Fundamental Operations Business Practices - What are you making?

So you finally received the promotion, got the new job,  or in your current capacities, are asked to help and support an "operation". What is the first thing you need to do?

You need to: "Precisely determine the Output of your operation, articulated from the consumers' point of view of this product or service".

Why is this important?   

For Clarity and focus. So you can move forward confident of where to invest your time and effort to ensure your operation creates value and to help you ensure that you are optimizing the right things, and are implementing the appropriate business practices.

So how to determine the Output of your operation?

There are many ways; here are four methods, from the most basic to the most involved, that could help you determine the Output of your operation: 

1.  What is this operation paid to do? What is the product?
2.  Another way could be to do a simple process mapping  (list the Inputs, describe the Process, and list the Output ). 
3.  A third way to refine your answer is to validate with stakeholders, shareholders, customers, and clients what product or service they expect.
4.  Finally, if you are looking for a more formal analysis, you can use tools like Michael Porter's Value chain analysis.

Below are a few examples of determining Operational Output for different industries and functions using the first two methods. 

Diapers Manufacturing

• What is the team paid to do? What is the product?  

Safely produce "X" amount of diapers at the desired quality standard. 

• What are your operation's inputs, processes, and outputs?

Software and Hardware R&D

• What is the team paid to do? What is the product?

Generate X amount of new ideas/applications / solving technical challenges, run experiments/projects to test the validity of these ideas,   develop proofs of concept,  generate Intellectual Property. 

• What are your operation's inputs, processes, and outputs?

 

Software Go to Market 

• What is the team paid to do? What is the product?

Grow sales by creating content and providing consultative advice and expertise to validate Product Market Fit and effective execution of Sales and Go to Market strategies

•  What are your operation's inputs, processes, and outputs?

Now that you know what your operation makes, what's next?

The next step is to understand the gap between the desire and the current state and find a straightforward way to measure progress and Output; once you have done that, you are ready to prioritize and manage tasks designed to close the gap and determine which are the most pertinent business practices to implement

 We will explore how to do that in my next post.

What do I talk about when I talk about Operations?

Not long ago, I realized there had been a common theme throughout my professional career. Across all the roles and industries I have worked in:  Diapers manufacturing,  High Education Career Services,   High Tech Customer Service,   Channel Go to Market,  Advanced Research and Development, and most recently, Industry Verticals Go To Market, once and again, I have built, ran and improved an operation. This blog post series attempts to capture the key things I have learned about the topic.

So, what do I talk about when I talk about Operations? Let's begin with a high-level definition:

"Operations management is the administration of business practices to create the highest level of efficiency possible within an organization. It is concerned with converting materials and labor into goods and services as efficiently as possible to maximize the profit of an organization..."¹

I like this definition because it is, at the same time, highly generic and very specific.   It provides a very clear end goal:  to achieve the highest level of efficiency possible to maximize profits, but it doesn't tell you what you need to do to achieve that goal.

So if the function of a business is to provide products and services that generate value for everyone involved,  the role of a successful operation is to ensure those products and services are provided in the most efficient way and at the lower cost.

Business practices are ways of getting work done and organizing people, process, and technology.    A successful operator focuses on implementing the most efficient Business Practices for the operation they are involved with. Each function would have its own set of methods and techniques, but there is also a general operational foundation we can all build upon.

Some examples of function-specific business practices are:

• Diapers Manufacturing: day-to-day process and safety protocols, proactive and reactive maintenance programs,  material utilization, and scrap management.
• For R&D: contribution to Open Source projects, management of Intellectual Property, management of Advanced Research.
• For Industry Verticals Go To Market: Industry enablement and evangelization, thought leadership creation, the process for design and launch of new offerings, input to the product roadmap.

Some examples of general business practices are:

Regular Quarterly and Monthly Business Reviews, Program and project management, Change Management, Agile Development, Compliance Management, and Budget reviews.

The first step for any good Operations Professionals is understanding what the organization wants to accomplish with its operation. So regardless of the industry, you need to answer the following questions.:

• Which goods and services do you, and your team produces?
• What is the highest level of efficiency possible for the good or service we produce,  and what is the necessary level of profitability?

From there, you can move to the function specifics questions:

• Which are the function-specific Business Practices of this field that I need to understand and master?
• What are General Business practices I need to implement? In which order?
• What's the best way to manage those Business Practices?

With those answers in mind, you can begin to execute your plan to "run the operations world."

In my next post, we will explore the first thing you need to do to get ready to effectively run an operation:  understand what you and your team produce.

Sources / Notes

1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operations-management.asp

40 for 40

About six months ago, right after Covid threw a wrench to my 2020 race calendar, I decided I was going to run 40 miles to celebrate my 40th birthday.  

Why?

Because I believe humans have to do hard things to thrive and feel alive and our current society conspires to make us soft, I have to counterbalance the urge to stay home and watch tv deliberately. 

Because of what the decision triggered, this goal served as a Troyan horse for discipline, process, and practice; I need to have a reason to wake up at 5 a.m., stretch, go to track workouts, and to put down the ice cream scooper, it doesn't matter is if invented - I made a contract with myself -.

Because I wanted to do something memorable for my 40th birthday and running non-stop for 40 miles will, for sure, create a memory or two. Case in point, a week later, I still remember very vividly puking my brains along Greenough Boulevard (a subject for a different blog post, but GI distress is my Kryptonite).  

So how did it go? I went really well (until it didn't), the weather was on point, my body felt great, and I had all types of fun - and occasional melancholic moments - thinking about the past with the help of my personal soundtrack (you'll be amazed at how much you can remember with the right triggers). 

What did I learn? Nothing new, really, but I got two BIG reminders.

It’s always better with others; in fact, this was one situation in which I couldn't have done it without friends and support. Family and friends showed up to run a couple of miles with me and cheer me up. Without company, I probably would have "dropped" at mile 31 when the going got tough.

Preparation is essential. I have done this many times; I know what my body needs, and I had ample time to prepare, yet I wasn't thorough enough to remember to add electrolytes and salts in my running bags. I was overconfident, and it bit me in the ass. 

Now it is time to rest and recoup. I might just have started a new tradition, until 50 for 50... 

 hello world