Is Your Job Purely Operational?

An operational job is one that provides basic standalone workflow assistance in the day-to-day functioning of an organization. That’s a bit of a mouthful. As the work flows through the organization, are you providing just a relatively small input to the finished product or service? Because many modern organizations have many layers, it’s likely that your work passes through a number of hands before it gets to the customer. The rule of thumb for determining whether your job is operational is to calculate how many others “touch” what you do. Perhaps an example might help.

Imagine a customer-facing support role in a large PC vendor. The employee provides direct support to end users. Suppose a user phones in saying that he can’t boot his PC. The support person gets the details from the user and accesses a database of common problems. Unusual issues (such as a motherboard failure) can generally be resolved by liaising with colleagues. The point is that the support person provides, in most cases, a standalone service. Most problems can be solved immediately. This is what I mean by an operational job.