Executive Operations Manager

KNOWN ALIASES / DISGUISES:

MARKET AVERAGE

$140,000

* Based on a typical range of $96,083 to $163,137 annually in the United States, representing a perceived mid-level executive compensation for a role with nebulous impact.

"This salary buys a highly paid individual who generates more process than product, adding layers of abstraction and bureaucracy between work and outcome."

[DIAGNOSIS]As a cost center role focused on 'operations,' Executive Operations Managers are prime targets during budget cuts and executive realignments, especially given the political nature of ops departments being seen as expendable overhead.

"As COO, you’ll be the strategic and operational right hand to our CEO and executive team — leading day-to-day operations, enhancing systems, and ensuring that…"

OTIOSE TRANSLATION

You are the CEO's administrative proxy, tasked with attending meetings they deem too trivial, while 'enhancing systems' means reorganizing shared drives and ensuring meeting minutes are formatted correctly.

"The Executive Operations Manager is responsible for assisting in the planning and implementation of the organization’s operational tasks and initiatives supporting the Technology Organization. This role supports coordinating and improving the impact of resources enterprise wide and reports into the Chief of Staff to the President of Technology."

OTIOSE TRANSLATION

You exist to create PowerPoint decks for the Chief of Staff, documenting 'initiatives' that technology teams are already doing, thereby 'improving resource impact' by adding another layer of reporting and oversight.

"overseeing and managing the day-to-day operations of core ERM programs and frameworks."

OTIOSE TRANSLATION

Your 'oversight' involves monitoring dashboards of metrics no one understands, ensuring 'frameworks' are rigidly adhered to, regardless of their actual utility to productive work or the ERM program itself.

[09:00 - 10:00]

Strategic Coffee & Inbox Triage

Reviewing email chains from the previous night, forwarding actionable items to relevant managers (delegating upwards), and drafting 'high-level' responses to avoid direct commitment, all while considering the 'strategic implications' of the day's tasks.

[11:00 - 13:00]

The Grand 'Operational Alignment' Ceremony

Facilitating a two-hour meeting with multiple teams to 'ensure synergy' and 'unblock dependencies,' typically resulting in more meetings, new, vaguely defined action items, and a sense of 'progress' without tangible output.

[14:00 - 16:00]

Dashboard Deep Dive & 'Initiative' Documentation

Analyzing vanity metrics on custom dashboards and translating existing team work into 'strategic initiatives' for the Chief of Staff's weekly report, ensuring that actual productivity is re-framed as 'operational excellence'.

"Operations Managers are always undervalued it seems. ... expected to do a million random things, and learn new systems without any benefit to me."

— r/nonprofit

"One of the issues with working in a cost center org constantly under the gun is it leads to a TON of politics. Every round of layoffs is an opportunity for ops executives to target each other’s people and power base. In addition the jobs don’t require skills or relationships, so it’s easy to use ops to for whatever HR quotas are in vogue."

— r/FinancialCareers

"My Executive Operations Manager spends 80% of their time 'strategizing' about how to better 'align' teams, which mostly means forcing engineers to fill out new forms and attend another 'cross-functional sync' that produces nothing but more action items for everyone else."

— teamblind.com