BUSINESS HOW-TO
HOW TO HIRE AND DEVELOP A DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS TO RUN YOUR BUSINESS SO YOU CAN SCALE GROWTH
By Guest Columnist , Mandi Ellefson
when we hired a good Ops Manager, I noticed that client success stories became even more compelling as my bandwidth went to high-level strategy rather than focusing on managing the minutia. You need to know how the role will impact the business so that you know what you can invest in this role and what you are missing out on now.
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Find ways to improve quality for clients and continually look for ways to increase profits?
The best way to grow your business is to do less. A lot less.
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Manage your team for you, so that you can stop being the bottleneck and have bandwidth to grow the company?
But who makes sure it all gets done? You.
You’re often stuck doing too much yourself, and managing others to get it all done can take just as much time. This is all happening because you’ve been successful, so congratulations! But running your business like this long term is a recipe for stagnation and burnout. It’s really hard not to drop the ball with clients while still taking the consistent actions needed to grow your business. In order to scale your service, someone needs to run the day- to-day operations. But it doesn’t have to be you. There are lots of levels of seniority they might have, but you do not need a 6-figure budget to enjoy many of the benefits. Even an Executive Assistant can function in this role. An effective Operations Manager was a game- changer in my own company. After some trial and error, we found someone who was not only very skilled but also a perfect value and cultural fit. As a result, client outcomes continue to rise. We’ve seen fast growth, even with my frequent travel schedule. And while this is happening, I get to focus on my areas of genius. It also means more resources for our clients and more fun for us all! Enter the Second-in-Command/Operations Manager/Director of Operations/COO/etc.
This may sound like a pipe dream, but it’s very possible when you approach it in the right way.
2. Poor Fit
However, this position has a very high failure rate. It is very easy to get wrong.
Your Operations Manager must:
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Have the right skills. (But skills are the least important factor.)
From research working with hundreds of services and consulting agency CEOs, very few have an Operations Manager who gets a passing grade on the above items. But don’t blame the Ops Managers. They need to know a better way to run your business, and you likely don’t know what that looks like or have the time to build it yourself. As one of the most important roles in your company, there is a lot to get right. The 3 Biggest Failure Points for Hiring an Operations Manager and How to Prevent Them
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Be a coachable leader who can be developed.
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Be perfectly aligned with your vision and values!
Test and evaluate to see if this person is already on your team. If not, attract and hire the perfect person to help run the business. We use the Kolbe A test to ensure candidates match the role and the CEO. Notice how different a CEO’s results are to a top-level Operations Manager? See if you can guess which one is which. (Hint: Look for the higher Fact Finder and Follow Through) Continued on Page 4 ...
1. Company and CEO Readiness
2. Poor Fit
3. Set Up to Fail
1. Company Readiness
Learn from our mistakes, and you can skip our painful trial and error.
To attract the very best talent, you and your company must have a lot to offer. What can you offer as the CEO to help them develop in their career? What do you stand for as a company? Top performers have a lot of options. Why would they want to work for you? How will this role generate ROI for the business? What important work will consistently be done that isn’t happening now? Will they be gathering testimonials, asking for referrals, implementing marketing campaigns, preventing fires that lead to client cancellations, improving quality, creating immaculate billing and collections, or having the hours and bandwidth freed up to sell?
Hiring Your Director of Operations
What do they do? Most importantly, they ensure everything runs smoothly and that clients get what they were promised. The pressure comes off you so it’s possible for you to grow the company without needing to work harder.
What would it be like to have an Operations Director to:
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Take your vision and turn it into reality? (Let’s face it: As CEOs, we just aren’t good at that.)
What is the cost of not having that role?
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Solve problems before you’re even aware of them?
For me, the wrong person cost us a couple clients, and I spent so much time on stupid details that it impacted my ability to generate more sales. But
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Profitably run the business based on a Service Management Blueprint that they create?
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