A Day In The Life Of A Director Business Operations At A Fortune 100 Entertainment Studio

Every day looks a little different, as you can probably imagine. We are in an interesting time in work generally, because we are coming back to the office after two years of working remotely.

I've been in the office at least two days a week for about a year now, and we are now required to be in the office three days a week. With that comes a number of new responsibilities and considerations we have to think about when we come into the office.

My team manages all COVID-19 compliance. I work very closely with a COVID-19 compliance officer who monitors all the trends in the area, like hospitalizations and cases. She looks after masking policies and compliance, making sure people do a symptom survey every single day.

Typically, my first thing in the morning is checking in with her and trying to see if any employees have gotten sick or if there could have been a possible case at the company we need to be aware of. If so, we have a number of contact tracing measures that need to be taken.

Generally speaking, if I am working from home, my days usually start off very relaxing. I'll catch up on emails, figure out what I need to do for the day, and get all my projects in order.

If I'm in the office, I try to do a lap around the building. We are based in four different buildings across three different locations, as we are a massive studio with 70 projects right now. Those people won't fit in a single building.

I tend to walk around and say hi to as many people as possible, which I think is very important if you're able to do so on-site. It's good to get some recognition by having people recognize you. I try to be my jolly old self every morning.

I'm also the only one who wears a name tag, which is a little bit funky. But I feel it's really important to be that visible person that people know and can rely on and trust. I'd rather they say, "Hey Colin, how's it going?" instead of, "Who's that guy who walks around every morning and says hi to me?"

Every day is different, but I do take a very intentional approach to what my day looks like. We are obviously very busy and I have meetings for the bulk of the day. The week prior to each week, every Friday afternoon, I'll go through my calendar and make sure my schedule is set for the next week.

Typically, if I have any free time, I'll block out increments of time to do things I know I'll have to do. For instance, before I went on vacation last week, I knew that today I needed to spend two and a half hours working on a slide about Spotify and a revenue opportunity we have with Spotify podcasts. This morning from 9:00 to 11:30 AM, I knew exactly what I was going to be doing.

I think that intentional approach to work is something a lot of people don't necessarily take. It's always very reactive; you get asked to do something and you'll do it, or you'll put it on a to-do list and figure out whenever you're going to get to that list. I take a more proactive attempt at making sure everything gets done and I recommend everyone does the same.

Generally speaking, that is what my normal schedule looks like. I also often take a lot of notes throughout the day of things I need to share with my boss or my direct reports. I have ongoing weekly one-on-ones with all of them. I keep an ongoing list of things that either need to be brought to their attention or that I feel need to be shared with them for the benefit of their own jobs throughout the week.