A day in the life of Gemma, our Head of Operations

How long have you worked at The Distance?

I've been at The Distance for four years now, and I feel like a veteran.

How would you describe your role in one sentence?

Basically, a professional juggler - except instead of balls, it’s deadlines, budgets, and scope. I oversee projects, process optimisation, and resource management to make sure we are efficiently delivering high-quality projects on time and within budget.

What does a day in your life as Head of Operations look like?

Spoiler alert: it’s a mix of planning, problem-solving, and making sure everything (and everyone) runs smoothly. Here’s a typical day in my world as a Head of Operations:

• 9am - 9:30am – The calm before the storm - I start my day reviewing emails, Slack messages, and project updates. Anything urgent gets flagged, and I check if overnight developments need immediate action.
• 9:30am - 10am – Team scrum - Quick 15-minute meeting with project managers, developers, and product staff to align on priorities for the day, in case they have changed since outlined at the start of the week. We discuss blockers and whether anyone’s struggling in tasks (so we can fix it before it’s too late).
• 10am – 12:30pm - Project overviewing - During this time, I do a high-level sanity check of all active projects to proactively foresee any issues, for example, individual project timeline shifts that begin to put risk on capacity in any way.
• 12:30pm – 1pm - Lunch - Never skip over lunch, everything will still be there in half an hour after you have had a quick moment to recharge.
• 1pm – 4:30pm - This is usually a mix of client calls, internal process reviews, and making sure everyone has what they need to keep things moving. If I’ve done my job right, we’re ahead of potential bottlenecks. Reviewing team capacity for weeks and months ahead, and making sure we’re hitting our targets. I might be refining documentation or adjusting processes to keep us efficient.
• 4:30pm – 5:30pm - Planning for the next day - Checking in on any last-minute tasks, and if something happened during the day that is affecting what a team member or multiple team members are working on this week. And reacting accordingly.

Watching a process go from”‘Wait… how do we do this again?”’ to “Wow, this just works and makes sense!” and knowing I helped make that happen. Watching the team thrive in their roles more and more because of the foundations I have put in place, and continue to improve on.

From a Head of Operations perspective, the biggest challenge is constantly balancing capacity with demand. It’s pretty much like a game of Tetris, ensuring that projects are delivered on time and profitably while keeping the team from burning out. Workloads fluctuate, partners shift their expectations, and budgets are sometimes tight. Resource allocation issues can quickly become a nightmare if the team and I do not manage properly.

I couldn’t do it without everyone understanding efficiency within their roles and wider. To manage efficiency across multiple staff and projects, it comes down to three things: process, visibility, and communication. This means making sure everyone knows what they’re doing, and when they need to do it, and has the tools to get it done without any issues.

We have a culture within the company where everyone understands the importance of standardised processes and tools, so we have clear workflows and we can balance the tasks people are completing.

We are huge on communication within The Distance, so everyone is aware of what they are doing, what their priorities are, and what expectations are expected of them. It's about preventing chaos before it happens, so we can focus on delivering great work instead of being reactive to put out fires. Proactive, not reactive!

If you like Pirates of the Caribbean, there is a joke throughout that movie about how the code of the ocean is more like a guideline than actual rules. This is a joke used by the pirates to get away with bad things, but the premise is right. I continually try to run a structure which is tight enough to keep things running, but loose enough to pivot when needed, and always with a backup plan (or five).

This only works as we have set a strong foundation over many years, with clear processes, project management tools, and defined workflows. This now allows us to empower our teams to make decisions well, so they can adapt on the fly, making flexibility second nature to them. We also have a daily 15-minute stand-up, which helps the full team remain aware of the bigger picture as priorities shift and evolve, or issues happen overnight.

The biggest thing I have learnt in my career so far is that teams who struggle with making correct decisions, trusting leadership, etc, mainly always stem from a place of not receiving the information, which can make leadership decisions feel wrong, or chaotic. Complete transparency and communication allow the team to know exactly why decisions have been made or changed, which keeps the business flexible to pretty much anything.

The process is there to guide you, not restrict you from doing a good job.

Usually with humour, but mainly following the steps of gathering all the facts to understand the severity and priority, and engaging with the right people to fix the current issue.

Finally, the MOST important step that people tend to fail to do… remembering an immediate fix is usually temporary, so I dig deep to understand why the issue happened to prevent it in the future by avoiding repeating mistakes. Questioning if something is missing from the process that needs to be followed up on.

My proudest moment at The Distance has to be taking a process from loose ideas and a lot of scattered workflows and turning it into something the entire team not only follows but actually values.

What started as a way to bring structure to what the team already did, but just without formality around it, has now become second nature to everyone, making everyone's lives easier and projects run smoother. Even better, getting to see people not just use it, but improve on it, from something I started, feels great.

Project Logs are my lifeline, and I struggle to understand how people keep on top of everything in other roles that don’t typically use them. It is typically associated with project management/operations roles, which I strongly believe is wrong. They’re a game-changer for every role in, things get lost, mistakes repeat, and people rely too much on their memory for decisions made and conversations had.

Hobnob! My life is problem-solving, but I do this with a no-nonsense approach, so I like to think I am sturdy, practical, and always up for a challenge.

If you weren’t in this role, what would you be doing?

I would likely be project managing still, I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything different. The only thing that would change if I weren’t in this role is that I would maybe be doing it in a different industry.

From morning stand-ups to last-minute timeline tweaks, Gemma keeps our projects (and people) moving forward with focus, precision, and a healthy dose of humour. Her role might be all about structure, but her impact is anything but rigid - she brings heart, hustle, and harmony to everything we do.

Want more behind-the-scenes insight from the humans making it all happen? Keep an eye out for the next chapter in our Day in the Life series.