I’m sure you’ve seen freeloaders at your workplace. But how do you find those ones in your Operations org. This is important coz, Operations is a network game. Breakages or misalignments in one area of your operations significantly affects other parts of your ops in ways that are not directly visible.

Here are 5 signs that your mid-level Ops manager is not adding value.

They wait for you to follow up

Ops managers need to be on high alert most of the time. Unfortunately, that’s what it takes in this business. When there are problems or when they have to do some tasks, they can’t wait for you to follow up on what’s happening or wait for the next sync up. If they do, you need to check the culture you’ve set or the person you’ve hired.

The Mgr does not use the Product

Often I see managers delegating looking at metrics/handling teams to the leads below them. The leads end up doing most of the work. This is a classic indicator of a freeloader. You can easily find them when they ask for a link to your main portal or the master dashboard.

When they are not involved in the Training process

The training process needs to be evaluated by managers at every level. All the way to head of Ops. Any manager who does not take training seriously is hardly a right fit in an org with critical operations.

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When they are not front and centre when shit goes down

This is probably the most important job of a manager. Ops has problems every single week. A key role of a good Ops manager is to put out fires and resolve issues. When your Operations manager is not involved in the process (may not be leading it), then you need to question their work.

A few more,

• They don’t talk to the technology team
• They share updates but ask their leads to respond if there are questions on that
• They don’t have daily operations data handy

Just ask for the key metrics in your next sync up. You’ll know who’s doing what. I want to emphasize this because you are as strong as your weakest link. An org that constantly removes weakest links and adds new links will get stronger over a period of time.