How to improve operational decision-making efficiency? I shared 3 methods

It’s strange to say, but my public account is often discontinued.

The reason is not that there is nothing to write, but that there are too many topics I want to write about, and I always want to choose the best topic to write about. Sometimes I often hesitate between several topics, wondering which topic is better? Will it be more popular? Will there be another 100,000+?

So, I missed the update time while I was hesitating. Because people are greedy, they always want to find the best decision point, but they always miss the best opportunities in the struggle.

So in daily operations , faced with choices big and small, how can we make operational decisions quickly?

1. 37% look then leap

In a recent post on Weibo about a doctor buying a house, there is a mention of the "secretary problem" . When facing many applicants, the interviewer always hopes to find the best one, because he doesn't know who will apply next, so you interview them one by one. Although you may have found someone you like during the interview process, you did not make an offer immediately, but instead chose to wait and see if there are any better candidates.

But there is a problem. If she is not given an offer after the interview, she will most likely go to work somewhere else. How can you be sure that the interviewee is the best?

The scientific answer is: 37% look then leap . First, you set a total recruitment time for yourself, and then you use the first 37% of the time to interview but not make any decisions. This period of time is considered as the time you collect data on the interviewees. In the future, as long as you meet someone who is better than all previous interviewees and send an offer immediately, your chance of getting the best interviewee is 37%, which is the best result you can get .

You might think a 37% success rate is a low number. If you have 100 applicants, your chance of getting the best interviewer is only 1%, but if you have 1,000 interviewers, your chance is only 1 in 1,000. Relatively speaking, 37% is already a very high number.

In order to make accurate decisions quickly, in simple terms, we need to spend 37% of our time searching for "selections" and then make quick decisions through subsequent comparisons.

This method of decision-making has continued to influence me.

For example, in the past we would carry out operational activities to attract new users every week. However, due to the limited resources of the small entrepreneurial team, we could only brainstorm the best activity, but were often limited to "do you have a better idea" and delayed the execution of the activity.

Later, we only left ourselves 8 hours to think, 37% of the time is 3 hours. We will come up with all kinds of ideas within these 3 hours. In the future, if we come up with ideas that are better than the previous ones, we will decide on them immediately and start executing them.

For another example, when a product of our company was going to be launched in public beta in 15 days, our marketing colleagues planned to find an internet celebrity on the live streaming platform to do publicity and promotion . After looking at many internet celebrities, my colleagues continued to look for one with the mentality of "the next one will be better", but nearly a week has passed and they still haven't finalized the list of internet celebrities. The timing is a little tight, after all, we still need to leave time to communicate with the Internet celebrity about relevant matters of cooperation.

We only have 7 days left, 37% of the time is 2 and a half days.

As a result, we created an Excel data table and listed the information of more than 100 Internet celebrities we saw in the past two and a half days, including the number of fans, interaction status, quotations, etc. We started making decisions after the first two and a half days, and on the third day, we saw someone who was better than any excel influencer, and we quickly decided on the final candidate.

2. Use data thinking to think about operational decisions

Operational decisions are nothing more than thinking about what to do and what not to do. In most cases, data can be used as an indicator. This data can be cost-effectiveness, investment-output ratio, user satisfaction, etc.

I have a friend who works in operations at a startup company. When I was chatting with her one time, she complained to me that her boss had not approved her applications for operating funds several times. She felt very frustrated. After all, it is difficult to operate a company without money and traffic .

From the boss’s perspective, the criterion for the boss’s decision-making is: Are these funds worth investing? The “input-output ratio” can be used to quantify whether the investment is worthwhile. How many new users, new users, active users and other benefits can be brought by spending this money?

The correct way to ask your boss for resources is to tell him what resources to use, what time period to use, and what kind of benefits to expect. You should use data to help your boss make decisions and make him believe that your operational decisions are correct.

In addition, data is also driving your operational decisions. The first thing I do when I turn on my computer every day is to look at the data, such as new users, daily active users, retention , activity PV/UV, etc. Through data feedback, I can see the effect, which will help me make better operational decisions next time.

For example, the same public account soft article submitted to different media will bring different conversion volumes and reading exposure . The data can be used to analyze which media channel is better. Then, next time when submitting an article, I will give priority to better channels.

3. Strive to upgrade your cognition

I have found that several big operations experts share one characteristic, which is that they have extremely strong operational decision-making capabilities, and the decisions they make are generally quick, accurate, and ruthless.

The reason is that they have a very strong level of cognition.

They are full of curiosity about the world, and like to tinker with and study new gadgets. They also like to go over the firewall to access foreign websites such as Twitter and Facebook to read various information, and they are always the first to know the hot news.

Driven by curiosity, their cognition has been upgrading. They see more, see farther, and see more deeply, which leads to their ability to make operational decisions far beyond the average person.

I check Fanfou every day, and I often see Wang Xing’s posts covering a wide range of topics without losing depth. I also see a kind of curiosity in him that makes him well-informed.

I increasingly realize that the essential difference between operators lies in their different cognition . Because skills are quantifiable, others can surpass you by staying up late and working overtime, but cognition takes a long time to cultivate and is not quantifiable.

Due to different cognitions, your understanding and thinking of the same thing are different, which leads to different decisions you make, and these decisions are the biggest difference between you and other operators.

For example, when you are running an event , how to mobilize resources, how to choose the right time, and how to spend the least amount of money to achieve the greatest effect. People who make different decisions will achieve very different results. This is the power of cognition.

Therefore, if you want to have the ability to make operational decisions quickly, work hard to upgrade your cognition!

First, gain broad knowledge and expand your horizons without limitations. After you have absorbed enough good things, you can think and analyze them to find the commonalities and differences between these things and establish a set of methodologies of your own. If you can do that, you've gone further than a lot of people.

Conclusion

Luo Yonghao once said: Everyone who comes to this world will eventually change the world. You can make the world a little worse, or you can make the world a little better. And it all depends on what you do, and the impact your decisions have on yourself, them, and the world, which increases as you get older.

Try to upgrade your cognition, use data thinking to assist operational decision-making, and then use "37% l