## Operations The start of setting up operations should be a painful task. The type of operation can range from setting up your Figma files of the team to fulfilling daily deliveries on the ground. The usual approach is quick and dirty execution. Thus, making it a set of default choices available at that point of time. A simple example of order fulfilment. It can start from your own house with a printer and scales to a full sized warehouse. But, the process of delivery remains the same due to prior choices. Operations is a department whose primary motivation is to do the tasks efficiently. But most times spend time fire fighting time bound issues that stop the workflows. “Everyone can do operations. But, doing it well, they are very few” was mentioned in my conversation with a C-suite logistics executive. A key proponent of good operations comes from communication. ## Medium of Choice: Group Chats  Matt comes at this from a product building perspective. But this can also be applied to all sorts of communications that happen among teams. Operations is a time bound job. But using tools like slack, WhatsApp or telegram help kick-start the operations but limits in many ways. This is the same problem with WhatsApp being used for the majority of work in my context. Every message is not important, but it tends to be urgent. A slacker(ironical) can use the number of messages to subvert work. It turns chaotic and unsustainable over time. For everyone who thinks I am being too high-handed. Trust me, I work in operations where 24x7 I am currently online. And I am here saying, WhatsApp is the worst tool to manage operations. It increases cognitive load and leads to poor execution of operations. The flurry of texts informing me about critical problems to routine updates get notified the same way. Chat based tools are a bane at the start, but the information shared through messages becomes repetitive, superfluous and non-intentional as time passes. This results in shoddy work as a team when companies scale. ## Model of the Problem There were this series of tweets by [James-Rosen-Birch ](https://twitter.com/provisionalidea) about the patterns of behaviour that kills companies. In one of his tweets, he creates a network model of [operations debt](https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1524038479071657984). All chat based tools accrues operation debt very fast. They create a sunk cost fallacy that allows people to lose sight of what really matters and get busy with doing what is immediate.  The knowledge that compounds when performing operations is lost when you use a chat based tool. Most project management or productivity software derive their functionalities from the [Toyota Production control ](https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/production-system/index.html)framework line of operations thinking. It stems from the Toyota people and operates on a set of principle that are widely read but hardly implemented. The process to use these tools is the individual team’s responsibility. This is where most companies falter. They invest in the tool, but not the time to recover the operational debt. ## Personal Journey When I first started using Basecamp as a tool to run team ops across functions. I thought it will make it better. But most of my time was spent teaching the team how to communicate using the tool. I even wrote an [[Designing collaboration in workspace|entire post about it]]. It changed how we do operations, product building and collaborate. I wrote in the post > The experience of running an “asynchronous” setup at Pipehaul has made me more aware of the challenges of implementing it again. With Basecamp as a product, we changed the way we worked. We had no meetings but when met, it was to solve problems. There were no brainstorming session but rather workshops to share your learning quarterly. There were no decisions taken on call, they were communicated through written format.  > What Basecamp cultivated and the team behind it preached is counterintuitive to how most workplaces operate. They focus on being deliberate, thoughtful and precise. The onus of figuring out one’s intent, work and effort was not left to the person being communicated, instead becomes the responsibility of the person conveying.  > This type of working is only possible if the team working as a company and its overall business are self-assured about one’s limitations and future prospects. It also stems from a culture of trust by default and treating each and every member of the team as responsible people looking to contribute for the betterment of the company. The focus on being deliberate in communication is not possible in chat based tools. ## Fixing Operations starts with communication If you want to fix your operations, fix your communication. The way you go about it may be different, but the important thing to remember is that the medium you chose shapes the way you operate. In one of our previous posts, I mentioned the [unseen process flow](https://buttondown.email/ontheside/archive/understanding-systems-at-work/) that is often missed. Chat based tools are the reason they become unseen in the first place. **** Original Published Date : 14-01-2023 Tags: #published #ontheside #operations #communication #essay