Former Meituan COO Gan Jiawei: Operations are Meituan’s core competitiveness | An article that explains the essence of operations (a must-read for operators)

Many times when we meet with colleagues, we will discuss the same question, that is -

What do you think operation is?

To be honest, I haven't thought about the concept of operations carefully or systematically.

In my usual work, I think more about: How to transform the work assigned by the leader or the next business direction into practical “time nodes + results” ? Therefore, at that time, I said that operations actually did not have a very specific concept, it was just a result-oriented approach to getting things done beautifully.

On July 1, two weeks ago, former Meituan COO Gan Jiawei (hereinafter referred to as Agan) started a course at Chaos Research Institute titled “How to Scientifically Operate a Technology Company.”

I began to think about operations. I simply organized the logic and structure of Teacher Agan’s course, and tried to restore my understanding of operations in this article.

The first half is a summary of Teacher Agan’s courses, and the second half is the thoughts of someone who has devoted himself to operations. The content is very dry, but every sentence below is worth chewing over several times.

Teacher Agan's course summary

Teacher Agan said:

1. The relationship between strategy and operation:

① Strategy is direction, and direction is very important;

② However, it is necessary to combine operations and establish strategic barriers in a short period of time. The combination of the two can highlight the importance of strategy and operations.

2. Common mistakes in operation:

① There is a strategic direction, but no operational path;

② No methodology, just relying on experience and guesswork;

③ Avoid meetings and lack of coordination in organizational structure;

④ Ignoring business elements, the overall efficiency decreases and becomes disordered;

⑤ Different treatments at both ends of BC make it difficult to get the rhythm right;

⑥ The management is unscientific and the system methods are never taken seriously.

I tried to re-arrange these six points as follows:

①②⑥③④⑤

3. So how did Meituan become the only survivor in the group buying market through scientific operations?

① Expansion strategy : First, figure out how local life e-commerce can start a war across the country: target market positioning (the Internet market has a 7:2:1 ratio, and more than 350 cities are divided into five levels of SABCD cities) - determine market share (AB cities bite the top three and become the first in the national market) - implement other solutions in the block market (S-level cities are ignored for the time being, and CD-level cities are educated by similar players before entering the market);

② Subsidy strategy : determine local food interests (such as the popular snack category in Nanjing: duck blood vermicelli) - seize the commanding heights of the category (such as discussing sales with the owner of duck blood vermicelli and educating users on purchasing habits through subsidies);

③ Profit strategy : Segment industries and cities, understand the industry attributes, city attributes and Meituan’s market share, and design a reasonable gross profit margin;

④ Data tracking strategy : Continuously iterate your understanding of data and business, use the right methods, and evolve at a higher frequency (Agan mentioned that they would analyze the data in the morning meeting).

4. Three-step scientific operation method:

① Scientifically understand business.

Deconstruction: Deconstruct your business in as many dimensions as possible (time, space, business, relationships, etc.) and set corresponding goals;

Observation: Analyze each block by observing the target indicators and provide timely feedback and iteration;

Benchmarking: abstract business models and find benchmarking industries;

Learning: Learn benchmarking industries and optimize indicator models;

Reconstruction: Have a deep understanding of the business and reconstruct the operating structure (a good operating structure is quantifiable, measurable, traceable and controllable).

② Establish a scientific organizational structure.

Organizational structure problem 1: The company grows, but the organizational structure and talent selection system do not grow;

Solution: Cultivate BM (business manager) through a rotation system.

Organizational structure problem 2: Management problems caused by the increase in business lines, such as uneven resource allocation;

Solution: Deeply understand the business, take efficient execution as the result orientation, and clearly define responsibilities and powers.

③ Build an efficient operation team.

“Three-part rule of personnel”

Wild and natural : managers who have not received good systematic training (how to solve: send them to military schools or build a military school yourself);

Experienced in good systems : Talents who have experienced these systems and received formal training (many people habitually copy old experiences and do not know how to adapt to local conditions. This is why parachuted executives have a higher probability of failure);

Have built a good system : Have built a good system from scratch and mastered the underlying logic of building the system.

"Four Levels of Management"

Natural growth : Because of some factors, you naturally become a boss;

Target budget management : only look at the goals and results, regardless of the problems and details that arise during the process;

Process management : split the goals, control the process, learn to manage the process instead of just looking at the results;

Use the false to cultivate the true : Don’t become the ceiling for your subordinates, but allow the team to grow.

My Operational View

My perspective is still the employee mentality, so by comparing with Teacher Agan’s course, you may be able to think about what operations are from two perspectives.

I discovered that what I was doing was operations when I started building the school’s first WeChat platform in my sophomore year.

At that time, in order to promote this so-called entrepreneurial project and make this WeChat platform the account with the largest number of users in the whole school in a short period of time, I tried various methods, including putting WeChat on the wall, helping various Youth League Committees and clubs to do WeChat voting, making Minions replies (until one day I found that the Minions replies were really yellow, so I removed this function), signing in, etc.

When I searched for WeChat platform promotion on the Internet, the word "operation" appeared. That was probably the first time I realized that all my work was directed towards one goal, which was to increase the number of users by a certain time, and everything that needed to be done in the meantime, including content, activities, and function additions, were all small steps in operations.

Four years have passed to this day. In the past four years, I have been engaged in new media operations . In summary, I found that operators should have three levels of mentality.

These three levels of mentality are divided into executive level, management level and strategic level. These three levels of mentality will only exist in a primary and secondary way in specific situations, but in the process of our operation, one of them is absolutely indispensable.

1.Execution level:

The executive level is divided into business execution and thinking, in-depth understanding and analysis of the enterprise, and personal ability growth and career development.

① Business execution and thinking : As an operator, the minimum thing to do is to implement your work, and think about the quality of the business and the speed and progress of implementation during the implementation process. At the same time, after completing this business, you must also think about how to improve it next.

② In-depth understanding and analysis of the enterprise : As operations personnel, they are closest to users compared to other departments in the enterprise. Therefore, operations personnel need to have an in-depth understanding of the company's business (which is conducive to conversion), corporate brand (which is conducive to maintaining the corporate image, for example, the customer service operations personnel of Three Squirrels must present an overall "cute" attribute to the outside world), corporate culture, corporate values, etc.; at the same time, operations personnel also need to have the ability to always grasp the dynamics of competitors. The competitors here correspond to related companies in the industry chain.

③ Personal ability growth and career development : The overall industry environment advocates "full-stack" talents, and the same is true for operations. Many operations personnel generally believe that they do not need to have copywriting and design skills. In fact, this is not the case. Current industry phenomena such as the one-person project system and flat management all require comprehensive personal abilities.

2. Management level:

Among the vast majority of operational personnel, the management level is more often reflected in the project phase, but in fact, everyone often overlooks the other two points: stimulating the goodwill of organizational members and improving corporate structure and processes.

① Promote project progress : During the project advancement process, most operators will focus on the operational depth and accuracy of their own links, rather than considering the project operation results as a whole. During the project establishment process of an enterprise, management often overlooks the emergence of the role of project operations.

Good operations should have the ability to advance projects and ensure that projects are completed with quality and quantity.

② Improve corporate structure and processes : In the process of project promotion or execution of other operational links, there are many cases where a link is missing or something is done wrong due to various factors such as partners, venues, time, etc. Excellent operations personnel will take other measures to remedy the situation when they encounter these situations.

However, after the end, people often overlook the need to make these contents or precautions part of the corporate structure and corporate processes as supplementary regulations.

③ Inspire the goodwill of organization members : Operations often need to cooperate with members of the project to complete a task or obtain information from users. A good operator must inspire the goodwill of organizational members, whether they are organizational members or users in the project.

What I understand by goodwill is the maximum value of members' interests and abilities. So to stimulate their goodwill is to enable project members to do things that interest them, satisfy their abilities, and give them a high sense of accomplishment, so that users are willing to actively spread your corporate brand and become promoters of your products.

3. Strategic level

Once again, the strategic level is not the highest level; it is the level of capability that operators need to possess.

I divide the strategic level into three major points: the enterprise side, the product (also called business) side, and the personnel side.

① Enterprise side : This can be understood as the transformation and expansion of enterprise affairs, which can be large or small. Any company based on its original product line, facing the current market environment, will make the choice of transformation or expansion of new business; and in the operational details, for example, when faced with user surveys, whether it is accustomed to questionnaire surveys or other user survey methods, or seeing clearly that the purpose of user surveys is to understand course needs, then choose other survey methods.

The above is for the enterprise side, and individuals’ strategic thinking in large and small scenarios, which should essentially be about optimizing the enterprise structure and improving enterprise efficiency.

② Product side : At the management level, I mentioned optimizing the corporate structure and corporate processes. The corresponding thing on the product side is actually to develop processes and achieve standardized batch replication. Of course, at the strategic level, you also need to think about the differentiated features of the products you are responsible for.

③ Human resources : Operational personnel are highly result-oriented, which actually brings new challenges to the company. As the head of the operations team, you need to provide timely incentives and support them with management systems.

And we must maintain a clear understanding that the purpose of incentives or systems is to enhance the team's fighting passion and combat capability, and to help the team improve cohesion and the growth of each member's ability.

Final Thoughts

Some people may ask, if it is so difficult, Chongjie, why are you still persisting?

Because I heard that the next era seems to be the era of operators...

Then I also want to say something to the young people who are joining the operations industry -

"You guys are awesome!"