Welcome to Ops and Ends

Every 2 weeks I’ll be dropping a five-minute read filled with insights and actual “how to’s” on managing the chaos that’s going on in your company.

Table of Contents

• When the Process Is Built… But No One Cares

• What You’re Really Seeing: Resistance in Disguise

• The 3-Step Fix (because all good things comes in 3 …

• When It Still Doesn’t Work? 

• Go Smaller, Sharper and Closer

When the Process Is Built… But No One Cares

Okay, so let’s first address the elephant in the room. I haven’t been around for a whole month. I know, I know, but everyone’s entitled to a break? 

Anyways, let’s get down to business. 

In the last edition, I talked about how building a process isn’t the win. Getting people to use it is. 

But sometimes you do bring people along. You loop them in, you get their feedback, you tweak it, you launch and STILL NO ONE USES IT. Or better yet, you get a Slack message saying “where is that thing again?” or the absolute worst is “I didn’t realise we were doing it that way now.” 

Cue me shutting my laptop, going to cry and contemplating what i’m even good at in life. 

But in reality when this happens you’ve (frustratingly so) added to your operational debt. Again. 

What You’re Really Seeing: Resistance in Disguise

Movies, books and life shows you that resistance is being loud, maybe shouting, flipping the table (or is this only in Italy?) But really, when people are quiet, that’s when you should be worrying.

This is what resistance looks like in our world. 

👉 Silent Ignoring. They saw the doc. They saw the update. They just… didn’t use it.
👉 Active Pushback. They tell you exactly why it won’t work. This is GOOD. We love conversation.
👉 Overwhelm Masked as Chaos. They want to follow the new way, but don’t have the headspace or time because learning a big new process takes time.

You might be seeing one of these, or you might even see all three of them.

The 3-Step Fix (because all good things comes in 3s)

Step 1: Diagnose with One Person

🎯 Goal: Understand resistance and pain points.

Please, for the love of ops, DO NOT just @channel in slack (and push those notifications - i know who you are 👀), and mention the new process to make sure people adopt it.

The reason being is that you have multiple audiences in your company, and all their pain points are different. Marketing team will shrug it off, Sales team will only care if it’s linked to their commission and Finance teams will probably adopt just as long as it’s not the beginning of the month. But really and truly, it will fall short.

So, here is what I want you to do:

1. Find ONE person. Just one person who should be using it and isn’t. Bribe them with a coffee if need be (you didn’t hear it from me). 

2. Listen to how they work today without judgement. It’s your job to understand their pain point and replay it back to them in a way that the new process will work and make their lives better.

3. Notice the friction, bearing in mind it can be silent. Are they sighing? Do they have multiple tabs open going from one to another seeming confused?

If they still don’t use it? That’s not failure. That’s feedback. 

If it clicks and you hear the “ahh that’s why we implemented this new thing. That’s cool”, then boom. You’ve got your first micro-champion and you build from there.  

Step 2: If They’re Not Using It, Ask About Their Pain

🎯 Goal: Get clarity on their version of the problem

Here’s the disconnect: you saw a problem. But their pain is still there. 

Rather than pushing your process again and hoping that this time they’ll do it, go back to the pain:

• “What part of this is frustrating right now?”

• “What do you wish took less time?”

• “What’s the most annoying part of this task for you?”
  

If they say “nothing,” probe further. It might be true, or it might be the overwhelm talking.

Step 3: Test and Validate

🎯 Goal: Confirm whether the changes actually work in practice.

Once you’ve understood the friction, and what makes their pain easier, make small tweaks. Simplify it and clarify. 

Then do this together. Get them to share their screen, and say “Okay, pretend I’m not here. Try to do this task using the new process.”

• Watch and listen (much like step 1). Don’t guide unless they get stuck. Observe where they hesitate, click around, or get confused.

• Ask open questions:

  • “What’s unclear here?”

  • “What would you expect to happen next?”

  • “Where would you normally go for this info?”

This turns your process into reality, as opposed to your doc that you had previously laid out, whilst building trust and giving you feedback.

If they still don’t adopt it? More data. If they do? Another advocate.

When It Still Doesn’t Work? 

Look, sometimes a new process just doesn’t land, despite all the effort, and you know its going to be amazing in the long run. 

That’s okay.

In the words of Elsa, let it go and just take a moment to reflect:

• Did it solve a real pain?

• Did my communication just not hit the mark?

• Was it just too complex?

The best operators I know don’t take this personally. Test. Learn. Iterate. Try again.

Go Smaller, Sharper and Closer

Changing how people work isn’t about processes on paper. We are all capable of building amazing processes on Miro, Notion etc., but that’s not all it is.

Rewiring habits is HARD. Especially if a company has gone through turmoils, processes change constantly and people can’t keep up, or not all, and people are just engrained in their day to day. On each end of the spectrum you’re always going to encounter resistance.

So when it fails, don’t take it personally. Take it as data (and boy does everyone love data), and go again. But much smaller, sharper and closer.

That’s how operational debt gets paid down: not with big rollouts, but with consistent, human-first nudges.

Who is Penny Penati?

Queue the Big Brother meme: "Who is she?" (And no, I'm not referring to myself in the third person... for now, anyway 😏).

With over a decade of experience in Operations, here's what I bring to the table:

• Building and fixing is in my nature

• Processes, people and efficiency is how I talk

• Continuously zooming in and out of the business is how I work

• Always learning and being challenged is my ethos

• Automation and tools is where I geek out

I’m here to help other operators and founders build amazing businesses, using the lessons I’ve learned (and the mistakes I’ve made).

🤍 Let me know if you’ve enjoyed this edition, and what other topics you’d love to cover. If you know of anyone that would enjoy this, send them my way!