Opsecution!

 

Sometimes, when you are attending a conference, you are listening to a speaker and learning about your industry, or you are catching up with colleagues and learning about what's happening in their lives, and once in a while, you can get a group of people together and have a passionate conversation and great spontaneous ideas can just jump out.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 'Opsecution'!

 

I often think, and I have seen in bigger corporations, there is often a power struggle between operations, sales and IT ... and while a lot of stones get thrown at the latter two, sometimes operations gets a rightfully deserved raised eyebrow because they come up with great ideas ... and then leave it to sales and IT to implement.  Or clients dictate to their vendor (that would be me) what they want the end result to be, and leave it to us to make their magic happen without input or collaboration.

 

Over the last year, I'm incredibly fortunate to have built a business relationship with a client who is refreshingly honest and transparent ... they will call or meet with me over an operational problem -- how we will work a batch of accounts, how we will measure performance, how we will meet compliance requirements, or how we will ultimately be judged on our results -- and then we work together on a solution, with boots on the ground at both ends of the relationship.  In fact, we often start talking about an issue, and then quickly wind each other up and get really excited about our solutions and report back to each other, and it's really an energizing process because it's not just an email chain, it's not a letter of direction, it's not a service contract addendum, it's a joint project we've worked on together.  We both totally avoid being armchair generals by rolling up our sleeves and working out a solution as managers who implement (not just point fingers), with the assistance of our team, and then go back to the table, share our results, and use each other as judge, jury, and sounding board.

 

A slip of the tongue earlier today made myself and my client raise our eyebrows and get a gleam in our eyes, and I think really summed up how we both like to work and solve problems ... it was a stroke of genius, and it's totally from by colleague, not myself, and I'd give him credit, but he's humbly declined. 

 

So ... Opsecution is now my new favourite word ... if you have any stories or ideas, feel free to reach out and chat.  I think this idea deserves further thought ...

 

Thanks kindly,

Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
Kingston Data And Credit
Toronto, Ontario
226-946-1730
bwettlaufer@kingstondc.com