1% Business Improvement Every day with Operations

Operations managers work with multiple departments in various functions, making sure each part works seamlessly with all the others. There’s no one track to get hired in operations, the key is to adapt easily, create constantly, and be willing to do whatever needs to be done. Here are some of the top skills and aspects of a business you’re going to want to master to be successful in an operations role.

Communication

To be successful in an Operations role requires multiple things. Because this role is extremely interconnected with all the other roles within the internal structure of a business, you’ll want to be very good to getting along and communicating with people in an effective way as to not feel like you’re always asking for something and instead of showing the real value that you’re giving them.

Predictability in Systems & Adapting to Change in Daily Tasks

In this role, you must be good at working to maintain predictability, even amidst the constantly changing nature of your work in the business. On the task level, you’re going to be doing sometimes radically different tasks on a day to day basis, but on a systems-level, you’re going to be doing whatever it takes to create predictable systems.

The tasks are going to be so different on a daily basis so you’re going to need to be able to explain your work effectively and sometimes this won’t be the easiest thing to do. There might be difficult concepts that you need to articulate in a way that all the people you’re reaching out to will understand what you’re doing and not have any questions or misunderstandings about what the end goal with your work is.

Getting your hands dirty

You’ll need to get out and see your process. It could mean going out on a delivery run, overseeing all different levels in the hierarchy of the business. You’ll need to talk to as many people involved with the process as possible: tech people, dev, marketing, sales, manufacturing/product team, CEO. It all depends on whatever problems the business is focusing on that day and catering to those problems.

Overall, Operations managers know how everything works. You need to understand the details.

Overseeing Others

There will be times when you need to check up on people and make sure they get done what they promised. You need to skill of being polite, and very cordial with your requests.

Self Motivation

You need to understand that not everyone will have the same motivation towards making the business run as well as you do. Some people’s only focus is on sustaining their family (which is not a bad thing at all).

Your work is to communicate the idea that making the systems better should be viewed as a good thing.

Simplicity

There’s no need to overcomplicate the solution to a problem if there’s a simpler way to go about the same thing. Simplicity is key especially when you’re working with others and communicating the problems in a succinct manner.

Change and Improvement

An operations role requires that you constantly want to improve the bottom line of business. Every single day you’re adapting to change and improving how the business runs overall, instead of focusing on a single aspect of a business like other departments tend to do.