38.  How does Research work with Ops?  Featuring special guest Mia Mishek

Joe Marcantano: Drew, welcome to another episode.

Drew Freeman: Hello. Hello. How are you?

Joe Marcantano: I am doing well. I'm excited. We are gonna do a little marathon recording today because I'm gonna be traveling a little bit next month.

Drew Freeman: Are we getting to the end of your busy schedule? Cause you've been doing quite a bit of traveling.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, the may marks the end of my travel. My big travel for the year, I should say.

Drew Freeman: All right, well, let's get into it. I know that in another episode in this session we'll be talking a little bit about some of your travel plans.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. And for this episode I have two very special surprises for everyone. The first is I have a listener question. And to help answer that listener question, I'm going toa introduce our guest for this week. everybody say hello to Mia Mishek.

Mia Mishek: Hello. Hello.

Joe Marcantano: Mia, you and I know each other from some years ago. We worked at a tech scale up company together where you were one of the first Research Ops people brought in.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, yeah. It's been a long time. Lots of things have changed since we were together there. But you know, good times, good times.

Joe Marcantano: So m Mia, go ahead and introduce yourself for everybody.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, absolutely. I'm Mia Mishek. I'm m a senior UX Research Operations Manager and I currently work at Target.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. So Mia, I brought you in or I asked you to come in because well, Drew and I are researchers and we have an idea of how to work with Research Ops. We are not Research Ops. It'not it's not our wheelhouse. And so we had a question from one of our listeners sent in. This one was sent in by anonymous and it just says what are the best practices for establishing and maintaining successful Research Ops within an organization?

Mia Mishek: Yeah, that's a big question. That's for sure.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. I thought that maybe the first thing we'd do is just kind of take a step back and like have you. Because we havent talked about Research Ops on the show before. So I was wondering, could you just give us a basic 101? What is research Ops?

Mia Mishek: Yeah, absolutely. So if we're going back to dinosaurs, way, way back, Research Ops basically came from design ops. It was the specialized operational, skill that people, from Design Ops would transition into helping research scale because obviously lots of designers use research to enable their decisions and processes. So that's the foundation of where it came from. But it's very much grown from there. it's not really connected to Design Ops anymore. And so research Ops now as it stands is operational role within a research team that helps scale and build the research up. So that could be either helping get the research projects out into the organization and making sure everyone can see those insights, whether that's through a newsletter, fireside chats or podcasts within the org, or research repositories. I feel like that's a very common way. but also they help with the day to day of really that sticky scalability kind of stuff, where you're talking about templates, wikis, knowledge, documents, people, growing, the organization, also the legal, governance and the data privacy aspects and also the tools. That's a really important thing.

Joe Marcantano: I think that there's probably a misconception out there by some more junior researchers that like what OPS does is recruitment. That's, that's what OPS helps with, is OPS just does recruitment. And that's so not the case. Like people can't see us, right, because we're not recording video. But I can kind of see you rolling your eyes there and it sounds like that might even be a frustration point for.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, I just realized. I really did leave out recruitment. because I. Yes,

00:05:00

Mia Mishek: that's definitely a sticky point because it's very easy for a Research Ops person to come into a team, do chief of staffy, like admin things where they're managing calendars that are managing agendas and they're doing the grunt work of the recruitment. so that's absolutely a case for some operation teams out there or operational people. however, that shouldn't be the main focus of a Research Ops, in my sincere opinion. if you're getting into research recruitment and that's their main goal, they should be a research coordinator and that's a more junior role. And I do think all Research Ops people should be exposed to that, at least because they should have those foundational chops, right? They should be able to make recommendations, they should be able to, you know, talk about best practices when it talks about recruitment. But the actual tactical doing, pressing the buttons, setting up the projects and doing the recruitment, that can suck up a lot of your time. And so you're not able to do all these other great things. If you're doing recruitment, 100%.

Drew Freeman: Yeah. Researchers out there, if you're thinking that a research opsperson is just going to help you with recruitment and make that, make your life easier that way, you are sorely missing out on all of the benefits that research opops can give you.

Mia Mishek: absolutely, 1,000%. And so I do think, it's really common to have that train of thought of an OPS person is someone who's coming in, helping me with recruitment, helping me with some of this management admin type of things. And you'd just be wasting everyone's time if you don't utilize them to the best of their ability.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, I totally agree. And building what you said about how every research OPS person should start as a coordinator kind of build those jobops, I think that a lot of researchers should start as research coordinators total. I think that there's a lot of, a lot of learning, kind of what you're asking for that can happen there. And so that you can understand like, okay, what's the cost benefit of me asking for this thing with my recruitment sample, which can be easy to not think about if you're not the one putting in the work and do like paying the cost of that thing?

Mia Mishek: 1,000%. Absolutely. And you also, then, you know, you need to walk a mile on someone else's shoes.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: You can understand that, certain criteria of people are harder to find. It's going to take longer to field. and then you become more precious about the numbers. You're like, hey, I really need five to six people. if we can get eight to ten, that's like gold standard amazing. But I can make some insights, and I can derive some decisions from five to six.

Drew Freeman: Well, and the way that we've been talking about it so far makes it sound like the line between researcher or OPS is much, much more clearly defined than it actually is. I think every researcher is also, you know, an OPS person to a greater or lesser degree. And I think that the difference between researcher and OPS is really more about how far on that spectrum are you, how experienced are you in either direction. But yeah, every researcher needs that OPS knowledge to a greater or lesser degree to be able to do their job well.

Speaker D: Oh, yeah.

Mia Mishek: And also like their preference. Right. Like, there are some people that are very organized and also, operation people should be taking ideas and thoughts from the researcher. It should not be a situation where they're like, it is my way or the highway. This is the process, this is the Most organized way we're going to do this, it should be a conversation between researcher and operations. And if there is something that a researcher is really into, like they really want to be heavily involved in the building, scaling and set up an organization of a research repository, I don't think that operations people should shy away from that and they should be like, oh, you're stepping on my toes. Oh, you shouldn't be being involved in this. This is my job. Like, that's just not a great way to go about it when it could be a relationship instead of, you do your thing, I do my thing and we stay in each other's lanes.

Drew Freeman: It needs

00:10:00

Drew Freeman: to be a collaborative relationship in order for it to work at its best. So, Mia, before we get back to our original listener question, you said something that sparked a question from me, which is how, how much movement back and forth between ops roles or research focused roles have you seen people make? So how often do you see folks go from being a researcher to being going to the op side and vice versa? Because it really does seem like researchers need to know ops. OPS needs to know some research to be able to help organize and make the best decisions. So it really seems like you could be doing a lot of moving back and forth if you wanted to.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, I definitely, I've seen both. So I've seen researchers that really, are almost pigeonholed and forced into an operational role because they're the only one that is like organized on the team and they're like, well, I guess I'll be the ops person and they kind of go down that path like. Butgrudgingly, you know, which isn't like a great approach.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: and then I've seen u, ops go into research because they're like, oh, I'm super interested in this and I don't want to be stuck in the weeds of like, you know, the tactical figuring out of things. I just want to be talking to the users, which is, Both paths are really valid, I would say from my own path. I actually came from a project management background. So that really melded well with operations.

Drew Freeman: I was gonna say. That makes a lot of sense too.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, exactly. And then I did some training within UX and like a boot camp and I really liked UX research. And then that's how I ended up in like the res ops area. And so I think operations don't need to come from a research background. Actually. I think if you come from an operational background anywhere in tech, I would say, like, if you're a design ops or a designer wanting to get into ops or a product ops wanting to get into research. I would say those skills really are transferable. And then what you need to do to get your foundations in is really lean on your researchers, ask a lot of questions, join these moderated interviews, you know, join webinars, listen to podcasts, and then you can really, get up to speed because no one's asking. No one has ever asked me to run a research project, that's for sure. But I can sit in a room and kind of talk the talk. when it comes to, the front side of a research project.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. I think in the same way a researcher doesn't need to be the expert in the product they are researching. A research ops person doesn't need to be a research expert as long as they can kind of have that conversational fluency, you know, or even the same way a qual researcher might not be experienced enough in some of the heavier quant methods, but they can kind of talk the quant talk a little bit just to kind of get by and get through those conversations.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Just having, knowing the language u, knowing how to admit when you don't know or, you know, not being too prideful in, you know, always asking questions and being like, is this a dumb question? But I don't know what this means. Can you explain it to me? I think that brings you really far. and I think, you know, if you're an organized individual and you want to get into tech, a research coordinator is a great entry point into research apps to grow.

Joe Marcantano: So let's kind of come back to the, the listener question a little bit in that I'm curious. I was going to say how would you. But you've done this. How did you tackle, you know, because if I remember correctly, you were the first ops person hired, when we were working together. So I'm wondering, like, how do you kind of measure what needs to be done? How do you kind of take those first steps if you're establishing and, and ops program in a place where research already exists?

Mia Mishek: Well, I think, and maybe it's because I'm looking back with like rose colored glasses of like my career in research apps, it becomes pretty evident pretty quickly where the holes are or like what's badly needed.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: I would say if you're coming into a role and there's no operations and there's a whole research team, they're gonna have a list for you to start. They're Gonna say we need a research repository, we need, a new tool for this methodology. We need xyz.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: And I would encourage any operations person

00:15:00

Mia Mishek: that's coming in to take a step back and really like approach it like a research question and a research project. You don't want the users to tell you what they want. You need to identify what the real problems are and make those suggestions and those insights.

Speaker D: Right.

Drew Freeman: I love this.

Joe Marcantano: So, yeah, I just found the quote I'm using to promote this episode on Social M media.

Drew Freeman: Perfect.

Mia Mishek: Great. but it is true. It is true. Like they're gonna have a laundry list for you. They truly are. and I've experienced that in every single role. And you know what that laundry list ends up being if you take it on It's a three year to do list. You cannot achieve it. All right, so you need to really identify what, what's the emergency fires that you need to take out? I would say most commonly documentation. And you'd be surprised. You think, oh, researchers, they're very organized, they have lots of documents. They like, they keep track of everything. But actually not really.

Drew Freeman: I was gonna say you said you'd be surprised. I'm like, nope, not surprised at all.

Mia Mishek: Yeah.

Joe Marcantano: As I look over at my legal pad and stack of papers that I know don't exist anywhere except on my desk.

Mia Mishek: yeah. And I'm sure your ops person is sweating a little bit as probably just a little. Yeah.

Drew Freeman: As a currently, as a research trainer, I'm like, I know so much of this information already exists in my head, in other people's heads. How the heck do I get it out to everybody else?

Mia Mishek: Yep. Yeah, exactly. And so it's even just those like foundational questions of how does recruitment work here? Where do our working documents live, where do our readouts live? You know, how do I set up, a readout and what are the best practices for inviting stakeholders and who should be involved in a research project and how should they be involved? In the moderated interviews, its like these foundational questions that people know and they can talk to you about it, but its not recorded anywhere. And so it makes onboarding extremely difficult. And then, it also makes the research ops job almost like becoming the wisened old librarian, you know, having to answer everyone's questions all the time. Whereas like, it should just live in a wiki and then, you know, you move on with your day. Because if you're always talking about those foundational things, you can't grow, you can't Scale up. And you can't bring your researchers to the next level where they're saying, okay, we've figured out all of our operational things. Now let's think about how we're going to scale research. Now let's think about how can we get ahead of research questions and be really strategic within the organization.

Joe Marcantano: You said something that I've had to deal with recently. You know, putting all of those, like, kind of procedures on paper. And it's great if they exist on paper, but they also need to be findable. People need to go where to. Look, I'm actually working with our ops team right now, and we're going through a procurement process and there is a very well written, very easy to follow doc that exists on how to go through procurement. The problem is none of us knew that document existed. And the joke I used was like, that's like putting up a speed limit sign on the highway and then throwing a blanket over it.

Mia Mishek: Yes.

Joe Marcantano: If I don't know that the doc exists, if I don't know where to find it, how am I supposed to follow it doesn't matter how good the doc is at that point.

Mia Mishek: Yes. A big part of a research ops job is to make sure that everyone knows about these things and they know it exists.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: And so that should be through either communicating with your team consistently, you know, doing team all hands meetings where you're talking about the new documents and where they live. That's a newsletter for the whole org. You should be really loud about what you're doing and you should be really clear. And then that way your work won't go and it won't be missed.

Joe Marcantano: When we're thinking about the ways that research and research ops work together. And I'm certainly not asking you to gripe about your research team, but, like, what are some of the things that researchers do, maybe even unintentionally, that make your life or your team's life harder? What are things, or I guess I'll rephrase it as what are the things that we as researchers can do better to make your job easier?

Mia Mishek: That's a great question. because the thing is, I think anyone who

00:20:00

Mia Mishek: is in this role has to like researchers and has to, like, just understand the people that tend to be researchers, how their brains work.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: I think the biggest thing is giving researchers the benefit of doubt and not assuming that they're trying to take advantage of your time.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: They're simply asking questions. Right. They're simply asking, where is this thing? How does this work? How should we do this and instead of, you know, getting defensive and being like, oh, well, they're telling me that I need to do this, or like I haven't documented it well enough. That's not what they're doing. You know, they're truly just trying to find the answer. So you need to set those boundaries and say, actually we have this recorded in the wiki. Here's the link. If you have problems finding anything else, let me know. You know, instead of being like you, you should have read this already, like I told you. D. You know, and it's's, it's this relationship, you know, and so I think, always, researchers are always going to ask for more.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: They're the mouse with the cookie. Or is that the right phrase? If, yeah, the mouse. Yeah. If you give a mouse of a cookie, right. They're go goingna on a glass of milk.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: So if you do recruitment for a researcher out of your job description once, they're gonna want you to do it again. So always set the boundary the first time and be say, hey, that's not our process. We don't, you know, recruit that way. Or I don't do the tactical recruiting for you. Here's the documentation on how you can follow that process. Any questions, feel free to like, put a time on my calendar.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: Set those boundaries. and it will increase your happiness tenfold.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: you just gotta avoid burnout. You can't do everything for everyone. And no one's expecting you to do everything for everyone. But if you say yes, they're goingna be like, great, then I don't have to do that. Moving on to the next thing.

Joe Marcantano: Everything you said there reminds me so much of how I've talked to mid and junior level researchers about dealing with their stakeholders.

Drew Freeman: Totally.

Joe Marcantano: And it totally makes sense because to some degree a researcher is a stakeholder for a research opsperson. even though it is definitely a more symbiotic relationship where it's kind of one team. But yeah, it could totally be viewed that way. And it's funny to hear researchers talked about that way. And it totally makes sense. I could absolutely see in my head every situation you just described.

Mia Mishek: Yeah. And this might be a controversial take, but I do think at some aspect an operational role is a service role, just like a manager role is a service role for their team.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: And so there are things that you will need to do to serve your team. Right. And the researchers are my team that I'm serving.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: But I also, am not. It's a service, not, enslaved to the team.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: I can set those boundaries. I can really control the conversation on how I am helping and surping the team. And so it's really just about communication and boundary setting. And I think that'll go a long way.

Drew Freeman: All right, Mia, so you've talked about how you set up a research ops department in a place where research was happening, but maybe in a disorganized manner. What about what does it look like for a team where research ops is already up and running? How do you maintain that? What does that look like? And how do you continually improve it?

Mia Mishek: Oh, that's a great question. I don't know if I've ever come onto a team where there's, like, operations set up and it's perfect and there's, like, nothing to do.

Drew Freeman: Nothing's ever going to be perfect.

Mia Mishek: Yeah. I think the approach is really the same. they're always gonna have a list for you when you come on. but the nice thing about coming into a team that already has operations is, there might already be a way of their used to working with operations in a positive and a negative way. And so you can use that to your advantage to kind of shortcut a lot of conversations about boundaries that you may need to have.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: you may need to, do a lot more relationship management in a team that is already used to an operations versus you being, like, new and shiny.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: You're, like, talking to all the researchers, being like, I'm a new person. Here's how I work. How do you work? Like, how can we work together?

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: because there's always that sense of, like, you know, oh, you're just the new operations person, so you're gonna work exactly the same as the last person. And that might not be the case.

00:25:00

Mia Mishek: And that's totally fine. you might have different skills that they had that you don't, you know. Like, I would never, ever suggest that I am a repository expert. Like, there are some people that have, librarian, you know, master's degrees, and they're just knowledge management experts. I would say that's not my forte. So if an ops person came from a librarian background, which absolutely does happen, their chops may have been much more repository focused than recruitment focused or even, you know, people management focused. and then I can come in with you my different skills and kind of communicate those.

Drew Freeman: I hadn't even thought of the librarian background. And now I absolutely want, to hire a librarian to work with.

Mia Mishek: Oh, my gosh. It's just the amount of skills they have like a librarian has, is just astounding. And if you see a repo that a librarian has built, you will be scarred for life on any other repository you see. It is insane.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Joe Marcantano: So as we're kind of winding down here, I want to like, like my, I'll call it my parting thought or my closing thought here. and then I definitely want to hear from the both of you. I've talked before about how the entire goal of UX research is to reduce risk for the decisions of the business. And one of the ways that we do that is by kind of being our own spokesperson, telling folks about our successes, telling folks about where we steered people away from failure or from actions that we thought would fail. And when you are, as a researcher are paired with a good OPS person or a good OPS team, it is like a shot of steroids. It makes all the difference in the world. And I think it is impossible to understate the value of that pairing of when those two groups of people are working together and gelling well. And that in my opinion is one of the biggest threats that the research industry faces in general is the perception of lack of value. And this is a way to really combat that.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, absolutely. It's the OPS person is the advocate for the team. They really are. They're the cheerleaders they should be at least, and they should be comfortable in that role because you know, you have to do a good job of showing others what the research team is doing and yourself too. I think there should be an element of, hey, we have this new shiny process that makes everything more efficient and we're able to, I mean people hate output metrics but we're able to do two more research projects a quarter because of it.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: and I think research ops really does do a good job of getting those metrics together in conjunction with a research manager or a researcher and showcasing where the value is. For sure.

Drew Freeman: Totally. Yeah, hear, I hear what both of you are saying. And my kind of final thought is we're always saying that if you can't find the, if people don't know about the research, then you might as well not have done it. And talk about the best way to try to make sure that that isn't happening. That's a good relationship between research OPS and research.

Mia Mishek: Yeah, absolutely. And Joe, I always think about our old boss Ari, where he said research is ah, a repositories where research goes to die. I think I Think that in my brain at least once a week. honestly, and it is really true. Just filing something away and tagging it appropriately isn't going to do anything. You need to have the relationship management where you're talking to your stakeholders, you're showcasing, you're doing fireside chats, you're doing all hands, you're doing readouts, you're doing so much work of just getting that research out. you're like becoming a one man, like, promotional show.

Speaker D: Right.

Mia Mishek: You're like marketing the work and it can feel frustrating that that is the reality of it, but you reap the rewards of that. And I think that is work well, well spent for sure.

Joe Marcantano: Absolutely. The analogy I had in my head is that it's like

00:30:00

Joe Marcantano: giving a researcher a megaphone, but it's really more than that. It's giving them like the whole PA for a rock and roll concert. Like, it's that level of like promotional, of the research that really makes a difference.

Joe Marcantano: Mia, if folks have enjoyed what you have to say, can they find you on LinkedIn? Are you active on there?

Mia Mishek: Yeah, I'm definitely on LinkedIn. So go ahead and find me. I'm sure, you guys will link it somehow, maybe in the post and come say hi. absolutely. If you're considering, transitioning into research ops, my DMs are always open, or my inbox, whatever the LinkedIn version of it is. and I'm more than open to do coffee chats and things like that because transitioning into this career can feel kind of daunting. and it can be right, but you just need to find the right people that will open the door for you. And there are people out there.

Joe Marcantano: Awesome. And we will definitely tag you in some LinkedIn posts when this episode gets, haired. Drew, any final thoughts?

Drew Freeman: Just a big thank you to Mia for being our expert guest and walking us through a little bit of the world of research ops.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, definitely echoing that. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Mia.

Mia Mishek: Of course.

Joe Marcantano: Well, thanks everybody for listening to the show and thank you, Mia, for being our guest this week. if you like the show, go ahead and give us a like and a follow, on any podcast platform. We're also pretty active on LinkedIn. You can follow us there. If you have a question you'd like us to cover for a future episode, send that over to inside uxrmail.comt and with that, I'm Joe Marintano.

Drew Freeman: I'm Drew Freeman.

Joe Marcantano: And we'll see you next time.

00:31:55