Roll your sleeves up and relish the blank canvas
One of the most fascinating things that I love to hear is how people describe and define Operations. It feels like this mythical creature that everyone has some sort of idea about but actually is much more than anticipated.
Last month I talked with Michaela, and she gave us a great introduction to all things Operations. This month we’ll be focusing on Operations from a person that has seen the team triple in size, the product servicing 10x as many users, and the shift/additional responsibilities.
Meet Ellis Turmel, Operations Manager at Apolitical. He joined this mission-driven gov-tech startup nearly 3 years ago (and with any fast-moving environment, it definitely seems much less than that) where the employee size was 12, and 3 years later, it has tripled the size.
I asked Ellis about his journey at Apolitical, and how his role has changed in 3 years and his story is fascinating. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and take a read. ☕️
First and foremost, for Ellis, Operations has two sides to it: compliance and keeping the show on the road. However, there’s another side that is absolutely crucial and focuses heavily on business and team improvement.
When Ellis started his role they were working out of a house (startup life eh?), and his duties, funnily enough, included: fixing the WiFi, heating, fetching the milk and even cleaning the house. I bet he’s very happy they have moved on from that. Whilst his duties have somewhat remained quite similar (of course, leaving out the whole house situation), he’s picked up more responsibilities as times have moved on and processes in the company have become more efficient. His larger tasks are more on the people side, with regular 1:1’s, heavy hand in onboarding and also quite a bit on the recruiting side. Oh, and remember our good friend GDPR? That also sits in his court.
Interestingly the Ops team has stayed the size so the core focus of his role hasn’t dramatically changed. The main difference is now the company has to service 3x as many as employees and 10x as many platform users. Undoubtedly, more time is spent on processes, scaling and trying to find the most efficient way to deliver the same (or better) service. Does automation ring any bells? Of course, this plays a part, but a side that is overlooked is setting expectations. By putting in place basic policies, templates, and timelines for the more regular tasks, it reduces the number of times you get waylaid by ad hoc requests.
People sometimes overlook the need to put time aside to plan for future work. With a small team, not only are you required to wear the hats of multiple functions but also have the hats of both long term vision and short term fixes. Whilst Ellis has become both more experienced and integral within the team, what is crucial is setting time aside to assess the more holistic company issues. This includes more work at management level (ameliorating work on hiring, professional development, and feedback), as well as the intra-team level: ensuring that teams have the right tools needed to do their job, without feeling over communicated to. As the team grows, iterating and re-balancing becomes key. All in all, when an ops team is so small, the need for the role doesn’t ultimately change. There needs to be a re-evaluation of how the role is balanced, and the way one goes about their duty.
His biggest achievement is looking at his team that the company has built during his time. They are super-efficient, engaged, happy and an incredibly great workforce. This allows them — and in turn the company — to thrive.
His advice for those that are going to experience their growth soon? “Roll your sleeves up and relish the blank canvas!”
I know there are many people going through this growth, so thank you Ellis for helping us to understand what lies ahead! See below on how Ops Stories has helped Ellis. Want to know more about Ops Stories, then click here.
Part of working in Ops is simply figuring stuff out. Trying to do that alone is nearly impossible. Ops stories has created my own secret ops team within my company — Ellis Turmel describing Ops Stories
