Tech outlet Built In LA sat down with our VP of Operations, Meg Mananian, to gather insights into operations leadership at a growing software company.
Give us a little insight into a typical day for you.
Every day is different, but there are a few things that hold true each day. I always start the day bright and early, catching up on emails and reviewing my schedule before heading into the office. Our team has been largely working in a hybrid model since Covid-19, but I always try to make it into the office, as I believe it is important for a leader to be accessible to their team.
Things can get pretty crazy, as the nature of my role means I’m always working with other departments, either on large-scale projects — such as ensuring we are compliant with STIR/SHAKEN and other FCC compliance protocols — or customer issues with which I help directly. On a typical day, I work directly with everyone from our director of support to our accountant. The nature of my role means that I get to interact with the full scope of Convoso employees, even those who do not report to me directly.
My role is fast-paced, and it is easy for me to spend the majority of the day in meetings. To combat this and stay productive, I always take the time to schedule some focus blocks and breaks into my day.
Describe a project you’re working on right now, and why you find it challenging or rewarding.
It’s Q4 right now, and we are already well into looking ahead to next year. My major project at the moment, outside of my day-to-day activities, is coordinating with all our departments to get operating plans completed. We had an amazing 2021, and want to keep that momentum going by ensuring that strategy, goals, and timelines are aligned across the business. This is challenging in a lot of ways, as there are many moving parts and sub-departments that all need to be accounted for.
We have centralized the process of collating department plans for the first time this year, so getting buy-in from leadership — and ensuring the template we created would meet everyone’s needs — took a month to perfect. As an ops leader, I need to be sure that the plans we are putting in place are attainable given the time and resources that we have available — that we are setting ourselves, and Convoso, up for success.
As we are wrapping up the process, it’s rewarding to see the amount of cross-functional work that goes on at Convoso, and how collaborative our teams are, even when setting their own departments’ goals. “Teamwork makes the dream work” is one of our core values, and I’ve really seen it in action during this project.
What are some of the trends you’re currently watching in the operations space, and how do you anticipate they will affect your team’s day-to-day work?
As our company continues to scale up, I’m seeing now more than ever the need for a switch from a task-oriented business approach to a project-based one. We are in the process of trying to adapt a centralized project management office for our business, which will not only elevate our day-to-day operations but also increase our ability to track and implement changes for our customers.
An increased focus on agile methodologies is definitely a trend that I have been watching closely, and I believe that establishing a project management office at Convoso will allow us to incorporate those agile principles across all departments. As we continue to scale our operations and increase our remote headcount, agility and centralized strategic plannings will be vital to our ability to keep succeeding and providing fantastic service to our customers.
Read the full Builtin LA article, “A Day in the Life of an Operations Manager”
