Weekly newsletter #161

The best of what I've read this week, about operations, training and education, communication, and more

Hello!

This week’s time-saving test for formatting this newsletter, while still giving credit to the humans behind the work, is to remove the company name from the events and remove the podcast names, so there are two fewer pieces of information I have to search for to add here. If these changes make those newsletter sections less useful for you, please reply to let me know.

Also, if you host or produce a podcast, please make it easy for people to give you credit and share information about your efforts by adding the host name, guest name, topic, and podcast name in the copyable text description of EACH episode. For your reference, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, the episode title and podcast name are usually not selectable or copyable. I have also spent a LOT of time hunting down host names in various spy-level ways, when the host names don’t exist anywhere near the episode or even in the show information! 😬 Please make it easy for people to give you the credit you deserve for your hard work. 😁

Onto the curated resources!

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Looking for newsletter sponsors:

If you have helpful human content, events, or other resources you think could help the readers here, consider sponsoring this newsletter!

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Last week’s most popular link:

• James Geyer writes that RevOps is still poorly understood by many companies

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What I've been reading, watching, and listening to:

LinkedIn

• Sara McNamara writes that the biggest challenge that ops teams face is being seen as just doers, not thinkers. Being dismissed when it comes to strategy

• Rosalyn Santa Elena writes about the key elements that RevOps brings to your organization

• Evan Kubitschek writes how trying to save $15K on marketing ops work just cost a new client $20K in sprint fees to make up for wasted time.

• Lauren Aquilino writes about how teams justify bad math in marketing every single day

• Jen Spencer writes that the most expensive thing in your company isn’t your highest-paid employee. It’s the repeatable work they’re doing

• Christina Garnett writes about what your Chief Customer Officer wishes you realized

• Tim Slade writes about how instructional design actually works. Not the LinkedIn version people pretend is true

• Gina Race writes how many consultants and freelancers under-value themselves, and often it has nothing to do with fees or hourly rates.

• Katherine Volard writes that if you work in RevOps, understanding finance isn’t optional

• Brian Jarvis writes that when you have a seat at the table in Learning & Development, you still can’t relax

• Jennifer Morreale writes that training doesn’t fail at delivery. It fails at design

• Ryan Milligan writes about how it’s not a coincidence that more RevOps leaders are becoming CROs as companies scale

• Kathryn Castle writes how great RevOps doesn’t come cheap - but it pays dividends

• Jelena Arnold writes how RevOps Needs Sales Skills More Than You Think

• Jasmine Powers writes how radical discipline is what helps CEOs succeed

• Mollie Bodensteiner writes about being worried about leaders who think AI can replace the actual work of leading

• Jenelle Hodges writes that when alignment is missing, learning initiatives appear to “fail”—but what’s actually happening is friction between competing priorities

Articles, Reports, Guides, Newsletters

• Tom McDowall writes about choosing the boring option to solve a problem, and How Experts Make Decisions And Why Your Scenarios Aren’t Teaching It

• Shelly Lombard interviews Leslie Greenwood on how Thinking of Networking As Building A Community Was “life-changing”

• Christina Garnett writes about The Silo Tax: What Fragmented Teams Cost You in Customer Trust

• Kawal Kour writes about when Your Company is Growing, but Operations are Struggling: A Guide to Scaling Smarter

• Mitch Weiss asks: Is Instructional Design Regressing or Did We Just Stop Designing?

• Mira Brancu writes about Telling Women Leaders to ‘Just Delegate’ Misses the Point 📝🚢

• Sam Jacobs writes about The Age of the Strategist: When execution becomes a commodity, deciding what to do becomes priceless

• Colette Molteni writes about Burnout Detection Systems: Monitoring Your Internal Production Environment

• Mark Sheppard writes about The Cost of “Just Ask Me”: Why Knowledge Transfer Is Learning & Development’s Problem to Solve 📝

• Ashley Rudolph writes about 3 strategies for managing difficult leaders and “impossible” personalities

• Ben Stroup writes about Why Execution Fails: The Missing Link Between Strategy and Results

• Charity Majors writes about why we should Bring Back Ops Pride: “Operations” is not a dirty word, a synonym for toil, or a title for people who can’t write code

• Michael Kovnat writes about Liz Tran’s book about how Agile Is the New Smart

• Regina Gerbeaux writes about The Unseen Cost of Being “Always On”: Why high performers confuse urgency with importance

• Glenn Familton writes why Your Best Work Won’t Speak for Itself: Tried-and-Tested Sales Tactics for ResearchOps Professionals

• Lauren Davidson writes about The Manager’s Career Positioning Playbook: How to Be Known for the Right Things

• Jordan Rogers writes about Building a Go-To-Market Operations Team from Scratch

• Kasey Jones writes about Building Your Repeatable Transformation Method: The 5-step framework for consultants who are done starting from scratch📝

• Wendy Scott writes about when Your Manager Took the Job for the Money, Not Because They Want to Lead You

• Ryan Parker writes about Why Structural Authority Isn’t About Your Org Chart: It’s about how you add value as enablement.

• Srividya Kumar writes about The Performance Consulting Diagnostic: Are You Actually Doing It?

• Andrea Chiarelli and Maurizio Cuna write about 8 Simple Steps For Meaningful 1:1 Conversations (especially if you are an introvert)

• Haris Odobasic writes about Why Your Referral Program Fails (And How RevOps Can Fix It)

Podcasts, Webinars, Videos

• Sabine Vidrike and Odd Morten Sørensen discuss the human element of system migrations and more

• Anne Pao, Mark Evans, and James McArthur discuss how to Stop Drowning in Systems: How to Build a High-Growth GTM Engine📝

• Mahak Vedi and Camela Thompson discuss the evolution—and confusion—surrounding RevOps roles

• Rachel Platt and Heather Burright discuss the cost of staff turnover and how training can help📝🚢

• Alysha Khan and Nital Shah discuss moving from Reactive Ops to Scalable Systems 📝

• Berkay Peker and Nikki Anderson discuss participant recruitment in research operations

• Heather Burright discusses how You’re Not a Training Factory. You are a Change Agent.

• Bradley Hamner discusses personal knowledge management 📝

• Tom McDowall, Bianca Bowman, Mike Taylor, and Christy Tucker discuss Marketing Techniques for Learning & Development and One Question Scenario Design

• Adele Kurki and Michael Hartmann discuss Keeping the Lights On While Changing the Engine: Managing Transformation in Marketing Ops

• Szilvia Olah discusses How Scientists Measure Corporate Bullsh*t

• Christie DeCarolis and James Meaden discuss the multifaceted nature of learning, emphasizing the importance of emotional engagement, psychological safety, and more

• Danielle Balestra and Leanne Dow-Weimer discuss When B2B Personalization Backfires

Featured Events or Classes:

• February 26: Revenue Leaders and the Visceral Fear of Surprises: How to eliminate surprises in hiring, onboarding, and execution

• February 26: The Power of Visuals: How to Enhance Learning through Effective Design?

• February 26: Accountability that Drives Results

• February 27: Align + Drive Cross-Team Planning & Orchestration

• March 4: Human-Centered Leadership in a Tech-Driven World

• March 4: A Webinar Workflow that Actually Works

• March 10-12: The Cultivating Connections Challenge

• March 17: What’s in Your Marketing Ops Backpack?

• March 27: The Rise of Non-W2 Leadership: Why More Executive Women Are Rethinking Traditional Roles

Featured Book:

• Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing by Leslie John (affiliate link to bookshop.org)

Featured Remote Jobs:

• Finance subject matter expert (temporary)

• Learning Manager - CXO Audience

• Senior Post-Sales Operations Manager

• Growth, Field, and Lifecycle Marketing roles

• Director of Inside Sales

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A Few Ways I Can Help You

On-demand courses:

• How to Document Your Business Processes

Live courses:

• Process documentation courses and workshops

• The next free RevOps BootCamp session starts in March

• Participate in the research for the next live course about employee onboarding

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Emoji Key:

📝 Documentation | 🚢 Employee onboarding | $ Paid course/event/resource