When you review job postings for technical operations managers, you have to appreciate the level of interaction required of these key roles. As manufacturing process experts able to troubleshoot variations and optimize output, they must:
Resolve technical, production, and delivery issues as they arise
Collaborate on larger process issues (supply chain, metric performance, etc.)
Network successfully at any level, interfacing within and without the organization
Increase efficiencies and productivity while reducing costs
All the while, they need to fulfill these roles:
Subject matter experts
Execute corporate initiatives
Project Managers
Team builders
Transformation leaders
Innovators
Collaborators
Engagement Drivers
Courageous (while being servant) leaders
Mentors and coaches
Supervisors of the most diverse segment of the workforce
Accountability drivers
Trainers and training managers
Hiring managers
Resource managers
Conflict resolution mediators
Data Analysts
Company policy and standard enforcer
and of course, Six-Sigma Black Belt preferred!
To complicate the role of technical operations managers, is a workforce that is distracted, worried, stressed, and unhappy. Gallup's 2023 State of the Global Workforce Report details the negative feelings in the workforce anecdotally conveyed in the news (access here). Stress levels are at an all-time high with 72% of American workers saying the job climate is good for finding another job.
This sets up a creative tension and operations gaps within organizations. In some instances, critical manager positions are open for longer periods of time with many of these aspects unattended or not fully covered by existing staff. Eventually the position is filled by promotion of an internal candidate, with a learning curve for the people skills, and higher employee engagement, collaborative leadership, and networking responsibilities; or alternatively, an external hire finally comes on board with a broad-based learning curve and a whole lot of unknowns. Throughout this process there are a myriad of issues that take longer to resolve and not only is there stifled progress, traction slips.
In this four-part technical operations manager series, I represent this everyday drama with connections to movies or media for a little levity and deeper connection, and cover what can be done to better manage these gaps and creative tensions.
Lesson One, Tony Stark is a fictional character. By profiling skills that take decades to hone, you are dramatically reducing your candidate pool. In the hiring market you are entering, you will have an extended hiring timeline, and may even be looking for someone you don't even want to hire! Candidates will have less experience as Gen Z populates the workforce. If you can, decrease the requirements of your job posting.
There are several alternate directions you can take:
Focus on the needs of your current operations manager. Figure out ways to give them support and alleviate stress at work. Make sure that everything they are doing is their responsibility, and not that of someone else. As gaps form in the organization, operations managers tend to become black holes for tasks and roles. If they become overloaded, and don't see a way out, they may start looking for another employer or and leave; this is detrimental to operations. Further, if you review the technical operations manager in their environment, you may find out that what you believe is underperforming, is really an overload of roles, responsibilities and functions. In worst case scenarios, which are more common than you think, get ready to hire 2-3 people to replace the quick exit of a high performing operations manager.
Target training dollars in the most impactful ways. Review the relationships of each position in your company. Who in the organization through their daily work has the most contact with others in support of the system? If you invest in these people with the intent of facilitating their interactions, your investment will have the most positive influence over the entire system. Greasing the wheels will reduce frustrations and increase overall engagement and job satisfaction. You will also help these highly connected employees to increase their level of productivity, making their jobs easier, and each action more effective. As all talent managers know, employees are less likely to leave when companies invest in their development, and they report to a manager they like.
Design-align your organization for directional efforts. Create vision and mission, and identify the capacities and learning needed to support your vision. This is known as VMCL and it comes from Cabrera Research Lab. This is a pragmatic and motivating process for aligning your team, not the traditional strategic-vision process most of us know. You will probably identify critical training for your operations team, and other learning for needed capabilities (e.g., project management, systems thinking, engagement practices, etc.). If you proactively address training needs of your current staff, you may prevent an opening in the future. At the same time, you will improve the efficiency and efficacy of your system to reach your ultimate goal.
Tame the savage beast! Review your operations as a system of systems of value delivery making sure to take different perspectives. Perform in depth reviews like agent-based analysis, ABA, also from Cabrera Research Lab, and after determining the system behaviors, develop a rubric of the ideal system design. You will identify actions that can be taken now to correct the behaviors that result in process and hiring gaps.
Those last two approaches can sound daunting, but once you understand the approach, applying it can be fairly straightforward and very enlightening.
In our next blog post, in more detail, we will review the numbers behind the hiring gap, discuss the organizational impact, and provide additional mindsets and modes to prevent and resolve the direct and indirect issues.
Lori G. Fisher
PLS Management Consulting
Purpose | Leap | Surge
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