Welcome again to this month's rolling Q&A. We will take questions throughout the remainder of the week.
Q&A Summary
Introduction
Q&A “How to manage Ops at [REDACTED]”
Overview
Remote
Timezones
“Fractured”
Supporting Processes and Consistency
A Centralised Channel
Shared Docs
Staff and Other Considerations
Introduction
Here's a broad list of where we feel our expertise sits:
Recruitment (and how best to use external recruiters),
Remote work and managing remote teams
Outsourcing and managing outsourced teams and freelancers (APAC focus)
Time management (a recap + a few more Au techniques)
Time management and processes for sales & sales roles
Managing stakeholders in family business' (carry the donkey)
How to design process (broadly)
Having said that if we'll always take a look and if something is outside our wheelhouse we'll do our best to refer out to another BowTied or somewhere that can assist you.
As always if you'd prefer to submit (more) anonymously, you can reach us via
bowtiedhippopotamus@gmail.com
Or on the bird app (Direct Messages welcomed)
@BowTiedHippo_
Q&A
To open proceedings here's a question that we've received in the last month. As always, we've edited it to add clarity where possible and to help preserve anonymity.
Q
Any thoughts about how to manage ops / internal coms at [REDACTED}. I've got people with pretty desync'd/sporadic schedules which is already proving challenging.
People still have (full time) 9-5's (in addition to us) and they're across multiple time zones globally.
I'm thinking either a Slack channel where updates/announcements only come from me, with a CTA "pls like if you've done X" for example some sort of weekly email summary?
Overview
Again, much like last month’s Q&A this question here could've been multiple notes to cover in sufficient depth.
For additional context [REDACTED] is a smaller organisation however the principles are still relevant for start up / scale up / SME and are even transferable to Enterprise.
In our view, you essentially have three "conditions" impacting your organisation. We'll briefly define these first before outlining our thoughts on a way forward (consistent supporting processes).
Remote
Timezones
"Fractured"
Again, all of these three "conditions" could be / would be yet more notes from us. In our view these are major, if not defining, topographical features that as an Operations professional you must either design for, or around.
Remote
Your people can work from locations other than a traditional central office(s). There may not be a central office(s) or any office.
Timezones
Your people live and work from different timezones. They can be temporally separated up to 12 hours apart from each other.
"Fractured"*
Your people work part time, inconsistent or sporadic hours. You employ contractors or vendors who may or may not continue.
**We're a big proponent of "Don't get it right; get it written” (if one couldn’t tell already). If anyone has any better ideas about what to call this condition please feel free to let us know; we're not particularly sold on “Fractured”. Maybe “Modular” ?
Supporting Processes and Consistency
In our view, the key here will be consistency of process, building trust in both your processes and the quality of your information / information sharing. See last months Q&A for an adjacent discussion as well.
At a high level, Remote, Timezones and Fractured need more formalised processes and structures to inform staff and share information.
A Centralised Channel
A central channel on Slack / Teams is a reasonable option to help manage Operations and internal communications. It's a bit clearer than email and a bit more dynamic, and this will be especially relevant when discussions or updates start threading (and they will).
We've seen some interesting takes here with "visual language" like keeping the main channel for topic headings and discussions/updates only occurring in threads, or defined rules around emoji use (including a rather amusing rant on the single eye vs double eye emoji).
The short version is that Slack / Teams can do most of what email can do without some of the downsides, however it needs to be properly supported by process.
At first, you'll definitely have to be the one to introduce new processes such as updates, summaries, KPI reporting etc. and the frequency or tempo at which these processes will now operate. You'll have to be the one to keep it really clear and consistent while you "train" and shape the behaviours in your team. It's not an immediate roll out and you'll have to keep encouraging and reminding them to follow the new process.
When you're finally sick to death of this part internal comms that's when it may just be starting to sink in and start to become a habit for your teams. Broadly, you will need to be an order of magnitude more consistent and reliable than your staff.
Shared Docs
If you're coordinating and sharing information among multiple staff that needs a bit more detail or a different format than a slack update then you can look at using shared docs or sheets. However here the need for good, strong, trusted reliable process becomes more important here.
If a shared doc isn't being updated properly than staff begin losing trust in the information, and in the process. This further then accelerates as "new" untested habits are discarded, and the flow of updates ceases. Secondly, staff begin distrusting the information, believing it to be out of date.
Doubt creeps in to their decision making, and they start moving toward or creating and maintaining alternative information sources. Now that you have inadvertently moved away from a single source of truth, multiple potentially contradictory information silos now exist. These add yet more friction to your system, and require more coordination and synchornisation just to assess the "current" state.
In this state, the difficulties discussed above for the Remote, Timezone and Fractured conditions will also amplify this process and potentially disengage staff even further.
Again, this will again fall to you to keep both shared doc and the supporting update process well maintained, while you (painstakingly) "train" and shape the behaviours in your team.
Staff and Other Considerations
A more in depth answer to your question also needs to cover decentralisation, growth management, operating tempo, delegation and empowerment. Today’s brief discussion has restricted our focus to briefly discussing information sharing and supporting process.
Having said this, after reviewing the initial three conditions above, assess the staff that are effected by each condition. Staff who are junior, less experienced, and highly collaborative won’t function as well in these environments and and are likely better off centralised.
More experienced staff or hardened contractors are perhaps better off in Remote or Fractured environments - particularly once you’ve established that they can be trusted to deliver on time. You also need to give consideration to how your existing or new processes empower or delegate authority (or how they don’t!).
There are also implications for your recruitment, retention and succession planning strategies which we will discuss in a later note.