Weekend newsletter #7
The best of what I've read this week, about operations, training and education, communication, and more
Hello! Though dividing these links into content topics could be difficult, because I am interested in so many topics that cross over into multiple categories, I tried dividing the resources this week into content types. Let me know if you like it!
Onto the resources!
What I've been reading, watching, and listening to:
Rust-out occurs when employees feel underutilized and understimulated in their jobs.
Nataly Kelly talks about how to get buy-in for your content marketing with your CFO before you start 💵
Thao Ngo posts about launching a new marketing ops community, Huddle
Logan Lyles talks about saving your creativity for creating the first time, not re-creating the wheel each time you do a process! 🛞
Adam Stahl compares CRM cleanup/maintenance with snow removal ❄️
If you really need to have an internal meeting, go beyond an agenda and get an upfront agreement, says Stephanie Valenti
Chloe Handelman talks about how “Your business 'problems' aren't complex. Your lack of organization makes them feel complex.” 💯
Sara McNamara talks about doing more with less in marketing operations
Tobey Wyatt discusses the difficulties in getting people to understand what it means to be a generalist in business operations
Gagan Biyani tells us 5 skills that help anyone succeed no matter their role: customer empathy, data analysis, storytelling/communication, cross-functional awareness, and managing people. Sounds like a lot of the topics in this newsletter!
The Secret CFO advises about what you can do if your business is affected by the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure
Thread by Lindsey Michaelides of Strongsuit about how the SVB collapse affects more people in more places than only the coastal tech 1%.
Ali Schwanke discusses a common communication failure
Articles, Reports, Guides, Newsletters
Elizabeth Yin advises on communication from leadership during a crisis like the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapse: Communicate early & often. Don’t wait for the “perfect” response or wait until the problem is solved.
Harvard Business Review covers How to Help Superstar Employees Fulfill Their Potential, “To ensure the success of their high potentials, managers and organizations must provide coaching, developmental support, and stretch opportunities, and high potentials must embrace them with an open and learning-oriented mindset.” ⭐️
Prevent scope creep in your projects with this advice from David C. Baker. “Think of scope creep, first, as a lack of information. And to solve that particular problem, you need more information. That information can come from the client (by probing deeper) or from you (by thinking about their problem and how to solve it).”
Pete Crosby’s Revenue. newsletter discusses the twins of Criticality and Rarity, meaning how mission-critical or indispensable your product is to someone’s business, and rarity as being unique or the scarcity of what you do. The beginning story also gave me some flashbacks to Orphan Black, a good show! 👯
Commsor's winding path from Notion to Coda to Slite: A documentation case study for a product that serves as an operating system for remote communities. Speaking of orphans (above)…beware of orphan documents!
An Instructional Design collaborative article about How do you communicate and present your task analysis outcomes to your clients or managers?
If you haven’t signed up for Ben Stroup’s newsletter, what are you waiting for? This week he covered 5 Misunderstandings Leaders Have About Project Planning: The importance of setting realistic goals, Understanding the resources available, Considering potential risks, Creating contingency plans, Involving stakeholders early
Jeff Ignacio teaches us about pipeline management in his latest newsletter. A few tools you can use to de-risk your pipeline: Pipeline Coverage Ratio, Adjusted Pipeline Ratio, Hygiene Score, Opportunity Score, Stalled Deal flag, How you run your cadence
Generalist World told us about What to do when you hit a career plateau as a Generalist: Reassess your goals, Seek out new challenges around you, Deepen (rather than expand) your network, Invest in what brings you energy, Consider moving laterally
More To That deep dives into the function of education. “The function of education, as it stands today, is to “be in the know.” It’s to be aware of what you need to know to be accepted into a given circle.” But “ The function of education, simply put, is to know yourself.”
Podcasts & Webinars
Revenue Optimists’ Women in RevOps webinar give advice to women in ops, which can be a male-dominated field
HubSpot Marketing Chief of Staff Chloe Washington talks about the role on OpsCast
Sonar’s Data Dictionary webinar — documentation! Do it! 📝
Roundup of operational efficiency podcast/video episodes from Alicia Butler Pierre
What Makes good eLearning Design? Tim Slade talks about how it’s not just good instructional design! Also graphic design, visual communication, & user interface design.
RevOps 2023: Automate & Align Your Team: from Pavilion, HubSpot, and Carabiner Group
The Rise of RevOps from Milkshake, with Rosalyn Santa Elena
Daniel Pink talks about the power of two letters to boost your powers of persuasion
Non-work:
If you ever wondered why more office buildings aren’t being converted to apartments, when the increase in remote work has left office buildings empty amidst a housing shortage, check out this New York Times article & graphics. 🏢
Featured Event or Class:
March 14 - MarketingOps.com presents Get Noticed: How to Increase Your Chances of Getting Past Gatekeepers and Land More Interviews with Travis Scott (Click ‘Bookmark’ to register for it)
March 15 - Rattle’ State of RevOps Redux Webinar, to accompany their guide
March 23 - Uptempo’s Can you prove the value of marketing operations?
Featured Book:
I am reading The Revenue RAMP by Lisa Cole for Travis Scott’s book club and am noticing so many similarities between her advice to Marketing leaders as also being the work that RevOps does! When a company has a RevOps department. Which makes sense since there are similarities between Marketing and RevOps both sometimes ending up as the task-takers of Sales, so she explains how that hurts the company, and how to escape that fate. (P.S. It is also available on the Scribd app which has a free trial if you want to start the book)
Organizational Tip:
I start moving apartments this week and am glad I made a list of all the places I needed to change my address, the last time I moved! I plan to add to it, with another list of other common moving activities I’ve done or am planning — please reply with any similar moving resources you recommend! I highly recommend saving this document, checklist, or task template where you can find and re-use it!
Featured Job:
HubSpot is offering micro-internships with companies and partners who use HubSpot, which is a great opportunity for those companies and for interns!
Self-Promotion of the Week:
I’m starting another cohort of the documentation course this week, and you can still sign up for April’s cohort!!
Thanks to Melissa McCready for this glowing review of the course!
HubSpot’s RevOp’s BootCamp ends this week — but starts again in May! Sign up here to learn from Connor, Jaime, & me.
Some of the latest endorsements from students include Sarah Medilo and Heather Robinette’s posts!
Thanks for reading! Please comment below with anything you'd like to see from these weekly newsletters.
This newsletter is brought to you by my new favorite emoji, the party document! Check out Slackmojis.com to find it!
Awesome stuff!!! My wife and I are going to be moving to Ohio in a couple months and I swear it's like you read my mind on prep'ing for it. If I come across anything you haven't I'll be sure to share!
You as well!!