Operations with Sean Lane

On this episode of Operations, Sean goes back in time – to 2012, to be exact – when special guest Bala Balabaskaran first joined Salesforce as Vice President of Go to Market Technology and Operations. At the time, Salesforce was a $2 billion dollar startup going through hypergrowth. Sean and Bala talk about Salesforce's operating model and what it was like to be in charge of the go to market planning process at a large company with a startup mentality. Want to know Bala's step by step approach for building out the annual planning process at Salesforce? Listen to the full episode.

On this episode of Operations, Sean explores a common trap that Ops teams fall into. And spoiler alert – it’s not what you think. Listen to the full episode to learn what the trap is, how and why Ops teams fall into it, and four actions you can take today (and every day) to make sure you don’t get stuck in the trap.

A scale-up is typically a company that has found product-market fit, has created more specialized roles within an organization and is in the process of building a repeatable, predictable machine for growth. And while there are tons of books, webinars, conferences, and coaches dedicated to this concept – it’s a whole other story when you get a chance to talk to someone who’s actually in the middle of one right now. So on this episode of Operations, Sean and Jason Holmes, COO of Showpad, break down the processes behind a successful scale-up. Want to hear some of Jason’s biggest lessons learned from his time scaling Adobe and Marketo? Listen to the full episode.

What does it mean to be a COO at a hypergrowth company? A valid question for sure, but if you ask 10 people the same question, chances are you'll end up with 10 different answers. To find out why the COO role is so misunderstood, Sean talks to J Zac Stein – COO of Lattice. In this episode, Sean and J Zac cover everything from what being a COO means to him, the relationship between a CEO and a COO, and the rare but powerful ways you can match your own career trajectory with your company’s trajectory during Hypergrowth.

On this episode of Operations, Sean chats with Kyle Morris about his unique path into ops. Kyle was an Army Ranger for four years before making his way to Silicon Valley, where he started his career in sales and eventually found his way into operations. Now Kyle is the founder of SifData and Kicksaw. Together Sean and Kyle cover everything from how Kyle fell into ops, why operations people should learn how to code, and why SDRs might actually be the best funnel for future ops talent.