Advanced Operations: How to avoid "messing around" when taking over a new project?

It's the job-hopping season again this year. Every time this time comes, major companies are at their hottest when it comes to the three hot things that new officials do upon taking office. When switching to the operations of a new company, you often face new projects and new products. If you cannot get started quickly, or if you start blindly (commonly known as "messing around"), it will undoubtedly be a loss or even a disaster for the company and the project.

To avoid blindly making trouble, the most important thing is to sharpen the knife first (understand all aspects of the situation) and then chop wood (make various operational decisions). Only when the knife is sharpened can you be targeted and make trouble in a reasonable way.

NO.1 Understand the company's business as soon as possible

The business of each company is different. To understand the business of a company, in addition to understanding the basic situation of the company, such as the time of establishment, founder, nature of the company, corporate culture, etc., the following aspects may be more important for operations:

1. The company's organizational structure:

1. Clarify the position and value of operations in the company. Is it a core position or an optional position in the company? If it is dispensable, how can operations play a greater role?
2. Understand the responsibilities and main tasks of operations positions. You may have seen the job description of the position on the recruitment website before submitting your resume, but a clearer organizational structure will help you look at the work content of your own position more holistically.
3. Be clear about the basic situation and organizational relationship of each supporting department and cooperating department, know who is the person in charge of each department, what their work style is, and what the workflow is when support and cooperation is needed. Being clear about these basic situations will help with the next step of communication.
4. Be familiar with the work flow and approval process: who makes the decision on the operation plan, whether it is necessary to fill out an approval report, who to apply for the budget, what method should be used if advance payment or reimbursement is required, etc. For operations, you must know these as early as possible.
5. The boss's management style: In addition to the above points, operations must not ignore the boss's management style. Is the boss focused on the process or is goal-oriented? Does the boss support making mistakes or does he not tolerate problems? Does the boss adopt a flat management style or has a strict hierarchical perspective? Ultimately, the company is still the boss's company. The company's previous business and project launches have all been influenced by the boss's ideas. Operations that are responsible for their work and can satisfy the boss usually do not deviate too far from the boss's thinking.

2. The company's customers and profit model:

1. Know who the core customers of the company are: Core customers refer to the customer groups that are most closely connected with the company and contribute the most to the company. The core customer of Party B may be the one who abuses you thousands of times but is your financial father or mother; and the core customer of Party A may be the company's supplier, distributor, or wholesaler. For operations, in addition to paying attention to user needs, the needs of core customers are of paramount importance.
2. Customer sources and customer relationship management: Since customer needs are sometimes more important than user needs, it is important to find out the customer sources and customer management status as soon as possible in order to obtain faster and more accurate information on what customers can provide for operations, what operations can satisfy customers, and who is most familiar with customer needs.
3. Existing profit model and expected profit model: For an enterprise to survive, making money is the key. Although operations sometimes manifest themselves as burning money, the ultimate goal of actual operations is to help the company make a profit, so it is very important to understand the company's profit model. Do you make money by generating traffic from content? Or is it the data performance generated by operations? Or is it to gain benefits by promoting consumption through operations? What was the profit model in the past and what were the results? Is there a better profit model that can provide various supports to the company's profits before and in the future? Operating without considering profit is obviously rogue.

3. PEST analysis and SWOT analysis of the company's business:

To understand a company's business, it is obviously not enough to just read the company's official website, company news, and company systems. It is recommended that you think more and find more problems. Talk with the company's old employees and core layers frequently with any questions you have, which may achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Of course, we can't just listen and forget about it after the conversation. I have said before that I think a good operation pattern should be big, that is, I think it is very helpful to be able to think from the strategic level of the enterprise and grasp the general direction of the operation. Only by standing higher can we avoid sacrificing long-term reputation for short-term interests and losing long-term core value for the sake of good short-term data.

Therefore, after listening to others’ introduction to the business, operations personnel should have their own analysis of the current business status. This can be an analysis of the political, economic, social and technological (PEST) environment currently facing the company’s business from a macro perspective, or an analysis of the company’s current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) from a development perspective. Only with analysis and conclusions can there be a clearer direction.

Of course, there will definitely be deviations in the macro-strategic analysis written by new employees, but only by communicating with others with their ideas can they discover where the errors in their understanding lie. At the same time, it can also bring new ideas to old operators who have fallen into rigid thinking.

NO.2 Understand the project background as soon as possible

Understanding the company's business as soon as possible is to avoid deviation from the general direction during operation, and understanding the project background as soon as possible is to ensure more precise and refined operations, which can make the takeover of new projects smoother and more orderly.

1. Origin and major events of the project

To understand the background of the project, it is helpful to first sort out the origin of the project and the major events of the project.

The origin of a project generally includes the time when the project was officially launched, the original intention of the project "why do this project", and the goal of the project "what kind of results do you hope to achieve through this project at that time".

However, the early operations of the project may not necessarily achieve the original goals, so it is necessary to understand the major events of the project, to know what upgrades and iterations the project has made since its launch, what operational activities have been launched and what results have been achieved, when the interim goals were achieved, etc. Personally, I think project milestones don’t have to be positive events, but should also include large-scale accidents, attacks, etc. If we had known earlier, operations are often not a one-size-fits-all experience. For an existing project, the cost of trial and error and the lessons learned are very important.

2. Basic process of project promotion

From the company's business perspective, what you need to understand is the approval and decision-making process, while from the project background perspective, what you mainly need to understand is the basic process of the original project promotion.

For example, the entire process of an activity from preparation (data acquisition, research and analysis) to planning (planning scheme) to communication of needs (development needs, design needs, data needs) to the release of details (writing and general rules) to execution training (who to train, how to train, common problems) to execution, tracking and effect summary, evaluation and analysis. It is important to understand the communication object, whether there are special circumstances, templates and routines, etc. The original complete process can be efficiently continued, and if the original process is not clear and complete, new supplements can be made.

In addition to the basic process of event operation , projects usually also need to pay attention to the basic process of content operation , such as content framework positioning, content scheduling review, content editing method and content push time, as well as product operation process, such as how to obtain product feedback, how to write product operation requirements, who is the demand liaison person, and whether there is a meeting discussion mechanism.

Clear processes can bring about efficient operation and orderly execution.

3. Current status of project data

I have come across a type of leader who takes a piece of operational data and, without knowing the business background or understanding the value of the data or how the data is related, starts to judge the data and make operational decisions based on the data. This data-driven style is a disaster.

A slightly more complex project will involve a lot of data. To understand the current status of the project data, I personally feel that it is necessary to start from the overall situation and then move on to the details.

First, clarify the methods and means of data collection , the basic dimensions and data volume of existing data, the core indicators of the data, the channels for obtaining operational data, the completeness and missingness of data samples, the problems with the data and the problems that require operational assistance to improve, etc., and then combine the specific business scenarios and detailed data to judge the next step of the operation. This is much more responsible than making completely irresponsible and simple assumptions that will result in losing the forest for the trees.

4. Bottlenecks and problems encountered in the project

After talking about the current situation, we can’t help but talk about the bottlenecks and problems that the project encountered before taking over. Operations often encounter various problems, such as a declining membership growth rate, stagnant user growth, low content operation click-through rate , and worsening user retention or activity.

The problems encountered by each platform may be different. In this case, the operation must conduct an in-depth analysis to explore the real causes of such bottlenecks and problems, so as to address the symptoms and the root causes, rather than treating the symptoms without addressing the root causes.

NO.3 Understand the operating products as soon as possible

The product is not necessarily the whole of the project, but it is often the core of the project and the core object of operation. If the operators themselves do not understand their own products, there is no need to encourage users to understand and use them.

1. In-depth experience and record problems.

One of the characteristics of operations people is probably a strong curiosity and a love of new things. Therefore, I believe that most operators have played with various products. Relying on these experiences, operators should thoroughly experience the new products they take over.

From the initial introduction of the product, to the product framework, the convenience of product interaction and other front-end uses, and then to the back-end familiarity with product rule setting, activity addition, user management, etc., problems in each link should be well recorded and retained, and research and communication can be carried out in the subsequent operation process to see if there is a need for improvement.

2. Be familiar with competitors of operating products and the differentiation and core advantages of your own products

Understanding of the product should be carried out simultaneously with understanding of the industry and market. What are the competitors' products like, how do they promote and operate, is there any overlap between their target users and our target users, what are the characteristics of our products in the process of competing for users, what kind of differentiated services can we provide, etc., are also the key points that should be paid attention to in the process of understanding the product.

3. Be familiar with the product’s user profile and application scenarios

In the final analysis, products and operations are all for serving users. In the eyes of data, users may be just strings of numbers, and in the eyes of products, they may just be abstract concepts, but operations are about dealing with users, and in the eyes of operations, users should be alive and well.

Therefore, after taking over a new project, operations should profile existing users to understand who they are, why they want to use the product, what they do when using the product, etc., and then restore different application scenarios through different user portraits to enrich understanding of the product.

In short, I sincerely think that operations should not be done blindly without knowing anything, and the results of early product efforts and operational implementation should not be wasted. After all, no good project or product can withstand repeated blind and stupid moves.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article is @跑跑大橘子 and it is compiled and published by (青瓜传媒). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!