Why Ops Matters!

My first job back in 2019, was that of a shop floor production manager at a razor blade factory in rural Himachal Pradesh – far removed from the glitz and glamour of consulting, investment banking or tech and even farther removed from the happening cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore etc. Expecting a “strategy job” right out of college and seeing my peers end up in what were arguably more glamourous roles, my first 6 months at P&G were an enormous struggle, led by an inability to articulate value and really see my role as meaningful and impactful as I was bogged down in the details of maintenance, production, safety, quality etc. I was missing the big picture!

I was reticent to get my hands dirty, rarely showed up on the shop floor and consequently failed to earn the respect of my team of (50+ direct reports), many of whom were more than twice my age and had been working at P&G for over a decade. My performance suffered and the department was dragged back several months on almost all operational results. My future at P&G looked bleak and I contemplated looking for a different opportunity. Things changed when my then bosses sat me down & explained what the job of an operations manager was really about:

1.???? Building systems and processes that scale and sustain over time

2.???? Driving cultural alignment to get an entire organisation to rally around common goals

I soon understood that strategy was only 20% planning, but 80% relentless execution and I was able to articulate the value in my role, that I was a small business owner with targets, budget and a team and that I had enormous latitude to develop strategy and implement it to deliver my targets. Things turned around quickly, and I ended my time at P&G, as one of the youngest inductees into the P&G Bold Outstanding Leader of Tomorrow program, a fast track opportunity awarded to the best performing managers in the company.

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Looking back at this experience, I am enormously grateful for the opportunity and the sheer amount of learning (I jokingly refer to it as an MBA degree that I got paid to attend) and I fundamentally believe that it has shaped the entirety of my career going forward. All of my future roles have borrowed from the strong foundational skills regarding systems and people, learned on the shop floor.

Yet, at different points of my career, it has been challenging to help prospective employers, colleagues and industry stakeholders understand how my former operations background contributes majorly to my current role. I have also seen that while the CEO, CPO, CTO and CMO/CBO tracks are celebrated in society as aspirational career options, the COO/operations career track which potentially employs more people than all the others combined, is often left out of the limelight, perhaps due to ops professionals being more behind the scene than on the stage!

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To try and celebrate the operations career track, my close friend Saugata Haldar and I launching Ops Matters, a community to discuss and celebrate all things operations centric and to bring like-minded ops professionals together. We want to support our members in further enriching their careers, building capability and growing into full-fledged ops leaders, who both design and execute strategy at scale. As a part of this process we will look at:

1.???? Content series on common challenges that cut across industries and frameworks/best practice

2.???? Hear directly from senior professional about their journeys and gain actionable insights for your own role

3.???? Meetups to allow members to build their networks, share their stories and learn from each other

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If you are a current/former professional primarily from any industry out of Manufacturing (FMCG, Automobile, Pharma, Aerospace etc), Construction/Infra, Energy, Natural Resources (Petroleum, Minerals etc.), Healthcare (Hospitals, Labs), Logistics/Transportation & e-Commerce, and are working/have worked in a core operations focussed role (production, engineering, people management, process/systems management, supply chain etc.) we would love for you to join us at (https://forms.gle/AJ28A9a23FM4xYpe8).

In case of any questions or clarifications, do write to us at ([email protected] or [email protected]).