Why do you work hard but still can’t operate well?

A friend who works in operations was fired by his boss and was very distressed. In order to ease his grief, he decided to treat me to a hotpot fish meal. So, I spent three hundred dollars in the small shop in Huilongguan.

This friend is a beautiful woman who has been working in operations for two years, but she has always been at the grassroots level and on the front lines. Her leaders have changed one after another, and she always thought that the position would be hers after the leaders left, but she has always been at the bottom and has never seen the light of day. As it happened, the company happened to be undergoing changes and I became one of the first to be laid off. The reason given by my boss was very direct: "Although you have been in the company for quite a while, unfortunately, you are not good at the operations job."

As we all know, in today's Internet companies, operations can be said to be a job with a relatively low entry threshold, and the requirements for academic qualifications and work experience are not very high. We often see in "Maimai" that there are countless operations people looking for jobs. Some of them are operations veterans, and some want to make a transition from operations. However, although there are many operations, only a few can do a good job of operation.

So, why can't you operate well?

1. Being obsessed with basic work and not being able to distinguish the focus of work

We all know that people who are new to operations usually spend some time doing jobs that do not require much technical skills, such as review, posting, and updating. In my experience, the time spent on this type of work should not exceed 6 months. You can spend a month to familiarize yourself with the job, another month to become proficient, and a little more time to optimize and improve your work efficiency. You can use the time saved to actively learn new work content and take on greater responsibilities.

Xiao A and Xiao B are my colleagues. Both of them are doing auditing and user acquisition work. In theory, the work content is the same and the work efficiency is similar, so the time it takes for the two to complete their work should not be too different. However, Xiao A works overtime every day, while Xiao B gets off work on time every day. I carefully observed their working habits and discovered the secret. Xiao A will first review the projects at work, and the projects are captured every half an hour, which means that after you review this batch, you need to wait until the next capture time to see the next batch of projects. After the project review is completed in a day, Xiao A will start to work on attracting new projects. Too much time is wasted while waiting for the projects to be captured. However, Xiao B starts with attracting new customers every day. After completing the process, he starts to review projects. He can finish all the content that needs to be reviewed in one day without wasting any time. He can still have a lot of time left at the end of the day to communicate with the boss and do other work.

Simply swapping the order of work will lead to different results, which also shows the work focus of the two people. Xiao A thinks that review is more important, while Xiao B pays more attention to attracting new users. In the year-end comparison, Xiao A reviews 50 projects every day, and Xiao B reviews 40 projects every day. The cost of attracting a new user for Xiao A is 10.8 yuan, and for Xiao B it is 3.8 yuan.

So, if you were the boss, who would you prefer?

2. No data analysis and optimization, lack of own data table

Almost every operations expert has his or her own set of data analysis methods and ideas. It is precisely because of these data that they can improve work efficiency, improve work quality, and receive countless praise and compliments. The importance of data is equivalent to the foundation of a house. It is an indispensable part of operations. If you don’t have a good data table, many of the user behaviors you propose will have no support. Let us follow a real example to understand the great role of data in work.

If you have used emails to attract new users or guide users to use your product, then you will know that if you plan to send out 100,000 emails, but the number of successful emails may be only around 80,000, some emails may fail to be sent due to being intercepted or other reasons, and the number of converted users who finally use the product will be even smaller. However, as copywriting continues to change, this number is also constantly changing. So, how can we get the best results?

When doing this work, Xiao C will first make a data table to count the time of each sending, the copy template used for sending, the keywords involved in the template and other variables. After the email is sent, the effect statistics will also be performed. After a month, Xiao C selected the 20 templates with the best sending effects according to his own data table and started sending them in a cycle, so as to ensure that the template used each time is the most effective. It used to take Xiao C two hours to push emails, which included creating templates, screening templates, screening users, and sending. Now it only takes 20 minutes, with only two steps left: selecting users and sending. This has greatly improved work efficiency.

If the above example is a little confusing to you, you can start making an assumption now. If there are three large supermarkets around you and you are addicted to shopping in supermarkets, you will go to the supermarkets to buy a lot of snacks every day. Then you will definitely compare the goods in the three supermarkets. After many comparisons, you will find that the yogurt in Supermarket A is the cheapest, the fruit in Supermarket B is the freshest, and the chocolate in Supermarket C often has promotions. The comparison process is the process of generating a data table, but this time it is generated in our brains. These can help you choose a supermarket better and know which supermarket can buy the best quality products.

3. I know a lot of things, but they are not refined.

We all know that operations work is rather complicated. You need to be able to do basic audits, write copy, plan events, explore user needs, analyze data, know channels, understand new media , and be able to handle products, technology, design, etc. in your work. Of course, in some large companies you also need to make a very beautiful PPT. Sometimes, if you don’t have three or five skills, you’d be embarrassed to say that you have worked in operations.

I once met a female colleague who had been working in operations for about a year. She knew a lot about the job and had been exposed to all aspects of operations. After the previous manager left, she vowed that she would be the new operations manager. However, this was not the case. The operations director at the time gave a very clear answer, "Although you can do everything, you are not proficient in any one thing." This is also a major obstacle for many operators on their way forward, as they only have miscellaneous knowledge but not in-depth knowledge.

If you want to be a good operator, you do need to understand everything, but you also need to be the most proficient in a few areas, at least surpassing your colleagues. Because the bigger the company, the more segmented it will be. At this time, what the company needs is someone who understands all aspects but is particularly proficient in one professional skill. Only in this way can you become a candidate for leadership.

Finally, let’s summarize why you are not doing well in operations. 40% of people are unable to extricate themselves from basic work, 30% of people do not know how to use data to support their work, and 20% of people lack specialized skills and their core competitiveness. I often tell people around me, "To do operations, you must have a sense of control. You must have a firm grasp on the direction of the product and the psychology of users, and be clear about every step of future product development. This way you will be a successful operator."