects planning fallacy on ops / last minute changes
Lack of appreciation
Lack of employment, only contracts
Contractor always feel like they’re on work trial
Poor work benefits
Lack of continuity / High turn-over of junior ops specialized
Getting people to do things they’re overqualified for
Reinventing the wheel on processes/systems
Organization/inclusion—unclear levels (can contractors join the ops slack?)
Not being invited to retreats
Not being included in strategic decisions that are ops-relevant.
Lack of delegation of tasks which don’t require EA context to non EAs. (E.g. EA time could be used in better than low-brow tasks).
Ops team responsible for all new ideas that people come with—could others do it?
Non-rational delegation to ops people (E.g. it would be quicker/better to do this yourself than delegate to an [ops person?], accounting for value & time discrepancy)
Ops people “always on call” at walks, etc. - Should be call
Pain points Group #2
Adoption of new systems
Extensive responsibilities
(Sometimes) Dead-end: What’s above? Why is that good?
Lack of sufficient overview on org’s strategy
Lack of skill transfer
No time on larger problems
Lack of time to explore & coordinate
Lack of time to make things easier ([you’re always] putting out fires)
Tedious
Having to “translate” emails to busier people
Time wasted on “below pay grade” tasks
Refilling coffee/drinks sisyphean
[someone has just drawn a picture of Sisyphus pushing his rock up a hill]
Some problems in operations at EA orgs: inputs from a dozen ops staff
This is a brief summary of an operations brainstorm that took place during April 2022. It represents the views of operations staff at 8-12 different EA-aligned organizations (approximately). We split up into groups and brainstormed problems, and then chose the top problems to brainstorm some tentative solutions.
The aim of the brainstorming session was to highlight things that needed improvement, rather than to evaluate how good EA operations roles are relative to the other non-profit or for-profit roles. It’s possible that EA organizations are not uniquely bad or good - but that doesn’t mean that these issues are not worth addressing. The outside world (especially the non-profit space) is pretty inefficient, and I think it’s worth trying to improve things.
Limitations of this data: Meta / community building (and longtermist, to a lesser degree) organizations were overrepresented in this sample, and the tallies are estimates. We didn’t systematically ask people to vote for each and every sub-item, but we think the overall priorities raised were reasonable.
General Brainstorming
Four major themes came up in the original brainstorming session: bad knowledge management, unrealistic expectations, bad delegation, and lack of respect for operations. The group then re-formed new groups to brainstorm solutions for each of these key pain points.
Below, we go into a breakdown of each large issue into specific points raised during the general brainstorming session. Some points were raised multiple times and are indicated by the “(x n)” to indicate how many times the point was raised.
Knowledge management
Problems
Organizations don’t have good systems for knowledge management. Ops staff don’t have enough time to coordinate and develop better systems. There is a general lack of structure, clarity and knowledge.
Issues with processes and systems (x 4)
No time on larger problems
Lack of time to explore & coordinate
Lack of time to make things easier ([you’re always] putting out fires)
[Lack of] organizational structure
Line management
Capacity to cover absences [see Unrealistic Expectations]
Covering / keeping the show running
Responsibilities
Working across time zones
Training / upskilling
Management training [see improper delegation]
Lack of Clarity + Knowledge
Legal
Compliance
HR
Hiring
Wellbeing (including burnout)
Lack of skill transfer
Lack of continuity / High turn-over of junior ops specialists
Potential Solutions
Lowering the bar—e.g. you don’t need a PhD to work in ops. Pick people with less option value.
Ask people to be nice and share with others
Best practice guides shared universally. [Make them] available to people before hiring so they can understand the job better before applying, so [there’s] less turn-over.
Database? (Better ops Slack?)
Making time to create Knowledge Management Systems—so less fire-fighting.
People higher in the organization [should have] better oversight of processes/knowledge.
Unrealistic expectations
Problems
Employers have unrealistic expectations for ops professionals. Ops people are expected to do too much in too little time and always be on call.
Lack of capacity / too much to do (x2)
[Lack of] capacity to cover absences [from above]
Ops people [are expected to be] “always on call”
Timelines for projects [are subject to the] planning fallacy, [and there are] last minute changes
Ops team [are] responsible for all new ideas that people come [up] with—could others do it?
Unrealistic expectations about
coordination capacity
skillset
organizational memory
Solutions
Bandwidth (?)
Increase capacity
Have continuity
[give ops staff the] ability to push back on too-big asks
Recognition
Create transparency
Create intra-team comms & strategy
Make the “invisible” work visible
Make the manager aware of the actual size of a task
Clarity
Don’t idealize the really tedious; be upfront about the nature of work
Manage expectations (both ways)
Humanize employees
??? [emotional support]
Hug it out
Make more sense
Emotional support horse
Have a good cry
Suboptimal delegation of tasks to ops staff
Problems
Employers don’t use their ops staff well. Ops staff are assigned tasks that could be more easily done by other staff, or by non-EA contractors. Ops staff have to do tedious, low-skill tasks for which they are overqualified.
Getting people to do things they’re overqualified for (x 3)
Ops staff assigned tasks that aren’t appropriate (x 2) / Employers don’t know what ops means
Tedious [jobs such as:]
Having to “translate” emails to busier people
Refilling coffee/drinks [is] sisyphean
Solutions
[Managers should have] knowledge [about] the task/responsibility.
Understand your team’s capacity + skills → even having a team (something/one to delegate to).
Clarity in messaging + communication.
The “need to know” e.g. can it be outsourced?
Motivate to get good/best results (standards) → [give people] context on why [the task is] important
Mission buy-in.
Inclusivity ([ops staff will] feel it’s mission-critical or valued).
Interim accountability + management.
Stakeholder/management support → No need to worry whether you can access the budget
Autonomy to take decisions to delegate.
Ops culture establishing (respect/reasoning for resources) from the get-go.
Lack of prestige or respect for operations
Problem
Employers don’t respect or appreciate operations work, leading to ops workers not always being (or feeling) included in the organization.
Lack of appreciation or respect (x 3)
Unclear levels of organization/inclusion—e.g. can contractors join the ops slack?
Not being invited to retreats
Recognition only comes when things go wrong
Employers think ops people have zero interest or subject matter expertise.
People have very specific preferences and want the ops people to take care of it so they can be more productive; [there’s an] inherent assumption that the ops person’s time is less valuable.
Poor management leads to low self-esteem for ops people.
Solutions
Make ops people more connected to the organization.
Make sure they’re invited to retreats, dinners, and decision-making meetings.
Show more precise theory of change or path to impact for ops.
Better tracking of hours saved/multiplier effect.
Arguments for why ops people aren’t easily replaceable or outsourceable.
Ops Day of Appreciation to show how indispensable you are.
Ops people should have the power to say no, since people don’t respect their time.
Open Phil mentorship program with someone from a different team.
Managements that build self-esteem.
Make other skills [that ops staff have] explicit for the rest of the team.
Exclusion from decision-making processes
Relatedly, many mentioned that they were not sufficiently informed about or involved in their organization’s strategic decisions.
Limited influence in decision-making x 2
Lack of sufficient overview on org’s strategy/ Working in a silo with limited interaction with colleagues (x2)
Less frequently mentioned pain points
Poor job security for contractors (who always feel like they’re on work trial) and poor work benefits
Bad leadership styles, with one person/group specifying a manager who is too “on my case”
Lack of “training for 10 years from now”
Hiring is time consuming; it’s difficult to find candidates (x2) especially with “geographical restrictions (West coast, Oxford, etc.)”. Sometimes bad hiring decisions are made.
Miscellaneous
Lack of creative outlets
Most tasks are hard to do off-screen
Existential anxiety
Bad events / community building’
(Sometimes) Dead-end: What’s above? Why is that good?
Ops less efficient
Appendix: the full general brainstorms to generate action items
Pain Points Group #1
Lack of capacity / too much to do
Timelines for projects planning fallacy on ops / last minute changes
Lack of appreciation
Lack of employment, only contracts
Contractor always feel like they’re on work trial
Poor work benefits
Lack of continuity / High turn-over of junior ops specialized
Getting people to do things they’re overqualified for
Reinventing the wheel on processes/systems
Organization/inclusion—unclear levels (can contractors join the ops slack?)
Not being invited to retreats
Not being included in strategic decisions that are ops-relevant.
Lack of delegation of tasks which don’t require EA context to non EAs. (E.g. EA time could be used in better than low-brow tasks).
Ops team responsible for all new ideas that people come with—could others do it?
Non-rational delegation to ops people (E.g. it would be quicker/better to do this yourself than delegate to an [ops person?], accounting for value & time discrepancy)
Ops people “always on call” at walks, etc. - Should be call
Pain points Group #2
Adoption of new systems
Extensive responsibilities
(Sometimes) Dead-end: What’s above? Why is that good?
Lack of sufficient overview on org’s strategy
Lack of skill transfer
No time on larger problems
Lack of time to explore & coordinate
Lack of time to make things easier ([you’re always] putting out fires)
Tedious
Having to “translate” emails to busier people
Time wasted on “below pay grade” tasks
Refilling coffee/drinks sisyphean
[someone has just drawn a picture of Sisyphus pushing his rock up a hill]
Recognition only comes when things go wrong
Researchers don’t respect ops/non-technical [staff]
Zero appreciation or recognition
Working in a silo
Limited influence in decision-making
Lack of creative outlets
Limited interaction with colleagues
Most tasks are hard to do off-screen
Attention needed difficult to 80⁄20
Existential anxiety
Pain Points Group #3
Bad events / community building
Ops less efficient
Employers don’t know what ops means
Leadership styles are hard
Delegation
Management quality
Unrealistic expectations about
coordination capacity
skillset
organizational memory
Non-EAs can do this work
Siloing → lack of team-to-team communication <> team communications
Manager too “on my case”
(lack of) training for 10 years from now
Pain Points Group #4
Hiring
Time consuming
Geographical restrictions (West coast, Oxford, etc.)
Bad hiring decisions
Finding/reaching candidates
Lack of Project Management Skills
Using the same systems in the same way
Knowing what system to use
Complex or simple
Relative to the task/project
Setting it up “right”
Setting organizational structure
Line management
Capacity to cover absences
Covering / keeping the show running
Responsibilities
Working across time zones
Training / upskilling
Management training
Lack of Clarity + Knowledge
Legal
Compliance
HR
Hiring
Wellbeing
Burnout
Change management within the organizations
Onboarding (capacity/time)
Software
Thanks to Amber for help cleaning up and organizing these notes!