I help organizations run effectively through operations coaching, workflow optimization, and talent development. I gain a lot of personal satisfaction from making other people’s work lives more productive, satisfying, and under control. On a personal note, I’m a mom with 4 kids juggling life, work, family, and community involvement.
Deena Englander
Karma: 786
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I totally agree, based on the information you’ve provided. I’m happy to chat about the right career path for you if you’d like!
The typical growth of an operations specialist from an associate to more senior usually involves more responsibility and oversight. The trajectory starts off very micro, and over time shifts slowly into more macro positions, overseeing others who are doing the micro work. But, if need be, they’re capable of doing the micro work as well. The experience climbing the operations career ladder means that they’ve been in all the more junior roles, so they have the skills and know how to delegate and oversee those beneath them. The highest form of this is overseeing all the operations to actualize the mission of the organization. The chain usually goes from ops associate → ops manager → ops director → COO, with each level becoming more macro and having more oversight.
Regarding the Chief of Staff position, that is one title that can mean almost anything… it’s so ambiguous that I try to stay away from it myself. I think it was potentially intended to be instead of “HR director”, and now that people are trying to avoid using the term HR, they use Chief of Staff instead. To me, a true Chief of Staff is responsible for overseeing all things people—HR, benefits, payroll, hiring, firing, performance management and mentoring. What it’s actually become varies greatly from org to org; sometimes it’s a glorified executive assistant, and sometimes it’s an unacknowledged COO or operations manager. I’m not really sure why people like to stick the label of “Chief of Staff” on almost anything… maybe it sounds more exciting to potential candidates? In those scenarios, it might be an ops role in disguise.
Would you agree with that?
Thank you for the feedback! I look forward to chatting with you!
All About Operations & Careers
Thanks for catching that! I’ve updated it.
Here’s the link to the summary and updates
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Er4duMaar9u8mju4Y/fundraising-and-marketing-webinar-recap-the-takeaways-from?utm_campaign=post_share&utm_source=link