When Operations Meet People

Dr. Carrie Graham says out loud what most organizational leaders already feel but cannot name. When Operations Meet People is one of those rare business books that's as honest as it is practical, written by someone who has clearly lived inside the dysfunction, not just studied it from the outside. The principle that misalignment is the default condition for organizations that grow without intentional design stopped me mid-read, because I have watched that exact erosion happen in real time. If you're leading a team where people aren't working together, where the unwritten rules contradict the documented ones, and where your best employees are slowly becoming checked out and complacent, the principles in this book will give you both the language and the roadmap to finally fix it.

After managing various small businesses and teams of all sizes over the past decades, I wasn’t aware that the uneasy feeling of training disconnect that pokes out of the shadows at times could actually be defined. My assumption that either the training needed to be built better or that the delivery method failed certain employees was wrong. Dr Graham’s latest book was so enlightening because it gave me a glimpse into why this misalignment had potentially occurred but that “misalignment is the default condition” when training has not been intentionally designed. We are not alone! It needed to be written that leaders need to take a more honest look at training gaps and use the lens of intention to close them once and for all. And as a process documentation specialist, I of course love that she shares a common insight that “Training investments connect to specific, measurable operational outcomes”.  This is the book that you have been missing in your quest to train your staff at a word-class level!

I started having flashbacks of all the damn energy I wasted trying to band aid the problems every team experiences. The problem Dr Carrie addresses lives in every business and the leaders who want to better serve their people stand to get clarity around how to do so. But they gotta consume the ideas in this book and put them into action 😉

The information in this book will enhance how I interact with humans in the training space. No one sets out to teach something hoping the training will fail.  The information in this book will give me the tools I need to ensure what I share with others improves people, rather than fails. The book, like all of Dr. Graham's training sessions, is filled with practical ways for me to ensure others can learn from me.