The 5 Habits of Savvy Ops Pros, with Drew Noel
The 5 Habits of Savvy Ops Pros, with Drew Noel
Simple steps to up your impact
There are a lot of conversations taking place about trendy topics right now - lots of ideas being shared on artificial intelligence, the (potential?) demise of the predictable revenue approach, and on and on.
I recently had the chance to interview Drew Noel, a GTM operator, leader, and advisor with more than 20 years of experience in a variety of roles. Our conversation took a bit of an academic turn, which I appreciated, and we collectively geeked out on some timeless concepts that Operators can leverage as secret weapons to power their career growth.
Drew had plenty of advice and insight to share from his time in the trenches. After our conversation wrapped up I felt like I had just read the Cliffs Notes of the Ops version of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.
During our conversation, Drew did an excellent job naming and calling out things that many Operators are probably aware of, but aren’t sure how to approach them.
I’ve highlighted some of the most valuable takeaways below.
Don’t lose the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ in the ‘how’
When family and friends ask you what you do, what do you tell them?
If your answer is “I work in Marketing Operations, or I lead a Revenue Operations team,” what is a common follow-up question?
In my experience, it’s typically something like “What is operations?”
Drew highlighted a great definition of operations in our conversation. He said, “Operations is the management of the inputs - things like budgeting, forecasting, attribution.” He quickly followed that up with the observation that “Operations is typically disregarded because it’s seen as the management of all these smaller pieces.”
Many of us don’t do ourselves any favors when it comes to how all of these smaller pieces are managed. As Drew commented, “Operations professionals often get obsessed with the ‘how’, rather than the ‘what’ or the ‘why’ of a project.”
I’ve seen this multiple times in my career. One of the ways it is most commonly manifested is in someone spending more time building automation than it would take to do it many times manually. Automation is amazing, but it’s not always the answer.
Another common example of this is someone explaining a process to a leader in the organization and going too deep and technical explaining every step of the process. Drew highlights, “The ‘how’ is the realm of Operations. But communicating that in a way that translates to the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ is a critical soft skill to master.”
“This is a skill that especially needs to be developed in the more highly technical revenue operations professionals who have come into the space more recently,” he continued. “For people who didn’t start their career as an SDR, or a marketer - they have only done Operations. Learning the appropriate bedside manner is important”
While the ‘how’ is important (and typically, the fun part for Ops pros), most leaders in an organization don’t need to know, and furthermore, don’t care about how things are getting done.
Over-explaining a technical process to someone is a bit like getting a sunburn, you don’t always realize that it’s happening, but when it’s over, you can definitely feel the pain.
These explanations impact how you are perceived in an organization. If all you talk about are the technical details of a process, you’ll probably be understood to be a technical expert who cannot think strategically and communicate effectively. This is good if your career goal is the life-long individual contributor path, but if you’re subscribed to this newsletter I would guess that you have different ambitions.
When communicating with senior leaders, I’m often reminded of the phrase used in the Insights Discovery program, “be brief, be bright, be gone”. Make the relevant points (what you’re doing and why you’re doing it) and skip the sausage-making in the middle, unless asked a direct question.
Focus on sustainability
Efficiency. Effectiveness. What should your focus be?
Drew notes, “Some teams struggle with a decision about whether to be efficient or effective. Ultimately, if a business is making money, no matter how inefficient, that’s preferable to a business that isn’t making money.” He continues, “Being effective should be your first consideration.”
However, the journey towards being an effective team isn’t a one-way street. Each team has peaks and valleys along this journey. Depending on the size of the bumps in the road, you may end up having to take a few steps backward to reset before moving forward again.
These rebuilds are not only costly and time-consuming, but they interrupt your progress toward continued effective operations.
Drew comments, “The next level for Operations teams is being sustainable. Because you can be efficient and effective for relatively short periods and everything looks really good, but can you do that and maintain it over the long term?”
Sustainability - the ability to operate at a high level of effectiveness for prolonged periods consistently, is the holy grail for an Operations team.
How do you reach a point where you can focus on sustained effectiveness? This is an achievement that has eluded all but a few Operations teams.
In my experience, there are 6 common challenges that can thwart an attempt at sustained effectiveness (barring macro factors like the economy, etc.).
Headcount turnover
Inevitable to a certain extent, and something that can’t ever be entirely controlled for.
Solutions to help mitigate the impact: Documentation, cross-training, succession planning
Major business strategy changes
Another item that is difficult to anticipate or plan for, but that has major ramifications for Ops teams
Solutions to help mitigate the impact: Deep understanding of core business metrics and the competitive landscape, trust and open lines of communication with leadership teams, staying up to date on current and future trends, automation
Ineffective planning
This usually happens when planning is an afterthought, is done in a silo, or is left to individual team members and doesn’t come together in a cohesive, single approach
Solutions to help mitigate the impact: Proper scoping of work, overflow buffers allowing, over-communication and coordination with stakeholders, frequent check-ins on progress, planned minor adjustments to adapt
Lack of focus
An ongoing struggle to avoid shiny object syndrome, all things artificial intelligence, or a myopic targeting of efficiency over effectiveness
Solutions to help mitigate the impact: Setting a concrete plan and reviewing often, proper scoping of work, ample usage of the backlog, a clear definition of what matters and what it means to be effective
Improper expectation setting
Manifested often when everything gets dropped to work on an urgent request from an executive, when everything is a priority, or when SLAs aren’t properly understood
Solutions to help mitigate the impact: Writing down and sharing an agreed upon set of SLAs, having a work intake process and a defined approach to reviewing, scoping, and committing to deadlines for work, building relationships outside of work request conversations
Focus on delivery over longevity
This has to do with the type of work being delivered and the intention of that work. If every problem is solved with a quick, untested solution that doesn’t scale well, you’ll be stuck doing a lot of re-work
Solutions to help mitigate impact: Using an interactive building approach, proper project scoping, team and user testing, and planning future improvements into your plan
The struggle for sustainability will probably always be an ongoing one, but with some intentional thought and effort, you can begin to make major strides toward that goal.
Focus on high ROI activities
If you spend $100 on a tool and it generates $10,000 in time savings every year, you’re likely to continue using that tool, right?
To a certain extent, similar calculations are being used to judge our effectiveness and that of our team members. Understanding the value of your compensation and having a system to determine the return on your employer’s investment in you is a powerful mindset to help guide your focus.
“As an additional headcount in an organization, you need to have a multiplier related to your compensation that you’re providing back to the business,” says Drew. “How does that translate for an Operations professional? The money you’re being paid is money that needs to go into optimizing the organization.”
At any given moment, there are probably 10+ things any Operations pro could be spending their time on. If your goal is to focus on return on investment, Drew has a suggestion:
“The number one thing you can do to create value as an Operations person is to survey the entire organization and find the processes that are the most inefficient, broken, or that require high levels of context switching (there will be a lot of overlap here). Then you need to focus on fixing those processes,” he says.
Why processes? Well, allowing for the time needed to do the work, “changes in processes, other than the communication and the entropy inherent in an organization, are almost free,” Drew notes.
Assuming you’re not buying any new tools, paying for any new data, or bringing in a third party to help with the process improvement process, your net financial change for an improvement made to a process should be positive.
If you want to really nerd out on the process improvement approach, I’d recommend getting familiar with Therbligs, or “elemental motions”. Codified by American industrial psychologists Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, a therblig can be used to define the basic function of each step in a process. Using this understanding,
My conversation with Drew was the first time that I’d heard this word or even understood that a repeatable system for defining processes with a significant level of specificity even existed.
Of course, working in Ops, this framework instantly resonated with me. Having the tools to define, label, and better understand the purpose of each step in a process makes it easier to find ways to improve them.
Applying even a basic understanding of this approach could help you find new ways to evaluate and improve the processes your team uses and supports.
Have a consultative mindset
If you’re having a difficult time determining which of the hundreds of tasks you’re responsible for you should begin working on, try this interesting exercise. Imagine that you’re consulting for your team and have to report back on what you achieved during the week.
Alternatively, take another page out of the consultant playbook and spend a week documenting where each hour of your working time is spent - essentially filling out a timesheet. Reflect on:
How much time are you spending on various tasks and projects?
If you support multiple teams, which ones get the bulk of your attention?
Compare the projects you spent your time on to the goals your team has - are they aligned?
Drew observes, “If we treated all RevOps organizations as internal consulting organizations if they operated as internal agencies, I think you'd see a lot more rigor around exactly what the outputs end being delivered.”
Why does this help?
Employees and consultants alike are valued based on the work they deliver, but it’s typically much easier and faster to stop working with a consultant than to stop working with an employee. Consultants are hardwired to not only deliver on their plan but to document how they delivered extremely well.
Drew even mentions the idea of creating internal case studies, similar to what consulting firms large and small do. This memorializes the work done and makes a clear connection to the positive results and outcomes achieved. This deliverable is an easy way to share news about the work being done and your role in it.
Taking the consultative approach also requires upfront documentation of a project and the included costs and effort, which, when documented at the beginning of a process, help to calculate a more efficient ROI.
Leadership - making a bet, and standing behind it
“Leadership is making strategic bets, and having the ability and confidence to stand behind them,” says Drew.
Operations work isn’t always well understood and can be complex and technical.
Oftentimes, the outcome of a successful project isn’t some flashy, over-the-top new process that everyone raves about. It’s doing the small things and fixing everything that is broken or needs improvement behind the scenes.
One of my favorite quotes that I feel describes this paradox well is from Fred Wilson, a legendary VC investor.
He says, “Grinding isn't very satisfying. It is hard to stand up in front of everyone and say "we are going to fix things around here bit by bit with a lot of hard work." Big flashy moves are an easier sell most of the time. But they don't work nearly as well and are prone to complete and abject failure."
Ops teams are uniquely positioned to be able to make highly informed decisions, or at least well-informed guesses. They’re close to the data, have a deep understanding of the team’s cadences and processes, often are very familiar with the budget, and can leverage the technology available to them to move quickly and decisively.
In my experience, Operations professionals don’t always leverage their position of strength when participating in various conversations and decisions.
Sometimes you’ve got to step up and be the one that asks the hard questions. Not because you want to trip people up or make everyone worried, but because that is the fastest way to the heart of what you should be talking about.
On this point, Drew says, “Revenue operations, especially in a fiscally responsible organization, needs to be the voice of reason. You want to be the one who's empowered to ask those tough questions. And it's part of your fiduciary responsibility internally to the organization to do that.”
It can be challenging and intimidating to ask the right questions, and you might even feel like you’re putting your neck on the line. But for those who can do it, Drew thinks it’s a critical skill to have to work your way to higher positions on the career ladder.
He says, “This is why I think there's so much hope for. Revenue operators and RevOps professionals, if they can exercise the soft skills if they can exercise the leadership skills, and the go-to-market skill in terms of their communication and their presence, I think that they are going to be the next CROs and the next CEOs.”
The technical skills are almost always there with GTM Operations pros, as is the familiarity with processes and data. Layer on solid communication skills and the ability to lead and influence, and you’ve got a recipe for a powerful leader.
Wrap Up
Drew shared a bunch of valuable information, and I’ve only been able to highlight some of it in this post. I’ve mentioned this before, but my goal in writing this newsletter is to share ideas and things that I’ve learned that I think could be beneficial for others in their careers. I hope that you’re able to find a few takeaways from this post that can help you move forward, and closer towards your ultimate goal.
If you’d like to connect with Drew you can find him on LinkedIn. He’s an active participant in the GTM Ops community, and I appreciate that he is very interested in and intentional about sharing his experience, learnings, and knowledge with other Operators. You can easily find him joining a webinar or sharing learnings in a blog post as well, and he’s active on LinkedIn too.
Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity in the written format.