Discover more from Jen Bergren’s Weekly Newsletter
Weekly newsletter #34
The best of what I've read this week, about operations, training and education, communication, and more
Hello!
I’ve been continuing to repurpose existing content into new formats, sizes, and other changes. Because I am not great at speaking off the top of my head, for any speaking event, I have to prepare extensive notes. I thought these cleaned-up notes may be helpful additions to the event video content, for people such as myself who prefer to read, instead of trying to clean up a transcription. The latest example is a blog about the Operations Nation event I spoke at earlier this year about setting up documentation systems. Most of the notes were repurposed from my course content, so I think this blog is repurposing x 3? Content inception? 😆
Speaking of repurposing, if this newsletter has TOO many links for you and you’d love to read something simpler and only about documentation… I created a weekly “3 things” documentation email that pulls select documentation-related content from this giant Substack email. You can see an example in this LinkedIn post and subscribe here.
And for an accountability check-in for my on-demand course: I did successfully record one out of the four main classes and figured out how to edit it to look more like the HubSpot Academy courses, switching between full-screen people and full-screen slides instead of looking like a Zoom video with a tiny head in the corner. Without buying any special tools or taking any extra tool training time — I would call that a win! 🙌 I may be on track to have it ready for beta testers by October.
Onto the resources!
What I've been reading, watching, and listening to:
Rachel Nazhand talks about great operations as a form of art, with 7 principles of art
Juhi Saha shares how to overcome CEO objections to transform partnerships from sidekicks to superheroes
Caterina Torres reflects on the job title trend of RevOps & Strategy Manager
Mike Rizzo shares his career journey of how he found marketing ops
Olga Denisova shares 5 marketing mindset shifts
Swarnendu Dutta shares a marketing ops onboarding plan
Lauren Ryan shares why you need systems job descriptions (document them!)
Danny Asling shares what makes a world-class marketing team
Jakub Grajcar shares 4 analogies for process building
Gabriele Grikstaite shares the top 3 questions about personal branding from CEO (and answers)
LG Guerra shares the top 4 learnings from walking the SaaStr booths
Ashley Lewin talks about 19 steps to diagnose why your inbound pipeline is down
Sam Jacobs explains how to get 1% better as a startup executive every day
Susan Whittemore shares learnings from Lean Manufacturing and the Theory of Constraints
Jeremy Burton talks about the value of content design
Brian Morris shares key reasons why a Marketing Operations Roadmap is crucial
Anna Aldred writes about learning to look at the impact of tasks in ops
Mel Pisarski shares the top ten professional and personal learnings from INBOUND
Jacco van der Kooij writes about how the SaaS market as a whole is currently going through multiple phase shifts
Kathleen Booth writes about how leadership is one of the hardest things to learn, and Pavilion’s new partnership with The Arbinger Institute for leadership development
Ant Murphy posts a thread of 5 first principles when implementing OKRs
Olena Bomko shares the typical terrible experience of a website visit
Matt Ragland gives an overview of time-blocking
Adriane Schwager shares the most powerful framework in marketing: Cialdini’s 6 Rules of Persuasion
Michael Girdley shares a thread about why you need a Chief of Staff
Articles, Reports, Guides, Newsletters
Nitin Nohria at Harvard Business Review ($) discusses ‘The Myth of the CEO as Ultimate Decision Maker’ and building a decision-making framework
First Round Review discusses: Investing in Internal Documentation: A Brick-by-Brick Guide for Startups
Darryl Piasecki writes about the COO agenda: vision, plan, and execution
Jacob Warwick asks: Does Logic & Credibility Hold Back Your Executive Leadership?
Haley Nahman writes about when a worse situation is actually better since it spurs you into deciding & fixing something sooner
Dorie Clark in Harvard Business Review ($) shares 5 Ways to Actually Move Forward on That Task You’ve Been Avoiding
Ben Stroup writes about how Accountability Matters: Why it's Essential for Project Success, and How Proper Delegation Can Lead to Project Success
Lenny Rachitsky shares ten lessons learned from building a newsletter to 500,000 subscribers
Eric Steeves writes about Breaking into RevOps: Key Skills to Accelerate Your Career Path
Linh Judin writes about Breaking Barriers: Launching a Sales Career in the Technology Industry
Robert Mills writes about how to organize your content team: Bring clarity using this roles and responsibilities chart
Alison Davis writes about how to improve internal communication content by starting at the top
LXA shares a guide to The 4Ps of Marketing Technology
John Cutler talks about the simplicity fetish and why it is so draining and burnout-inducing
John Knotts writes about What Should A Fractional COO Look Like?
Josh Allen asks Why are so many of our top sales leaders on the sidelines?
Heather Burright writes about why your skills development strategy won’t work
The Chief of Staff Network writes about Salary and Skills for a Level 2 Chief of Staff
Tammy Bjelland shares The Remote Work Competency Model
Graham Kenny writes about Avoiding These Pitfalls When Measuring Your Strategy’s Performance
Jeff Ignacio shares a RevOps Assessment + Maturity Model
Gretchen Rubin writes about how to Solve Coworker Conflicts with One Simple Question
Podcasts & Webinars
Daniel Pink shares a short video on how to motivate yourself
Brian Halligan and Mark Roberge discuss The Untold Story of Scaling HubSpot's Sales Team of The Science of Scaling podcast
David Norris, Bethany Ayers and Brandon Mensinga discuss growth mindset: what you need to be a COO, on the Operations Room podcast
Marlow shared the recording from its recent Manager Mini-Summit
Sonar shared the recording from its webinar on The Ops Journey: From Rookie to All-Star Status
Logan Lyles interviews agency people at INBOUND to ask where they’d invest $10,000 on the Agency Life podcast from Teamwork
Featured Events or Classes:
September 21: Breaking Silos through Building Collaboration: How RevOps Leaders can Maximize Their Impact from Sweep and RevOps Co-op
September 26: Leaders: Do you know your company’s superpower? From McKinsey
October 2: Personal Knowledge Mastery course from Harold Jarche
On-demand: Enterprise design thinking from IBM
Featured Book:
Writing for Busy Leaders by Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink
Featured Tip:
If you have a tip to share, I would be happy to feature and credit/link to you!
Featured Jobs:
Self-Promotion: More Ways I Can Help You
October workshops:
Documentation templates — the workbooks from my courses