Derek Belch argues that operations shape client satisfaction in ways most businesses overlook, from how computers arrive to whether they include all accessories. His 29-person company works best when team members share physical space; scattered remote workers slow decisions and collaboration, he says, even with video calls and VR tools available.
Chapters
Operations are absolutely critical. Okay, I cannot emphasize this enough. When you guys go to business school, guys and girls, some of you that may go to business school one day and you fall asleep in an operations class because you think it's boring, trust me, you're doing yourself a disservice. Okay? And this doesn't necessarily mean factory line operations, right? Widgets and a fit in Toyota Lean 6 and efficiency and all that. That's not what I'm talking about. That's really, really high level stuff. At my level, at Shriver's level, it's ordering a computer, prepping it, making sure it doesn't have malware on it when you send it out to the Dallas Cowboys. Just little things that add up. Making sure you send the remote and the remote part that are on this machine right now. Because if you forget something, they're going to call you and say, what the heck's going on? And they're going to wonder why they're paying so much money for your service. So all of the little things with operations are absolutely critical. The other thing I'll add to that is it really, really helps to have everybody in the same room at the same time. It's very, very tempting in today's day and age to think, oh, I can do this remotely. We can have someone in New York, we can have someone in Wisconsin, we can have someone in San Diego, we can Skype, we can put our VR headset on and talk to each other virtually. Trust me, decisions are best made and people are the most efficient when you are in the same room together. And, and one of the major issues that we're having right now is we are 29 people and only 15 of them live in the Bay Area. And 14 of those, or probably six of those 14 that don't live in the Bay Area, are some of our best people. People that I wish could be sitting next to me every day. Not because I want to babysit anybody, because when we're in the same room and we talk out ideas, you're missing someone on the phone, you're trying to play tag, guys and girls are traveling all the time. It's really, really tough. So to me, operations is not only figuring out how to efficiently operate your business, but also figuring out how to just efficiently make decisions. And part of that is being together in the same room. That's very, very.
