Operations: A guide to high-impact careers

Every organization, beyond its public face of products and services, relies on a significant amount of crucial behind-the-scenes work. This is where operations professionals come in—they’re the people who ensure everything runs smoothly and effectively, whether this is sorting out contracts and finances, organizing events, keeping projects on track–or a huge range of other things an organization needs.

Simply put, operations professionals are the people who make things work.

Our sense is that operations careers can be a brilliant option for someone who is a good fit. However, your impact will be dependent on the organizations you work for during your career. This means it’s crucial to work for an organization performing effective work in a high-priority cause area.

What do we mean by operations? 

What exactly does an operations professional do? The most important answer to this is that it varies enormously. The truth is, your day-to-day tasks will be shaped by the unique needs of your organization, because your fundamental role is to make that specific place work effectively.

However, even with all that variety, there are definitely some common threads. Certain tasks and responsibilities are common in the operations world, even if you won’t necessarily take on every one in a single job. Let’s explore some of these key areas to give you a practical sense of what you might be doing:

Legal. In many organizations, operations staff handle the legal groundwork that keeps an organization running. This includes things like securing the organization’s legal status (e.g., registering as a nonprofit) and making sure it’s compliant with any laws and regulations. It can also mean all sorts of other things, like registering trademarks, preparing contracts, and establishing a board of directors.

Human resources. Organizations need to both bring in the right staff and make sure they’re happy and productive. Operations staff are often involved in both sides of this, for instance, by helping in the logistics of the hiring process, and perhaps implementing effective hiring practices. They may also take on interpersonal responsibilities within the organization – things like establishing codes of conduct and managing conflicts.

Risk management. Another responsibility for an operations professional is to protect the organization against all kinds of risks – whether they be reputational, legal, or physical. These kinds of risks can significantly impair an organization’s ability to make positive change. In practice, this can involve tasks like procuring insurance, managing potential conflicts of interest, making risk assessments, and complying with health & safety regulations. 

Logistics. Operations staff are also often responsible for organizing the logistics of their organization’s real-world activities. This can include events and conferences – whether this is running them or organizing their team’s travel and accommodation. Similarly, if an organization has a physical office, an operations professional may help organize the space, keeping it well-equipped and productive. If the organization delivers physical programs (like workshops or distributing goods), operations staff might coordinate the various moving parts, such as securing venues, procuring supplies, and communicating with participants.

Internal systems – A significant part of most operations roles (which touches on other tasks mentioned in this list) is managing and improving internal processes and workflows. This can include anything from setting up CRM systems to keep track of donors and donations, to managing vacation request and approval systems. An operations specialist may often be responsible for researching ways to improve these systems and implementing them.

Project management. This responsibility involves organizing and overseeing tasks to make sure that projects are completed within budgets and on time. Concretely, this can mean all sorts of things, like implementing project management systems (e.g., Asana, Jira, and Monday) and potentially some people management responsibilities. 

Finance. The financial side of any organization is crucial, and operations staff are often given the responsibilities of both managing the payroll and invoices, as well as keeping track of their organization’s budget. In some cases, it might also involve fundraising, identifying donors, writing grants, and even some marketing to support those efforts. 

The responsibilities above are fairly universal – they’re things almost every organization needs. But as a general rule, the nature of your operations job will change a lot depending on what your organization needs.

For example, an operations specialist in a global health nonprofit might be responsible for procuring antimalarial bednets and organizing their distribution. In contrast, an operations specialist in a think tank might help in keeping track of research projects, ensuring they’re completed on time, and formatting them into publishable reports. 

But it’s not just an organization’s activities that determine what an operations role entails – it’s its size as well. Larger organizations usually need more specialized support. Instead of a few people handling a wide range of tasks, they’ll often have dedicated personnel for finance, legal, and HR. These are still “operations” roles in a broad sense, but this article focuses on the more generalist roles – where individuals handle a variety of operational needs. These generalist roles are more common in small- to medium-sized organizations, particularly nonprofits (though not exclusively).

How promising is operations as a career? 

As we said at the start, we think operations careers can be a great way to have a positive impact. We think a talented operations specialist can find ways to make meaningful positive changes to an organization that noticeably increase the quantity and quality of its output, and maintain the organization’s health in other crucial ways.

Similarly, an operations professional that ensures their organization is protected from important risks can make a huge difference to that organization’s fortunes – sometimes even the difference between whether the organization can function or not. We’ll go into more detail on these kinds of best practices in the priorities within operations section. 

Another part of our motivation for recommending these careers is that we think it’s likely there’s a substantial difference between the best operations professionals and average ones. Our sense from speaking to experts is that the best operations professionals will be able to spot critical bottlenecks and work out the best ways to solve them noticeably better than others–at least in the kinds of roles that give them this level of influence.

This means that if you’re a great fit for these careers, there’s a good chance of having high counterfactual impact – the good you’ll do that wouldn’t have been done otherwise, particularly if you find a role that lets you really improve the organization you’re in.

Another advantage to operations is that it’s a career that’s applicable across cause areas. Whether you care most about global health, animal welfare, or catastrophic risks, or another cause – organizations working in these areas will need operations staff to function well. 

However, it’s also true that some operations tasks are fairly routine. There’s often not a huge difference between how a great specialist and an average one handle things like processing invoices or ensuring an organization’s legal status. These tasks are pretty standardized, with limited scope for optimizing. The more of your job that’s taken up by these tasks, the less you might be able to find ways to improve your organization in other ways–which we’ll expand on later.

The importance of where you work

This all comes with a significant caveat: this is a career path where the impact you’ll have is highly dependent on the organization you’re working for. Even the most talented operations professional won’t have a significant impact if the organization they’re supporting is taking a flawed approach.

This is because, as critical as operations staff can be for an organization’s ability to achieve its goals, operations roles generally don’t offer much influence on what those goals are. 

Similar to other careers we’ve written about, like fundraising and communications, operations roles often work to ensure others can do their best work by providing the structures and processes needed for great work to happen. Because of this, there’s less in the way of face-to-face interaction with whoever is ultimately being positively impacted by your work.

Importantly, if you want to have an impactful operations career, it’s crucial to find work within organizations focused on effective solutions to high-priority problems, and that really care about whether the work they’re doing is effective or not. If you can be confident you’re working for an organization focused on solving important problems, then you can in turn be more confident of your own impact. 

It’s worth noting that operations professionals can work freelance as contractors or consultants (though this is less common), though the same considerations about the kinds of organizations you help out will still apply.

Priorities within operations

If you end up pursuing a career in operations, there are some important things to keep in mind if you want your career to have a great positive impact. Here, we’ll give a few:

Getting the important things right

Assuming you’ve found a role within an organization performing effective work in a high-priority cause area, the best path to positive impact within operations careers is to find the areas where your organization can be most meaningfully improved with your work.

Pinpointing an organization’s greatest opportunities for improvement (and the best solutions) can be challenging – and it will depend a lot on the kind of work your organization is doing. However, we’ve identified a few areas where a skilled operations specialist can often make a substantial positive difference to how their organization functions.

Help others do their best work 

One important function an operations professional can perform is enabling a more efficient division of labour across their organization. People are usually hired to do one or two things well—but in practice, they often end up tackling a long list of unrelated tasks that get in the way of focusing on their strengths. For instance, a researcher might spend hours answering routine emails, tracking timelines, and formatting reports for publication—tasks they’ll likely perform less efficiently than those with an operations mindset, and which actively displace time they’d otherwise spend on research.

Operations staff can step in to remove these blockers, centralizing routine work so others can focus on what they do best. This has the added benefit of compounding improvements across the team: by removing a single bottleneck in a shared process, you can free up time for multiple colleagues at once. For instance, setting up processes that streamline communication (like automated email responses) and automate the scheduling of internal and external meetings can significantly reduce the time spent. 

Of course, the improvements and automations that matter most will vary depending on the organization’s context and mission. But across the board, they help ensure that a higher percentage of the team’s time is spent on work that’s both meaningful and well-matched to their strengths, rather than routine tasks that could be handled more efficiently elsewhere—or even by no one at all.

It’s worth noting that these optimizations often require initiative. The friction points they solve won’t always be visible, especially in organizations where “how things work” has been established without much prior process. Spotting recurring problems, coordinating across teams, and nudging the system into something leaner and more reliable is often where ops work can enable an organization to get more done. 

Increasingly, a large part of improving processes and setting up automations involves the use of AI tools. For example, AI is already competent at assisting with standardized documents like tax forms and legal documents. As AI develops, it’s likely that more and more of an operations career will be focused on guiding AI tools. And, in general, tech-savvy operations specialists (who can use AI and other tools well) will have an advantage in making big improvements to how an organization functions.

Be proactive about risks

One of the most important things an operations person can do is help to shield their organization from important risks, such as those that can threaten its financial, reputational, or legal stability. This means implementing practices and policies that reduce the likelihood of these downside risks.

For example, nonprofits undergo regular audits (with specific requirements depending on local laws). Failing an audit can result in fines, penalties, and reputational damage, severely hindering the organization’s ability to operate effectively. By identifying and keeping hold of the right documentation and accounts for a successful audit, you can prevent a lot of problems down the line.

Risk mitigation can also mean things like performing due diligence on organizations or individuals you partner with. For instance, receiving a large donation from someone with a bad reputation can seriously harm your organization’s image. In many cases, the reputational damage far outweighs the financial benefit.

Other common sources of risk, particularly in smaller nonprofits with more informal structures, include inadequate data security, safeguarding policies, potential conflicts of interest, and undiversified income. 

An operations professional willing to take ownership over risk management, for instance by performing risk assessments and ensuring risk mitigation strategies are in place, can significantly decrease the organization’s vulnerability to financial or reputational harm.

It’s worth noting that addressing risks proactively sometimes requires advocating for caution when others in the organization (including senior leaders) are eager to move forward quickly. This necessitates clear and careful communication. You’ll need to emphasize the importance of risk management while acknowledging that it may require additional time and resources, potentially causing delays in other areas.

Finding the right role for you

Alongside working in a highly impactful organization and finding the best ways to support it, there are other factors that can influence your impact.

Does the role offer meaningful influence?

In some organizations, the expectation is that an operations person will work primarily on the rote tasks that leave little room for excelling, like basic legal and financial tasks. This isn’t inherently a bad thing – these are important tasks that someone needs to do. These roles can also give you helpful experience (and career capital) you can use later on to find a role that offers more room for showing off later.

But, if you’re looking for an impactful role, it’s worth taking a real look at what an organization actually wants from its ops team before you take a job. Is it simply about keeping the lights on and ensuring legal boxes are ticked? 

If you’re someone who wants to do more than this, such as wanting to innovate and actively shape how things get done, you’ll need to find an organization that truly values operations as an engine for improvement. For a talented operations professional, these will be the roles that offer the most chance of having a sizable positive impact. 

What an organization wants from their operations staff is usually something you can get a sense of through the application process, so make sure to ask questions about what an organization is looking for from their operations hires. 

How might the role change over time?

It’s also worth bearing in mind how your role might change within an organization. If you join early on, you might spend a lot of time helping to set up the organization, but later spend more of your time on internal systems, helping with hiring, and other ongoing processes. Because of this, it can help to find out what your role might look like in one or two years, not just when you start. 

This can cut both ways in terms of how promising it might make a role seem to you. For instance, a role that involves more “trivial” administrative duties early on might help you find your feet in the field before taking on more substantial tasks, even if you won’t have much of an immediate influence. On the other hand, some roles might offer an ability to meaningfully shape an organization when you join, but only require more routine tasks later down the line.

How passionate are you about the mission? 

Beyond this, there’s a bigger question: do you genuinely believe in what the organization is trying to achieve? Operations roles often mean your impact is a step removed from the front lines. If you’re not sold on the mission, that indirectness can hamper your motivation. It’s tough to stay motivated pouring your energy into something if you secretly doubt its value. 

This is a risk in any job, but it’s particularly sharp in operations careers where your work is tied entirely to supporting the rest of the organization. Before taking a role, ask yourself if you can really see yourself staying motivated within the org – if you can’t, it might be worth expanding your search.

Is operations a good fit for you?

Your personal fit for a career path is really important. If a job doesn’t suit your skillset, motivations, and other factors, it’s less likely you’ll be able to do great, impactful work.

This section will discuss some traits that make you more likely to excel in (and enjoy) operations work.

• Organized and detail-oriented. More than most careers, operations requires a high level of organizational skill and care for the small but important details. If this comes naturally to you, this is a positive indicator.
• Good at quickly learning new tasks. Especially in smaller organizations, you’ll need to get competent in a few different areas. One day, you might have to research tax codes to pay a contractor, and the next, you might be doing graphic design for marketing materials. The ability to get up to speed across different kinds of work (and equally importantly, know how to research efficiently) is something that will serve you well in this career.
• You value variety more than “deep work”. Related to this, a distinctive feature of operations work is how varied the day-to-day tasks can be. These careers tend to suit people who like working through a long list of different tasks, rather than those who prefer to spend hours on a single complex task like research.
• Resilient. Operations work often means dealing with new and unexpected problems being thrown your way. For instance, a banking issue might arise that prevents staff from being paid on time, or new legislation might affect how your organization functions. You’ll be the one dealing with much of the fallout from these surprises, which can cause a fair amount of stress. If you’re able to cope well under the stress of putting out these kinds of fires, you might be a good fit for operations.
• Proactive. Related to the previous point, the best operations specialists are those who can anticipate and address problems before they even arise. Similarly, a great operations person can find ways to make processes better even when there aren’t noticeable issues to begin with.
• Happy to work outside the limelight. Operations often means working behind the scenes to support your organization’s goals. This can require a certain degree of humility, as well as finding satisfaction in enabling others rather than seeking the spotlight.

How to test personal fit

It’s often hard to know how well you’ll suit a career path. Because of this, it’s a great idea to find practical ways to test your personal fit in advance. Here are some suggestions:

Consider your personality. If you’re the sort of person who’s cut out for operations roles, there’s a good chance you’ll already have some good indicators from your personal history. 

For instance, if you’re a good fit for these careers, you’ll probably have already noticed that you’re more organized than most people. You probably enjoy keeping your own life running smoothly and putting systems in place to get stuff done (like habit trackers, productivity tools, and other things). These traits are common in people who excel in operations.

To make this assessment more concrete, you could take a “big five” personality test. Pay the most attention to your score for conscientiousness – an attribute that’s helpful in most careers, but especially so in operations.

Find low-stakes ways to perform operations tasks. Find a local volunteer group that needs some help with logistics or legal work. If they need it, helping to officially register them as a charity could be both a great learning experience for you and genuinely helpful for them, too. 

If you’re in college or university, taking a role within a student society can also be a good way to test your fit. In some common roles (like treasurer) you’ll be doing some of the things real organizations need, but on a smaller scale, and with much less downside if things don’t go to plan.

Career Journey – Bell Arden

Bell worked in engineering and construction before pivoting into operations. They now run the Operations team at The Future Society, a non-profit organization focused on improving AI governance.

“For me, 18 years of extensive project management work—along with running a small business in the construction industry half of that time—was really applicable to running operations for a nonprofit. A lot of construction is complex projects that require organizational skills. I now find that really helpful in organizing our organization and how we work.“

Read our full interview with Bell here!

Getting into operations

It’s not always clear how to enter a new field. Fortunately, operations isn’t a career path with stringent background requirements. Though many roles will likely require a degree, the subject rarely matters much. What matters more is the experience you can demonstrate. Here are a few ideas to start gaining experience:

Take on measurable projects. We gave a couple of examples above of ways you can test your fit within college societies and volunteer groups. If you’re keen on operations roles, you can go one step further than this, and seek out opportunities to do things where success is easily measurable. Being able to provide concrete examples of improvements you’ve made in ways that organizations care about will give you an advantage in the hiring process. Examples like “I helped scale a volunteer organization from 3 to 50 members” or “I ran an event that received a higher net promoter score than previous years” are great things to be able to list on your CV and discuss in interviews.

Consider professional experience before finding directly impactful roles. If you’re struggling to get the experience needed to join a highly effective nonprofit, it could be worth getting some experience in the for-profit sector to develop your skills first. This is something recommended by Bell Arden, an operations professional we interviewed: ‘I’d recommend people invest in operations spaces in the for-profit space while trying to make themselves probably as much of a generalist as possible.’ 

Whether this is right for you will depend on a few factors, so we’d recommend reading more about career capital to work out whether you should focus on developing or having an impact now .

Develop more specialized skills. The more senior you become in operations, the more helpful it’s likely to be to develop specialist skills in project management, human resources, and people management. This means you’ll be able to take on greater responsibilities and gain more leverage with your career. We’ll give a few examples of helpful online courses at the end of this article.

Relevant education. Though your degree title matters much less than your experience, there are some subjects that can still offer an advantage in entering this field. Nonprofit management (typically a postgraduate subject) is a particularly helpful subject that will take you through many of the important processes you might encounter as an ops specialist.

Recommended resources for taking action

Internships and fellowships

Here are a few great recurring opportunities for those who are interested in entrepreneurship, and are early-career or still studying:

• BlueDot’s AI Safety Operations bootcamp is a great introduction to operations careers in the context of addressing risks from AI.
• Impact Ops are an impact-focused operations organization that occasionally run 3-6 month fellowships. 

Online Courses

These are courses that have been recommended to us by experts, or look like particularly good ways to upskill within operations:

• The Project Management Institute’s project management course is a good place to start if you want to upskill in project management. It comes with a fee, so you could also consider their shorter, but free, Kickoff course for a taster.
• Udemy’s free course on operations management may also be worth checking out. It’s focused more on for-profit and industry rather than impactful roles, but many concepts will translate.