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​​​Half the battle is working with fellow leaders to come up with a solid strategic plan. 🧠

The other half is ensuring the strategic plan is actually achievable.

What we know for sure is that we must anticipate risk to appropriately navigate it. 

"How to make sure your new 2024 plan isn't derailed by failing to predict/manage risk"

 at Trust Keith to get concrete tips on how to risk-proof your strategic plan. 

What should you expect in this session? 👀

This workshop will leave you with the principles, tips, and skills to take with you as you plan for 2024.

high-level strategic planning/risk management (Head of Ops or COO equivalent).

​​This event is probably not for you 

if you're not involved in risk management.

 We're here to offer advice from different perspectives and help you make your decisions, but we won't be able to make them for you.

How to make sure your new 2024 plan isn't derailed by failing to predict/manage risk

Summer

As operations leaders in fast-paced startups, we often juggle multiple responsibilities, and a significant one is paying our team — a task typically overseen by HR and People Ops. 

Before our companies grow to the point where we can fire ourselves from this role and hire a full-time Head of Ops, we want to do a decent job at:

Join us to deep dive into all of the above at an engaging and interactive learning session hosted by our community member 

who's wearing a HR/people ops hat and wants advice from professionals and peers on how to manage it.

if you can't relate to the questions above.

combines the best of payroll software with best-in-class support. With Pento, get a strong payroll automation platform, with all the perks of a bureau in the form of CIPP-qualified expert support.

​If you ever have any questions, Pento's COO Sabrina Castiglione is always just a ping/DM away on the ON Community Slack. 🙌

ON Community Learning Session: Payroll Essentials for Ops Leaders

Dreamy

Tune in to our closing event of the first ever International Ops Festival.

With over 25 years of experience, Lila (COO at 

has honed her belief that successful organisations thrive when driven by a clear mission and impactful initiatives. Lila will be wrapping up our International Operations Festival with a Fireside Chat, answering questions ranging from how operations leaders can gracefully lead their organisations to do more with less human and financial capital, to how AI is changing operations within and across organisations. 

Charlene Chen has nearly 20 years of operational leadership experience working with a variety of organisations ranging from tech startups to international non-profits to Fortune 500 companies. 

She began her career as an IT consultant at 

, but spent 8 years focused on operational leadership of socially impactful venture-capital backed businesses in the fintech and healthtech industries. Charlene was co-founder and COO of

Tune in to hear Lila Ibrahim answer questions ranging from how operations leaders can gracefully lead their organisations to do more with less human and financial capital to how AI is changing operations within and across organisations. 

​This virtual session will be broken down into two sections;

​That's right, we are bringing back the 

 due to popular demand! We will be facilitating short rotating sessions of 5-10 minutes where you get the opportunity to connect with your fellow ops professionals attending the session and share your own ops war stories and building relationships.

*You can attend this event for free, or name your own price. The 

 team is building a community-powered knowledge hub for current and future operations leaders, and any funds we collect will enable us to continue to provide events like this.*

International Ops Fest 2023 · Fireside Chat with Lila Ibrahim, COO at Google DeepMind

Operations Nation’s Nairobi Chapter are organising networking drinks in collaboration with Women in Power Africa. 

 is an international community of operations professionals working in startups. ON offers courses, educational events, and a very active online community that can help you with any ops-related question.

The Nairobi chapter is the very first local chapter of ON and we're delighted to kick this off with you! What makes the Nairobi chapter unique is the diversity of the members and that we all know that operations in Kenya brings its very unique challenges. 

Someone in San Francisco, London or Berlin might not be able to help you figure out how to manage a team of field agents out in Turkana without stable internet connection or other infrastructure, but the brains and ops power of the Nairobi chapter is here to empathize, support and cheer you on!

Nairobi welcoming Operations Nation to join Women In Power Africa

The CrossBoundary Group is a pioneer in navigating investment opportunities in underserved markets. By advising operators on fundraising and performing as operators in select sectors, CrossBoundary knows the tremendous qualities it takes to translate ideas into action on the continent. Great operations professionals are what make great investment bear fruit.

The Group is proud to host African implementors in Nairobi and Lagos as part of this week's International Operations Festival to connect on shared experiences in their impactful work.

Nairobi Happy Hour

Sunset

If you'd like to join the party and watch the cONference sessions, you can access them here: 

https://operationsnation.gumroad.com/l/conference2023

Thank you to everyone who has purchased a ticket for what we are expecting to be our best event yet.

Due to the incredibly popular demand, we have now released "cONference content" tickets. This will allow you to purchase the recordings and key-findings of each session, sent to you the following week of the cONference, allowing you to access the insightful sessions virtually, on-demand. 

Operations Nation is organising the world’s first-ever global conference celebrating the wily world of startup operations: 

There will be many events occurring across the globe throughout the week, but the anchor event will be the 3rd Annual cONference hosted for the first time, in-person in London thanks to our amazing partner 

: Operations leaders from the Operations Nation community and a few guest speakers will share thought-provoking insights, wisdom and war stories all related to the theme of the week: 

Scaling Operations in the Midst of a Recession. 

13:00-13:30: The Highs and Lows of Scaling Retail Ops

17:45-18:30: Global Ops: From Silicon Valley to Silicon Savannah

As well as in-between sessions, the afterparty will allow you time to unwind after an information loaded day and network with your fellow ops geeks experiencing the same challenges you are. This will be held in the same building as the cONference from 6:30-9pm. 

Take a look at some of our previous (ONline) cONferences 

 and visit our website for more information about the entire 

We couldn't make cONference possible without the support of our incredible partners. 

Operations Nation cONference 2023 

Ocean

Get ready to kick off the International Ops Fest 2023 with a bang! 

Jeff is an experienced Operations leader (Founder and CEO of Reframe and former COO of Stack Overflow and Sphere which was acquired by Twitter)

will be opening Ops Fest 2023 with a keynote speech on 

"Operating in Stormy Seas: Leadership Insights for Turbulent Times". 

For the past five years, Aušrinė (Head of Operations at Reframe Technologies and Co-Founder of Operations Nation) has been a driving force behind Operations Nation, a community-powered knowledge hub that connects and empowers hundreds of operations leaders globally. With over a decade of hands-on experience navigating the unique challenges of early-stage companies, Aušrinė is a seasoned operations leader guiding startups from pre-seed stages to series B.

Operating in Stormy Seas: Leadership Insights for Turbulent Times

Join us for an insightful session with Jeff, a seasoned tech professional with extensive experience in operations. Moderated by Aušrinė, this event will be a deep dive into the evolution of operations throughout his illustrious career. Jeff will share invaluable practical advice tailored for wartime ops leaders, focusing on achieving more with limited resources.

Throughout the session, Jeff will cover a range of topics, including proactive strategies, stabilising methodologies, and the art of making difficult decisions. Additionally, he will delve into the critical mindset shift between playing it safe and playing to win. 

Don't miss this opportunity to gain unique insights from true industry experts!

This virtual session will be broken down into two sections; 

International Ops Fest 2023 · Opening Keynote with Jeff Szczepanski, Former COO at Stack Overflow

To office or not to office? That seems to be the question everyone keeps asking - and more and more often, the answer lies somewhere in-between. 

With hybrid and distributed teams becoming commonplace, ops leaders everywhere are prompted to re-evaluate the purpose of in-person working. 

What do you hope to accomplish by working in the same physical space? How can you reach this goal while having a hybrid or remote team?

Join us for a discussion with a panel of incredible ops leaders 

as they share their thoughts and experiences about the evolving workspace.

Florencia is a People & Talent lead with over 5 years of experience and a broad skillset across all generalist functions, with a focus on change initiatives that improve operations and workplace culture whilst prioritising the most important asset in any organisation - it’s people. Florencia is also a remote work ambassador and work-life balance enthusiast.

 - Fractional Chief of Staff/COO/Head of Remote

Scott helped build & scale one of the 1st remote-first companies back in 2012. Since then he has helped dozens of companies implement the future of work. By implementing the intentional processes, documentation, tools, and best practices to create world-class remote organizations. Scott also hosts a podcast about remote leadership - 

Jas is a confident and multifaceted operations leader working with tech start-ups preparing for rapid growth. Being a business all-rounder, she has actively been involved in roles within people, commercial, marketing, product and general operations. She has worked across a number of industries including retail, government, charity, deep tech to name a few, from early stage start ups to large corporations. Today, Jas leads ops at a global tech platform, with offices in Europe, the US, and Australia.

Joe is a growth and RevOps specialist, responsible for Commercial Operations at Hubble—The UK’s largest flexible workspace platform. We help businesses give their teams great places to work – whether that's full or part-time offices, or on-demand access to a network of thousands of spaces to work and meet.

is a flexible workspace platform. They help businesses give their teams great places to work – whether that's a longer-term office, or on-demand access to a network of thousands of spaces to work and meet.

Their solutions flex with your workspace needs, helping you reduce wasted office spend while keeping your employees happy and productive. 

Hubble has supported the Operations Nation Community for a long time as our Community Partner. If you'd like to know more about their offerings or want some workspace-related advice, you can always reach out to 

In-person working in a world beyond the full-time office - Operations Nation x Hubble

**You can attend this event for free, or name your own price. The 

 team is building a community-powered knowledge hub for current and future operations leaders, and any funds we collect will enable us to focus on this project full-time.**

We’re halfway through 2023 and businesses everywhere are adapting to a challenging environment. 

Venture-backed SaaS companies have a uniquely challenging pivot to execute as the “growth at any cost” mindset has shifted to a “predictable, sustainable and profitable growth” requirement.

So how can GTM (sales, marketing, customer success) and operations leaders...

how GTM Ops can play a critical role in this environment. 

We’ll explore practical frameworks that cut through the noise and a tested methodology for building effective GTM Operations.

Jeff is a Financial Services leader with deep experience in both high-growth and transformation environments. He has held COO roles in both Sales and Risk functions in several banks as well as in venture-backed FinTech. His experience includes building, scaling, and transforming operations for teams ranging from 10 to 2,500.

Jeff is not only a long-standing member of Operations Nation, but also a co-author of one of our COO Survival Guide chapters, as well as a speaker at our Chief Operating Officer Course.

Christian is an accomplished SaaS Go-to-Market executive with experience across sales, marketing, operations, and product management. He’s built successful go-to-market, sales, and marketing strategies, led growth programs and product launches, and achieved revenue goals at companies across different stages of growth; from pure startup to scale-up, to enterprise growth.

Simon is a strategist, writer, and consultant working with startups and scaleups in the UK, US, and Latin America.

Through his consulting arm (Saber Works), he focuses on strategic storytelling to help startups think, speak, and grow. 

Through his newsletter (Technopoly), he covers the latest news and analysis of Latin America's exploding tech and VC ecosystem. Each week, the newsletter reaches 2,000+ subscribers from the world's top tech companies, VCs, and banks. 

On the side, he's also an informal scout and 'fixer' that connects founders, VCs, and operators on both sides of the Atlantic.

GTM Operations - From Strategy to Execution

Over the months of working with our Community Partners at 

us untangle the mysteries of data protection, we realised that

 as a company evolves, so does its data - and so does our job

, since it's usually up to ops people to keep adapting and figure out how best to handle data protection management. 

Based on your feedback about these events, we realised it would be great to have some sessions where 

folks from different funding stages can gather to discuss common challenges.

how businesses can protect their data throughout different stages of maturity.

For this final session, Tom will be joined by 

Do you have any specific questions? Submit them when you RSVP and Tom will answer at the end of the session. 💡

Data Protection from Pre-Seed to Series B - and Beyond! 🚀

Many Operations folks in early-stage startups wear multiple hats, and one of those hats often happens to be Finance. With no dedicated Finance person in the team, we have to first 

quickly learn how to work with external accountants,

 then as the company grows and the need for a team becomes evident, we're faced with the question of 

It's no easy task and there's no one right way to do it. Join us for a 

webinar and Q&A session with our Community Partners at

, our long-time supporter and Founder of Onside, we'll discuss...

... And anything else finance-related on your mind. 💡

 are Chartered Certified Accountants and Business Advisers supporting businesses in the United Kingdom across the tech and services industry. They have a particular passion for supporting high-growth businesses and offer a vast range of accountancy, tax and other advisory services.

 is always just a ping/DM away on the ON Community Slack. 🙌

who's wearing a finance hat and wants advice from professionals and peers on how to manage it.

if you can't relate to the questions above, or if you're expecting a definitive answer to them.

ON Community Webinar: How to Work With Accountants and Build Your Own Finance Team - powered by Onside Accounting

Once upon a time, there was a group of ops people who decided to start a Book Club, headed by the wonderful 

. As our community grew, the Book Club took a temporary pause, but when late last year during a roundtable many of you expressed interest, we knew it was 

This year, we’re aiming to read one ops-related book every quarter.

For the first book, we’ve decided to just go ahead and pick the book that started this project off.

"From Kim Scott, author of the revolutionary New York Times bestseller 

―how we can recognize, attack, and eliminate workplace injustice―and transform our careers and organizations in the process.

We―all of us―consistently exclude, underestimate, and underutilize huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate, and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it's bad for business. Just Work is the solution.

Just Work is Kim Scott's new book, revealing a practical framework for both respecting everyone’s individuality and collaborating effectively. This is the essential guide leaders and their employees need to create more just workplaces and establish new norms of collaboration and respect."

ON Book Club: Just Work by Kim Scott 📚

Ops people love their tools. We love geeking out over new, exciting features, figuring out all the secrets, and the best ways we can use them to improve our teams' processes. 

 is used by many in our community, so naturally, questions about it pop up in the 

 channel frequently. As luck would have it, one of these conversations reached the ears (well, eyes) of our community member, 

 - and she's made the incredibly gracious offer to host 

a workshop where our community members can ask for advice directly from her and her colleagues on the Airtable team.

My fellow ops geeks: here's your chance to 

super specific technical questions about ops processes in Airtable

 that no one else on your team can help you with, and get your long-standing Airtable mysteries solved. 

The agenda will be based on the questions you submit,

 probably not for you if you're not using Airtable in your ops role. 

If you're interested in discovering the tool, its widely used cases and core functions, you can find some great resources on Airtable's 

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

ON Workshop: Exploring Airtable's Ops Use Cases with Friends from Airtable

In today's digital age, data protection is more important than ever. Cyber threats and data breaches are increasingly common, and it's crucial for businesses to take proactive steps to safeguard sensitive data. 

However, many businesses opt for a tick-box approach and overlook the critical role that 'culture' has to play in data protection.

improve your business's data protection by changing your leadership and team culture. 🚀

 any community member responsible or accountable for data protection.

Whether you're just starting to develop your data protection strategy or looking to enhance your existing efforts, our panel of experts are here to

help you find the right path to protecting your data. ✅

Trust Keith Workshop: How to embed Data Protection into your company culture (without killing it 😬)

As promised, this year we're turning our COOhort meetups into COOhort Roundtables, where any COO (or person in a similar role, as the most senior ops person in your company) can submit their current challenges for group discussion. If you're interested in hosting your own roundtable, 

how we manage organisational risk in our respective companies

. As the COO, you're often the most senior person in the organisation who both has a helicopter view of all of the context and plans, and will also be on the hook for potential downsides. This can be a uniquely valuable, yet also frustrating & lonely position - but luckily, we've got a whole community of people in the same boat. 💜

- Welcome and kicking off with topic introduction 👋

- Share key takeaways with the other groups 💡

Have more questions you'd like to add? Submit them via the registration form above. 📝

​In order to create a safe space where the most senior ops folks can discuss sensitive topics and vulnerably share their experiences, we ask that you

 only register for COOhort roundtables if your role matches the above description

share the key takeaways with the entire community

ON COOhort Roundtable: How do I manage organisational risk as the COO?

When we launched our #celebrations channel last month, one of our first posts was from 

Obviously, we were all super proud of Riley's success - and many of us wanted to know the details about how he accomplished it. Luckily, Riley was on board with that, and so for this mini workshop, he'll indulge our curiosity and tell us all about his experience with 

building his company's internal knowledge management system. 

This is documentation 101 - it's probably not for you if you're 

expecting ready-made templates and shortcuts

ON Mini-Workshop: A Documentation System from Start to Present 

As per Ops Stories tradition, every now and then, we put our heads together to dive into a topic presented to us by one of our community members.

The format is simple and informal - the host presents the topic and shares a couple of questions, we split into small groups (3-5 people), and then we discuss. At the end of the session, we bring our learnings together so we can share them with the wider community

This time, we’re doing something a little bit irregular. 👀

Due to the increased interest and need for career-related advice as many folks are facing layoffs and searching for new opportunities, 

hosted a panel with our Community Partner JBM

, whose recruiters shared their perspectives with us on the job hunting process, including tips for your CV, interviews, and how to showcase your ops skills. 💪

However, our community members have indicated that they would also love the chance to 

swap stories with fellow members who have recently gone through the process and found success, and would be willing to share how.

 Around the same time, I was approached by 

, who volunteered to do exactly that - and so the idea for this roundtable was born. 💡

We’d like to invite you to a lively discussion about 

Kyle will present the job hunting framework

 that helped him land first his job at a little company called Uber, then his role as VP Ops at Avo, which he now uses to coach other folks to land their tech ops roles. 🙌

After that, we will split into smaller groups of 4-5 people, so you can discuss your current challenges and ask for advice. 

We would like each group facilitator to be someone who has recently started a new role and feels like helping someone else achieve this goal.

 - Regroup and share the biggest takeaways from each group

​This workshop is about peer-to-peer support and advice, including strategy tips and an opportunity to vent. If you're looking for actual job opportunities, check out 

We hope you’ll find the session helpful!

ON Roundtable: How to Find and Get Your Dream Ops Job

As per Ops Stories tradition, every now and then, we put our heads together to dive into an operational topic presented to us by one of our community members.

As ops leaders, many of us experience frustration and stress because we feel forced to manage our day-to-day manually and reactively, which creates an overwhelming mountain of tasks.

This reactivity is often driven by the fact that ops teams don’t receive the necessary engineering resources - and so 

even though we want to build proactive systems and create automations for smoother sailing and efficiency, we hit a wall.

With this roundtable, we’re gathering to find ways to 

 (ex-Managing Director of Delivery Hero Hungary) and 

 (ex-Head of Strategy & Operations Youtube EMEA at Google), 

how to empower our operations with no-code tools,

 so we no longer have to be dependent on tech teams to get the solutions we crave.

- Sharing key takeaways with the whole group

ON Roundtable: Empowering Ops Teams with No-Code Tools

It’s been too long since we could last enjoy each other’s company in person, so one of our New Year’s ResolutiONs is to host meetups more frequently this year. 🤞

Thus, we’re super excited to invite you to 