The power of mindset shifts: four pieces of advice from great operations managers
The Effortless Office is an event series co-produced by Envoy and Managed by Q that gives office and ops managers and teams the opportunity to meet and learn from other talented professionals in their field. Whether the theme is organization, culture, employee onboarding or kitchen efficiency, the goal of each event is to help make running an office a more effortless experience!
We received so much positive feedback from our last Effortless Office event that we decided to once again partner with Managed by Q for another panel of experienced operations pros, this time in Q’s New York City office. To round off our panel, we invited Adam Edrington, Operations Manager at Compass, April Hargrove, Sr. Manager of People Operations at Percolate, Ashley Hubler, Assistant General Manager at Dolphin Cove, and Craig Strauss, Operations and UX at Venmo.
Here’s a bit more about each of our panelists’ backgrounds:
Adam Edrington, Compass — He does everything from space design, leasing, opening offices, and day to day office operations. He used to work in operations for another company.
Ashley Hubler, Dolphin Cove — Manages operations of the front office, resident hall, students and professional staff. Their front desk staff is about 30 people. She’s been working there about 3 years, but started in resident life and student affairs in school.
April Hargrove, Percolate — Joined Percolate about 4 years ago as the 15th employee. Now Percolate has three hundred employees worldwide and offices in London, San Francisco, Austin, Miami. She has a background in childhood literacy.
Craig Strauss, Venmo — He stepped into a lot of positions that had been left vacant at Venmo and landed in doing both office operations and UX. There are about 65 people in his office. Craig used to be a financial consultant in a past life.
This time, we decided to focus on the mindset shifts that occur when you work in a role that demands so much in terms of dealing with uncertainty, being flexible, and learning new things. Each of our panelists came from a different background, but they all had great feedback for the challenges that can come with, well, any job:
1. Sometimes you’ve got to fake it until you make it
“When I first started, it wasn’t customary for me to greet everyone in the morning or ask them how their day is going. Part of the reason why I took on this persona of being an extrovert was because it helped me start conversations and build relationships that would inevitably help me do my job better — because if people were able to come to me, trust me, talk to me, they were able to tell me everything that was going on in the office… It took some time, but people were willing to build better relationships with me because I was willing to go outside of my comfort zone.” — Craig Strauss, Venmo
“I totally freaked out [every time I took on a new role], but I had a good core group of people who were there to support me at work. I also asked my boyfriend, who had a lot of experience doing those things. It’s just about taking it in stride: someone once said to me, ‘just fake it ‘till you make it — just do it’.” — April Hargrove, Percolate
2. Letting go of perfectionism can be hard, but rewarding
“I’ve adopted the motto that nothing is permanent, that everything’s going to change. There’s no reason for me to keep something forever, whether it’s a vendor or a snack in the kitchen… There’s always going to be a better option out there eventually. And coming to terms with that, yes, I can give it my all — I can color code and label everything — and then someone’s going to come in and use it. I’ve got to let it be used and have it serve its function… But overall, once you accept that fact, there’s a little bit of relief.” — Craig Strauss, Venmo
“I think that [perfectionism] was an idea that I let go of a long time ago, because you have to anticipate that something’s going to go wrong. You have to. Because the vision that you have in your head — maybe you’re planning an event — it’s not going to turn out like that, but that’s ok! It doesn’t mean that it’s not still great, even if it’s not exactly how you pictured it. It doesn’t make it any less or any better, just different.” — Ashley Hubler, Dolphin Cove
3. You’ve often got to take charge of your own career
“During a structural transition, I lost my manager and my boss’s manager. It was just me, at work, trying to figure it out. For me, a Trello board helped keep me accountable and helped me confidently reply when someone asked me ‘how’s that going, is it done?’ to say ‘yes’.” — Craig Strauss, Venmo
“I used to order pens and go grab stuff to make salads for everyone for lunch. And then, as we started growing, we grew way faster than anyone had expected — I started doing payroll and I took on all of the onboarding and HR responsibilities, then I started doing the bookkeeping and I started doing the accounts payable and I started doing the accounts receivable and then I started looking at office spaces and I moved us from 2,500 square feet to 9,000 square feet in New York and then I was flying to San Francisco to look at 10,000 square feet there. One thing led to another, and you just grew really quickly.” — April Hargrove, Percolate
4. Career growth can take many forms (and your bosses do notice when you do great things!)
“One of my team members created this Dewey decimal system for our desks so that when he’s out or he’s on vacation, he’s not coming back to this onslaught of work. That just spoke to me that the role doesn’t need to be a stressful situation always, although there will be stressful times.” — Adam Edrington, Compass
“We do weekly one-on-one meetings, and they’re between 15 and 20 minutes. When someone comes prepared to the meeting with ‘this is what I’ve done this week, this is what I’m working on next week, these are my questions, and this is what I need you for,’ I feel really good. I feel productive and like a really awesome manager, even though I didn’t really do anything. It’s all because this person came really prepared.” — April Hargrove, Percolate
“A couple people really stand out because they don’t think anything is beneath them. Even if it’s something like, ‘Can you double check this Excel sheet?’ I know one of my current staff members will do anything, and that’s really left an impression on me. She’s gotten awesome references just because of that work ethic.” — Ashley Hubler, Dolphin Cove
Have you ever experienced a big mindset shift at work? What’s one great thing someone’s done that’s really stuck out to you? Let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
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