Thanks for writing this up! It also strikes me as a good overview and will probably be my default link if people ask me what ops is like. I like the specific examples across different orgs. It varies a lot!
My ops buckets:
HR/Legal/Governance (lots of checklists driven by government compliance. Getting the right insurances, drafting company policies like misconduct, ensuring the board meets and approves the right things and discloses conflicts of interest)
Finance (Ensuring people get paid. Creating systems to track transactions, so that we can get accurate reports about the flow of money, predict how much we will spend for fundraising, prioritization, etc)
Basic logistics (Running an office and/or events, ensuring people have a place to work with working electricity, plumbing, and internet. Maybe some snacks :)
These buckets are specifically geared towards ‘supporting beams’, bases for me to ensure I have covered. Helps to keep priorities in order and avoid the always-putting-out-fires syndrome.
That said, I’m probably wrong in my thinking about this, and it will vary widely across organizations and staff. Specifically I think I’m wrong in that priorities are more dynamic and diverse than this framework implies, so it’s more an ever unfolding process of sorting out the prioritization of supporting beams / need-to-haves vs. nice-to-haves.
really great to hear about your experiences as well! Very much agree, its a challenge to keep focused on the bucket of ‘important priorities’ and not just get caught up in ‘fire-fighting’ mode. What do you find works for you to keep that focus?
My best tool is to become a connoisseur of what it’s like to be shifting into reactive / fire-fighting mode, and make a craft of switching back to prioritizing.
(responding to this post has the sort of dizzy pulling-away feeling that reactivity has, so I’m going to yolo submit and try to shift back to proactive mode)
Thanks for writing this up! It also strikes me as a good overview and will probably be my default link if people ask me what ops is like. I like the specific examples across different orgs. It varies a lot!
My ops buckets:
HR/Legal/Governance (lots of checklists driven by government compliance. Getting the right insurances, drafting company policies like misconduct, ensuring the board meets and approves the right things and discloses conflicts of interest)
Finance (Ensuring people get paid. Creating systems to track transactions, so that we can get accurate reports about the flow of money, predict how much we will spend for fundraising, prioritization, etc)
Basic logistics (Running an office and/or events, ensuring people have a place to work with working electricity, plumbing, and internet. Maybe some snacks :)
These buckets are specifically geared towards ‘supporting beams’, bases for me to ensure I have covered. Helps to keep priorities in order and avoid the always-putting-out-fires syndrome.
That said, I’m probably wrong in my thinking about this, and it will vary widely across organizations and staff. Specifically I think I’m wrong in that priorities are more dynamic and diverse than this framework implies, so it’s more an ever unfolding process of sorting out the prioritization of supporting beams / need-to-haves vs. nice-to-haves.
really great to hear about your experiences as well! Very much agree, its a challenge to keep focused on the bucket of ‘important priorities’ and not just get caught up in ‘fire-fighting’ mode. What do you find works for you to keep that focus?
My best tool is to become a connoisseur of what it’s like to be shifting into reactive / fire-fighting mode, and make a craft of switching back to prioritizing.
(responding to this post has the sort of dizzy pulling-away feeling that reactivity has, so I’m going to yolo submit and try to shift back to proactive mode)