Operations Is the Goalkeeper Position. Here's How AI Made Me the MVP.
I came across a post by Janelle Page this week that stopped my scroll cold. It was about goalkeepers in soccer — how the position used to be considered the "boring" one, the spot reserved for the unathletic kid on the team. Until you watch high-level play. Until you see a full-stretch dive on a 70-mph penalty kick from 12 yards out. Until you realize the entire game can come down to one moment, and the goalkeeper is the only person on the field who can save it.
She drew the parallel to business: everyone celebrates marketing, sales, and growth. But what about the people building the systems that prevent failure? The processes that protect margin? The teammates who show up when it actually counts?
I read it three times. Because that's me. That's operations. And it's the most accurate description of my job I've heard in years.
The unsexy position
Operations doesn't get the highlight reel. There's no quarter-end celebration when the invoicing system runs cleanly for the 90th day in a row. No standing ovation when the CRM data is clean enough that sales can actually trust it. No applause when a contractor agreement gets routed through the right approvals before someone signs something we'll regret.
But the moment one of those things breaks? The whole game changes. Revenue stalls. The CEO is in your inbox. A client churns. A deal falls through.
Operations doesn't get fifty chances to shine. We get one — and we have to not miss.
That's not a background role. That's the position everything depends on.
How AI changed my game
For most of my career, the only way to be a great goalkeeper in operations was to work harder. More hours. More attention to detail. More mental cycles dedicated to catching the things nobody else was looking for.
Then AI showed up. And I want to be clear: AI didn't replace the goalkeeper instincts. It made them faster, broader, and more accurate.
A few real examples from the last few months:
I now reconcile data across systems in a fraction of the time it used to take. What used to be a 4-hour Friday afternoon audit is a 20-minute review of AI-flagged anomalies. I still make the call on what's a real issue and what's noise — but I'm doing it on five times the surface area.
I draft SOPs in the same meeting where we identify the gap. By the time the team disconnects, I've already shared a first draft of the new process. The momentum doesn't die in someone's "I'll get to it next week" backlog.
I spot bottlenecks earlier. Pattern recognition that used to take me weeks of sitting with the data now takes a focused afternoon. AI doesn't tell me what's wrong — but it helps me see what's worth investigating.
I write better questions. When I'm prepping for a meeting with finance or legal or a vendor, I run my draft questions through AI and get sharper, more specific versions back. I sound more prepared because I am.
When pressure hits, I don't need more activity. I need certainty. AI helps me be the person who doesn't miss.
The MVP twist
But here's where my own thinking goes a step further.
Being the goalkeeper isn't enough. Not for me. Not in operations.
The MVP isn't the goalkeeper who saves the most shots alone. It's the one who teaches the rest of the team to play defense, so fewer shots ever reach the box.
That's the real lever.
Every prompt that saves me an hour, I share with the team. Every workflow that took me a weekend to figure out gets documented and turned into a quick Loom. Every AI tool I stress-test, I bring back with a clear "this is worth your time" or "skip it" verdict.
It's the most strategic career move I've made in years.
Hoarding knowledge makes you a single point of failure. Sharing knowledge makes you the person the whole team gets better around. Those are very different positions on the field. Only one of them is a long game.
What this looks like in practice
If you're in operations — or any role where your value is your ability to keep things from breaking — here's what I'd encourage you to try.
Pick one workflow that drains you weekly. Just one. Use AI to compress it. Then don't keep that win to yourself. Document it. Show it. Hand it off if you can.
The instinct will be to protect the time savings. Resist it. The teammate you teach today is the teammate who covers for you when you're on PTO, who spots the next bottleneck before you do, who makes the whole operation more resilient.
That's how you stop being the goalkeeper everyone depends on — and start being the captain everyone wants to play with.
The takeaway
Operations is the goalkeeper position. AI is making me a better goalkeeper. But sharing what I'm learning with my team is what's actually making us unbeatable.
When the next big moment hits — and it will — I want a whole team of people who don't miss.
That's the MVP move.
