Do you know the 6 basic principles of operational thinking?

What is operational thinking ? Operational thinking can be said to be a set of basic procedures for knowing how to carry out operational work. The quality of operational work is closely related to operational thinking.

What is operational thinking?

Operational thinking refers to a set of "human brain system" programs that guide all your operational behaviors in your operations work. In addition to the definition just mentioned, there is a lot more content. I have summarized it in six directions:

Six basic principles of operational thinking

1. Starting point

The starting point of operation is the user, and everything should be centered around the user’s needs.

2. Prioritize

The priority is definitely the interests of the platform. This benefit is not just cash income, but also some benefits such as KPIs that you currently have and need to complete.

3. Goal

The goal is to target service satisfaction. This service includes multiple directions: for user-oriented products, the goal is user satisfaction; if it is others, such as e-commerce or B2B enterprises, the core is the satisfaction of the customers on the other end.

4. Guidance

Whatever you do, be result-oriented during the start-up phase, mid-term development phase, and later stages. If what you do has no results, no matter how beautifully the process is completed, it is meaningless. It is not about emphasizing the importance of results, but results are also important.

5. Principles

We must follow the principle of using a small amount of force to achieve a great result. Based on this principle, every company actually requires to maximize profits with minimal cost in everything they do. This is called making the most of a small effort. Bosses usually prefer this way of operating.

6. Fundamentals

Taking business as the foundation means that the operational work done cannot be separated from the essence of the business. For example, for e-commerce products, you may have done a lot of ultimate KPIs related to e-commerce in your operations, but these may be things that have nothing to do with sales volume. So the key is to focus on the core of the business.

Iteration of operational thinking system

In short: learn to summarize progress in work

There are several learning tasks that need to be done in the operations work: Some problems need to be handled simply. From simple problem solving to analyzing and solving complex problems, from simple information organization to fragmented organization of complex information. If you start with the basic concept of simple operations, for example, you may plan some online activities at the beginning, and then you can build an entire series of user operation systems in the later stage. This is actually an iteration of the human brain system.

Operational thinking = “human brain system”

In general, operational thinking means that the stronger your "human brain system" is at handling problems and bugs, the stronger your operational capabilities will be. When you can solve problems well, that means your operational capabilities are constantly improving.

The essentials of four major operational thinking

1. Process thinking

Process thinking means that you have an effective process for the entire process of what you do and arrange these processes in an effective manner. To put it simply, it means doing things from beginning to end, and doing them step by step very clearly and rigorously. If the thinking is chaotic, the efficiency will be very low. When doing work planning in the early stages, you can use tools such as XMind and MindManager to assist in process organization.

Taking new media operations as an example, if you are an operator or practitioner of new media , your KPI is usually the number of fans or fan activity, conversion rate , reading rate, etc. If you are a team leader in new media operations, you first need to learn how to use mind maps to clearly organize the team's workflow. As a team leader, you must be very clear about the work content of the team you are responsible for. To achieve these KPIs, the content planning must be very clear in the early stages, including what A, B, and C do in the team, and how the three people can engage in healthy competition and effective division of labor.

First of all, self-media needs a matrix, that is, a channel . Commonly used ones are Weibo, WeChat , Baidu Tieba , and even other Toutiao , Penguin , etc. It is impossible for you to do everything, so first choose one or two or three more important channels to try first.

Second, you must make your choices purposefully. First of all, you need to think clearly about your customer base and users, whether they are on WeChat or Weibo, which will do better. So you have to think clearly about the purpose of doing new media.

The third is the need to pay attention to operational strategies. The strategies mainly focus on three aspects: working mode, column design and push frequency. The working mode refers to how the team operates new media. In the early stages of operations, column design may be required to determine what type of content is appropriate to push to customers. As for the push frequency, WeChat has certain requirements, but it can also accurately achieve the push frequency based on personalized user portraits .

Some companies will cultivate some grassroots joke accounts on their own. The advantage is that they do not let users directly discover the utilitarianism, but simply do a good job of content push, which will be better in attracting fans in the early stage. In addition, you need to clearly consider the team's evaluation indicators, such as image and text conversion rate, number of shares and forwarding, number of fans, UV, PV, etc.

2. Fragmented thinking

Many people don’t know how to summarize or organize trivial work. Operations is a very disorganized job, so some people have a lot of complaints, and their operational capabilities cannot be improved even after working for a long time. This is because he has no way to effectively organize large amounts of information. Therefore, fragmentation sorting is also very important in operational work. Here we define fragmented thinking as regularly cleaning up junk files in the brain and organizing useful documents so that useful information documents can be quickly accessed at any time. In this way, when you and others are faced with the same idea or emergency, you may react faster and more accurately.

How to improve fragmented thinking?

The first thing is to develop good reading habits. We need to keep learning and acquiring new knowledge every day so that we can keep up with the times.

The second is to expand the scope of reading. If you are operating a clothing e-commerce business, you may not only need to learn how to operate, but also learn about fashion, including some things related to celebrities. This will give you a better understanding of this industry and surrounding industries, including improving your strategic level to varying degrees, and expanding your way of thinking and vision to a certain extent.

The third habit is to use a mobile notepad , and the most commonly used one is the notepad in the mobile phone. For example, when I see a good operating method or approach, I will record the model on my mobile phone at any time. I will also record any good ideas or thoughts that flash in my mind in my mobile notepad at any time. In this way, after being polished through experiences at different times, some very good creative ideas can be created.

The fourth is to constantly review and summarize the content of your work. When planning the same event before, which part of the event can be optimized, and whether the invited people have a bad experience in the process. Constantly reviewing your work will help you improve.

The fifth is to continue sharing with colleagues and peers. Share your operational experience that you think is good or meaningful with colleagues and peers. Perhaps you will get better or new experiences through mutual communication.

The following mind map mainly talks about how, as a novice operations manager, you need to have a good plan for the team during the early stage of construction. Usually, if a startup company wants to do operations, it will definitely focus on these five directions.

The first is traffic . The traffic of Internet products is very important. Most companies will do SEO , Baidu and 360 searches, as well as advertising on various channels. We will also choose some promotion sources. This method of promotion sources is not used very often now because the explosive volume may be very weak, so it is not particularly recommended at present.

The second direction is marketing planning. A planning team has many good ideas, all of which come from the planning team. The planning here is divided into: one is content marketing activities, which require some professional knowledge, practical and interesting content to be presented to everyone; the second is promotional activities, which may be more inclined to e-commerce products; the third is social marketing , and the most common one is event marketing . For example, Durex will use hot spots to combine its own products for marketing.

The third direction is about user operation. User operations are more commonly used for community interactive media-oriented products, such as Baidu Tieba , iQiyi Bubble Community, etc. There are three directions of user operation: the first is how to attract new users, the second is how to retain old users, and the third is to convert all users into core users.

The fourth direction is brand operation. Brand operation is somewhat similar to the work done by the marketing departments of most companies, including some PR (public relations), brand management, and the establishment of media libraries for various media. This includes platform cooperation with celebrities, brand launch activities, and public opinion monitoring.

The fifth is data analysis . Data analysis is divided into two parts: one is data monitoring and the other is analysis. Monitoring is to routinely check if there are any abnormal changes in the data. The second is to do better analysis based on the data to help us create better activities, users and transactions.

3. Geek thinking

What I understand as geek thinking is the pursuit of excellence in work, the pursuit of perfection, and the effort to achieve perfection in every detail. This is a working attitude and also a very core thinking.

Here we still take new media operation as an example. If your operation strategy is based on content operation , you need to have a very detailed content operation plan. In general, everyone should have enough imagination to think about whether things are good enough, whether the execution is strong enough, whether the efficiency is high enough, and how passionate they are about their work.

4. Boss Thinking

Boss thinking is to examine all operational management work from the perspective of "resource efficiency". What operators need to think about is how to improve the efficiency of resource utilization to meet all user needs and thus maximize the benefits of the platform. So it is not about considering the company's revenue, nor about having higher decision-making power, but about maximizing the utilization of resources. Boss thinking is not unique to operations managers. Newcomers who are new to operations also need to learn boss thinking, because resource utilization is very important in every operation link.

Sharing of entertainment operation skills

1. Where are the “stars”?

First of all, the "stars" mentioned here not only refer to movie, TV, music and entertainment stars, but also include some KOLs in your industry, the so-called "opinion leaders", as well as some experts, celebrities, masters, internet celebrities , etc. As long as he has a certain influence in the field and is highly professional, he is what we call a "star", which is the star we are looking for.

2. What kind of products are suitable for cooperation with what kind of "stars"?

Here are three examples. One is interactive media products , such as WeChat, Weibo, and Tieba. Maybe Toutiao now also has some interactive functions. When making interactive media products, the best way to cooperate with celebrities is to have a big V certification system. What Weibo does particularly well is to track celebrities. Everyone goes to Weibo to search for entertainment gossip, which is a very successful system of Weibo.

There are also tool-type products , such as maps, calendars, browsers , etc. Here is a classic example, which is the Lin Chiling version of cloud navigation on Amap. Lin Chiling's voice can help you navigate while you are driving, which is a good experience for many male drivers.

The third is e-commerce products , such as Taobao , JD.com , and more vertical e-commerce. It is not particularly cheap to collaborate with celebrities on e-commerce products. So if you don’t have particularly good resources to convince celebrities to cooperate for free or exchange resources, use some internet celebrities or experts to make recommendations.

3. What can “stars” do for your product?

The first is that celebrities have their own fans , and the fan effect is very strong , which will definitely bring his entire fan base with him. Then you can quickly bring awareness to new products and use your personal influence to influence the entire industry. The second is that industry opinion leaders are professional enough to provide some powerful content. The third is that it is easy to discover highlights of communication. The media prefers the actions of opinion leaders and celebrities in the industry. Their views, professionalism, and what they have done are more easily spread by society. Fourthly, brands also prefer this group of people. They are a very powerful resource for advertisers, and clients are satisfied with the level and consumption of this group of people.

4. Things to note when looking for a "star" to work with

First of all, you need to have a clear idea of ​​the content of the cooperation between your products and celebrities. For example, if you are running a community related to sexual content, you definitely cannot look for first-line female celebrities to collaborate with you. It is just like finding a boyfriend or girlfriend. You must have the same values, complementary or consistent interests and hobbies in order to be together.

The second is that you need to have an in-depth understanding of your industry and their development positioning , and never make mistakes based on basic common sense. This basic common sense mistake mainly refers to not making requests for collaboration with experts that are not relevant to the content.

The third is to grasp the publicity period of the "stars". If you are looking for celebrities, industry experts, or opinion leaders, you need to grasp their recent developments so that you can combine their promotional periods to exchange free resources. Otherwise the cost will be very high.

Fourth, when working with so-called industry opinion leaders, internet celebrities, and stars, it’s like finding a boyfriend or girlfriend. You can insist, but don’t force it. Some people may not want to reject you directly, so they will reply to your message very slowly. At this time, you should understand that they are not particularly willing to cooperate with your product. So you should think about whether the other person is in a tactful way of rejecting you.