⚙️ Ops Playbook #48

Hi Operators ⚙️

It’s been a privilege to watch high-performing individuals competing at their best on the world’s biggest stage.

Of course, I’m talking about The Bottleneck team putting together this week’s Ops Playbook, but I guess the Olympics are interesting too!

⚙️ Here’s today’s tips:

• Onboarding Buddies → Making remote work more sociable

• Structuring Employee Bonus Plans → How to construct and allocate a bonus pool

• A Security-First Offboarding Checklist → Are you prepped for a security breach

Ready? Let’s dive in 👇

PS: Ops is a lonely gig. Let’s connect on Linkedin 

^{Together With Attio}
New Manifesto Drop

I’m on a Times Square Billboard!

When the Attio team asked for my take on CRMs' future as part of this brand marketing launch, I knew they were working on something big.

With AI at the forefront of everything now, it is no surprise that CRMs, the world’s largest B2B software category, will be massively disrupted.

An underrated part of this launch is the manifesto. Building an excellent product is hard. Crafting a vision of the future is next level. Attio went out and wrote the blueprint for what to expect in the next decade.

Click on the button below if you want to learn about the future of software.

Operator’ Library

• Netflix is a great case study on building A+ teams. Here’s a detailed breakdown on attracting top performers.

• How to balance being involved without micromanaging.

• There’s no way around it, firing people sucks. But we have to avoid lying to ourselves when letting someone go.

• 10% of the time, there may actually be a “silver bullet” approach to your problem. It’s all about how you present your idea

• Here’s a guide to creating SMART goals that actually move the needle.

I. Onboarding Buddies

Insight from GitLab

Building remote teams is tough.

You’re not just fighting mouse-jiggling apps, you’re contending with the alienation new remote-first employees feel.

Over 50% of remote employees reported feeling less connected to their teams and company's culture. Onboarding processes for remote-first teams are, in many cases, severely lacking.

But it’s not all bad. We found a simple step that GitLab (and other culture-first companies) use to get new remote hires integrated right away.

Assign new hires an onboarding buddy - preferably a senior teammate to:

• Greet them at the start and end of their first day (GitLab pairs team members in the same timezone to make those calls more seamless)

• Give them a tour of the most useful Slack channels and helpful pages of the company handbook (we love documentation 🤝)

• Organize a group call to introduce the new employee to the rest of the team

Thinking beyond the first week, pairing new hires with an onboarding buddy also sets them up for a very organic mentorship program.

It’s a small step that goes a LONG way in building a strong culture, especially in remote-first teams.

Learn more: How to be a good ops boss to a remote team

II. How to Structure Employee Bonus Plans

Insight from Jim Schleckser 

Let’s talk cold hard cash 💸

How to set up a cash bonus plan to attract and incentivize high-performers?

First, we need to calculate the bonus pool size. For startups, a common benchmark is to set aside 10-20% of capitalization for employee equity + compensation.

For larger companies, we’ll want to set aside a percentage of profits.

Next, we’ll need to choose a distribution strategy we’ll use to divvy up that pool.

There are two common ways to structure bonus compensation. The first is as a % of base salary, and the second is based on role/contribution. The first is more straightforward, while the second requires a little bit of creativity on your part.

If we’re using the more straightforward structure, a good benchmark is ~11% of base salary.

If you’re tiering bonus distribution based on role, think of the cash as a pool of shares. 

To use a simplified example: If you have a $100k pool, you can divide it into 20 “shares,” and distribute those $5,000 units across your team based on role. Your CFO might qualify for 5 shares while a more junior member might qualify for 1.

There are a hundred ways to slice it, but we thought we’d cover the basics and benchmarks.

And, if nothing else works, throw a quarterly pizza party. Everyone loves pizza 🍕

Learn more: How to calculate bonuses based on shares

III. Our Security-First Offboarding Checklist

Insight from Pure IT

When you have to fire someone, the last thing you want to think about is security risk.

But if there’s one thing that makes a not-very-fun task even worse, it’s a breach from a pissed-off former employee.

Ask Cash App, Georgia-Pacific, or Tesla. You get the idea.

So, in the name of covering our asses while not having to think too much, here’s a quick checklist that you can screenshot and pass to your IT guy:

• Deactivate their user accounts (while retaining and backing up all of the data!)

• Return all company property

• Revoke access to sensitive internal tools & platforms (slack, email, cloud services & storage, CRM, and admin or financial tools)

• Communicate the personnel change to the team and mandate password changes for those with shared accounts.

• Keep detailed records of your actions for potential documentation later on

Better safe than sorry.

Learn more: How to fire someone while protecting your data

How am I doing? 👋

I take all feedback I receive to heart. Keep it coming! Just hit reply and let me know – I'd love to hear from you!

Cheers,

Rameel from The Bottleneck

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