Operations Lead

"We have several cultural practices that encourage leadership and collaboration."

Operations Lead: Success Profile 

Role Purpose:

 Build and coordinate Animal Think Tank’s core team’s capacity to operate as a grassroots Social Movement Organisation (SMO) for Animal Freedom.

   Who we are looking for:

 This role is about building a team, alongside our Direction Leads, that can deliver on our organisational vision. You will lead our Coordination Circle (our core team), initially as a shared role with our Direction Lead. Your key role will be to lead our core team to build a powerful, resilient and broad-based SMO. You will be committed to our mission, align with and model our values, and have the attributes to coordinate a large, complex project.

 We value humility, courage, effectiveness, building shared power and love towards others. Our team is rewarding to work with, applies discipline, and has a strong work ethic. We don’t want action without strategy, aptitude without care, or passion without discipline. The animals need a high calibre team, an ambitious strategy, a mass movement, and personal fortitude to see it through.

 Leading Animal Freedom will require: personal sacrifice; fearlessly confronting our adversaries; staying calm whilst others lose it; being on the frontline of protests; and a disciplined commitment to nonviolence.

  Initial Objectives and Key Results

1. Lead the delivery of ATT’s 2022 Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Your primary objective will be to build Animal Think Tank’s potential to deliver on our organisational OKRs - developing and implementing best practice for social movement governance, culture, and local group development. This will require you to use leadership and coordination skills to juggle competing demands, facilitate cross-functioning teams, and prioritise tasks and resources to maintain focus on outcomes and mission. This will involve supporting other leads to develop and deliver their own team’s OKRs. We use holacracy as an organising method of distributing management across the organisation, and so are looking for a servant leader.
2. Steward the soft launch of a SMO. In 2022 we will begin the work of soft launching a network of local campaign groups within the UK. It is important that you align with our values in order to model, communicate and embed them throughout the groups we build. We are looking specifically for someone with a non-egotistical, caring and composed personality. ATT plans to publicly launch in 2022 and it'll be up to you to make sure we're ready!
3.  Oversee implementing our key systems and agreements. As a start-up organisation we are completing the design of our key processes, systems and agreements. You’ll use organisation-building skills to implement these as we move into an operational stage of development. We expect to grow from 12 full-timers to approximately 25 by 2023. Key will be ensuring that we distribute management of the work away from the centre to grant individuals the autonomy they need to be effective, and that all existing systems, processes and organisational structures we’ve designed are fit for purpose and effectively running to enable us to grow robustly.

It may sound daunting, but you will receive a lot of support from our Direction Leads, particularly sharing responisbility for delivery in the first year.,   

  You should not take this role if:

1. - you expect people to do what you say, rather than to be a servant leader;
2. - your focus is on taking action, rather than building a team and movement that enables many to take action;
3. - you look for someone to blame when things go wrong;
4. - you get caught up in doing stuff and lose sight of the horizon;
5. - you’re disorganised, undisciplined, change your mind often and don’t take personal responsibility or accountability

  The following readings will help you succeed in this role:

1. - Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 - Jim Collins
2. - Radical Focus - Christine Wodtke

 How We Pay

 As a Social Movement Organisation (SMO), rather than an NGO, we do things differently when it comes to compensation. We don't offer salaries, and instead offer needs-based stipends of varying amounts to enable volunteers. Click here to see how our Volunteer Grants System works

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