How Being a Pianist and Nonprofit Cofounder Have Prepared Me for an Operations Role

For over a decade, I’ve played piano at an almost professional level, competing and winning in state and international competitions.

I also co-founded a nonprofit called Hidden Beauty last summer to help with the N-95 mask shortage caused by COVID-19. We ended up donating $1000 to UNICEF from skincare mask sales!

Through this experience, as well as countless hours of honing my skills and taking classes, I honed personality traits and skills that will serve me well later in life, especially in an operations role.

People working in operations assess problems with a wide variety of business processes and come up with solutions to those problems. Here are some important traits that all operations managers share:

Ability to Execute

An operations manager should balance out a vision with practical actionable steps. I’ve never really thought of myself as an ideas person; I’m more of a person who relentlessly executes an idea. I broke down my cofounder’s idea of a “mask for mask” into bite-size tasks and mini-deadlines to turn her vision into a reality.

Drive for Perfection and Detail-Obsessed

Operations managers manage tasks meticulously; they track projects, product launches, and more. They never settle for “ good enough” or mediocrity, since processes can always be improved, and there’s always a better solution.

When I worked on piano pieces for competitions, I obsessively refined every tiny detail. I spent my time practicing a single movement hundreds of times.

Similarly, when building Hidden Beauty, I made exhaustive notes on meetings, action steps, and advice from other entrepreneurs, lawyers, and doctors. Inspired by Agile project management, I split up the project into 5 equal sprints based on the deadline for the project and 4 stages: Initiation, Planning, Execution, and Closing. I organized all tasks by this timeline and categorized them by the four stages, as well as by priority. I used Asana to keep track of everything.

I enjoy project management and creating systems to keep track of every single project detail. I know that I’ll enjoy working in an operations role.

Persistence

In operations, it’s important to persevere through difficulties and have a relentless focus on results. Those in operations are constantly trying to find a solution to a problem, or creating a better system. I’ve developed a mindset of never giving up through countless piano competitions where I failed to win anything. Instead of feeling discouraged, I focused continually on winning — and I eventually did. That mindset is easily transferable to any operations role.

Data-Driven

Operations managers create strategies and make decisions backed by data, not by emotion. Similar to an operations manager, I surveyed 42 people on their skincare preferences for Hidden Beauty and analyzed their responses to determine where to focus our marketing efforts and how to position our products.

A Love For Other People

Operations roles focus on dealing with other people. Those working in operations establish systems to help the company and employees operate more efficiently, so they interact a lot with people. For example, Sara Morrison, the director of operations at Praxis, builds systems to help everyone else working at Praxis. Communication skills are key to implementing those systems.

I also interacted with a lot of people while building Hidden Beauty, whether it was a videographer for our promo video, or mentors to get feedback on our website and product offerings. My love for connecting with other people is valuable for working in operations.

I’m sure the skills I developed as a high-performing pianist and nonprofit cofounder will go a long way in an operations job.