I’m on the Operations team at a startup that raised our Series A roughly 6 months ago. I’ve enjoyed being a part of this slack community but most of the topics are geared towards product management. This may be vague but I’m looking for recommendations to better structure our organization as a whole from an operations perspective. Any resources on the following topics would be appreciated:
• Goal Setting/Planning
• Forecasting/ Metric Tracking. Planning inputs vs. Outputs.
• Structured Decision Making/Prioritization
• General Operations Management: Scaling teams, performance management, setting and meeting targets.
• Any resources on becoming a better operator is welcome.
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There may be something I am missing but aren’t most of these tasks related to product management or leadership also? Especially if the product is the business, which is the case with most discussions I’ve read here.I’ve always had a hard time wrapping my head around the whole “head/vp of operations” title and what that job actually entails. Often it seems to be coupled with some vague statement like “getting things done” at startups. To be fair I guess that applies to many descriptions of product management too Can’t have back-and-forth discussion with the bot but maybe someone understood the question better and could elaborate or chip in ?
One resource I can recommend and that kinda answers the question is caseyaccidental.com
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I’ve always liked the framing that the COO is an internal facing partner to the CEO who’s focused more on the big picture and external stuff.
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I wonder what the Operations equivalent is of this community 
Goal setting/planning - I’d avoid getting to far into OKRs but could be worth exploring at a company level.
Metrics wise, do you know what metrics matter for your company?
Prioritization, look at RICE and for structured decision making read up on “second order thinking” and the “profit tree framework”.
General operations - have you read high output management? Maybe high growth handbook too.
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Setting up company level operating cadence
https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8
Building Systems in a COmpany
Picking Metrics (and measuring them) - lots of framework on prioritization and OKRs out there as well
How to run effective meetings
Keith Rabois on how to operate (More manager level stuff but a personal favourite)
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