Details Matter: Importance of Operations and Process in Growing Startups

Early in my career in the technology sector, I’d always been attracted to the marketing & sales strategy side of business. The front facing side and frankly the sexy side. I had held several roles in marketing until I was offered an interesting but divergent role at Yahoo! Inc. helping run Global Sales operations. The role was about bringing the best practices, technology and processes perfected in the US operations of Yahoo! to the rest of the world & adopting them to fit for each local market's needs overseas.  

While sales & marketing is the front facing side of business, operations is all about the delivery. Basically “making the trains run on time.” And it is often the crucial and overlooked side of any business. I’m not a naturally detail oriented person but operations forced me to get good at this. It made me understand the trade offs between process, people & technology and how getting that mix right was key to delivering the product to customers in the most cost effective and sustainable way. I learned so much here and it made me a better salesperson and it made me a much better executive and business person. 

The hardest part of operations is if you get it right, no one really notices because all the details are in the background. People only notice when it goes badly wrong. For any ambitious executive, this is a hard way to rise through the ranks as it seems like a no win situation. But this is ironically the best way to learn the nuts and bolts of a business. 

I’ve been very fortunate in being a small part of multiple fast growing businesses. And the thing I’ve noticed that ends up damaging or handicapping all of them, besides crappy leadership, is due to bad operations. This is usually also tied to crappy leadership, as many founders usually dislike delving into details & processes and love working on grand strategy and vision. 

Yet the details matter. As an old Japanese saying goes: “For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost. For want of a horseshoe, the steed was lost. For want of a steed, the message was not delivered. For want of an undelivered message, the war was lost.”