The Unsexy but Critical: Business Operations
I remember when I first volunteered to take on international Sales operations projects when I was a few years into my career at Yahoo!, how many questions I got from my colleagues.
I was moving from doing the sexy stuff of international marketing. The glitz and glamor of ad agencies, advertising and new product rollouts to the basic grind and dirty. I remember many of my colleagues being confused and being counseled that it was a career mistake.
They were wrong. Besides being an orthogonal career move to work on an area critical to the company, it was also a great crash course on the fundamentals of business. Operations are all the hidden details that “allow the trains to run on time.”
It’s the basics of systems, processes and people that deliver our product and services. It’s the core of business. It’s the gritty details and requires amazing project management. It’s a codified way of doing stuff and how we deliver against what is being sold and promised by sales. It was for me personally a great education and step to leading sales teams later in my career. I never sold anything I couldn’t deliver on and this has served me well for the rest of my career.
I’d heard of a saying “How we do anything is how we do everything.” And this is certainly true in business operations. I always use the analogy of putting on a big event or party. Operations are in the background and if all goes well, nobody really notices. But if you screw up, people definitely see it. I think that’s why so many shy away from this part of business. It’s unsexy yet critical.
This is what differentiates the best executives, founders and operators from the rest. They are strategic but don’t shy away from getting their hands dirty in operational details to find out what’s going wrong and what can be optimized.
So my point for anyone looking for a great career, go into operations. It’s a great way to learn business at its fundamental underpinnings. It’s not sexy. But maybe because of that, it’s not as competitive. And you may end up being invaluable to your company. Couple this with sales and marketing skills and you will become an unstoppable founder and business person. Delivering on what you say you will do puts you ahead of 90% of people out there.