Ops Term of the Month: Ease

Ease is infrastructure.

Over the last several years of working with 45+ organizations and businesses—from large-scale educational training providers to CBOs connecting young people to career paths—I’ve seen very few orgs that think of ease in this way.

Most organizations treat ease as a luxury. Or worse, as a sign they’re not working hard enough. ← Gah. No. Let’s say no-to-the-no-no-no to this. Grit is overrated. We want to work more smoothly, have time to breathe, and still get more results (for humans and for the Earth).

Ease is leverage.

It’s what allows a business / a venture / a mission—and the people dedicated to it—to stay sustainable through pivots, contractions, and expansions. When systems are designed with ease in mind, change becomes easier to absorb rather than destabilizing.

In organizations, ease shows up in practical ways:

• Clear (and visually displayed) roles and goals that reduce re-explaining and drawn-out decision-making.

• Tools set up for work's sake. Your Salesforce, HubSpot, Insightly, Monday, or ClickUp should match how people actually work—and make that work faster and more straightforward.

• Documented processes and practices—SOPs, workflows, norms—that beat the tendency to re-design or re-do things you already have right.

• Operational roadmaps that show teams what matters now, next, and later, especially during periods of transition or growth.

Ease reduces friction.

Friction causes grind, and then we tell ourselves we have to be gritty to survive it. Instead, we can install systems, practices, and tools that smooth the path—and make what used to be hard work feel more easy-going.

The impacts of increasing ease aren’t always measurable in the ways we’ve been programmed to check. I haven’t seen a KPI for ease yet, but it consistently leads to:

• More impact with less strain.

• Faster, calmer decision-making.

• Greater resilience when something inevitably changes.

• More space to rest, to think, and to re-imagine.

The next time you’re designing for your org or business, don’t be afraid to design ease into the system. It’ll get you further than the grind ever will.

This was first released in E.TBD’s monthly Ops Update newsletter. You can read it here and subscribe here.