Recently, in an interview, one of my friends told me excitedly about the plan he had made. I could feel that he was very satisfied with the plan. But the more I listened to it, the less reliable it sounded, so I asked a question: Is it online yet?
He sighed and said: Well, because there is no schedule, so no.
To me, that’s zero, nothing. Having a good idea is only the first step, and then we need to face the actual and specific problems. Only by coming up with corresponding solutions and putting the idea into practice and making it work is a complete thing. It doesn’t make sense to stop at the “idea” level.
1. Pursue the most reasonable solution
This is not uncommon, not only during interviews, but also when chatting with new colleagues. Come up with a solution and tell me you didn’t do it because of product or development, or because your boss didn’t support it.
Therefore, landing and the ability to solve problems is one of the criteria to measure whether an operation is awesome or not. You don’t need to look at what he says, you need to look at what he’s done. That’s real skill.
Almost every operator can come up with their own vision, but no company will give you absolute ideal support. You need to consider costs, requirements priorities, labor and time costs, development cycles, etc. In addition, each company has its own complex and unique situation, so if the operation wants to implement its own idea, it must find a way through these complex problems.
There will have to be some compromises and solutions to some problems in order to find that path.
Therefore, the quality of operation is not to come up with the best idea, but to choose the most reasonable solution.
For example, when you were in school, you always wanted to marry a smart, virtuous, beautiful girl with long breasts and legs and rich family who loves you very much. Later, you realized that this idea is unrealistic. You have to choose and you can also be happy.
In operation, the ultimate goal is not to give a beautiful plan, but to achieve the set goals, so the pursuit of a reasonable plan, to have the ability to land.
2. Landing ability is the core
Product manager is a field that grows faster than operations and starts earlier, and some star ceos insist on calling themselves “product manager”, giving the position a halo.
Product managers have standardized and systematic design concepts, many mature typical cases, and years of precipitation of thinking and skill models, giving people the overall sense of “superior”.
In terms of operation, the responsibility boundary is not clear, and there is no authoritative methodology, and there are few classic and reusable cases. Compared with the “high quality” of the product, operation feels “Low”. This is not meant to disparage, but to express the contrast.
Operation “Low” is paying more attention to landing ability, planning ability is very important, but without landing ability is bullshit. The “last step” from execution to revenue is the most challenging in operations, and many people never take this step.
It is just like doing sales. Many sales people seem to work hard. They make phone calls and go out to visit many customers, but they cannot sign contracts at last.
The implementation ability should not be too formal and procedized, but the ability to solve problems flexibly.
If you have to have detailed data, live product features, and awesome UI design before you can do anything, then your business is worthless. Imagine that the product has been very perfect, users themselves will be attracted by the reputation, and voluntarily roll into the closed loop of the product, then there is no need to operate the role.
So, run low-cost trial and error to verify that the inferred model works. After verification, the model will be productized and functionalized. If the process were reversed, the stakes would be too high, and a major misdecision could kill the product.
At this stage, most of the time, there are not enough grounds and cases to be copied, but rely on subjective judgment, to invest a little resources to try. Try a few more times, and you’ll know which direction to go.
Don’t think that when I say “subjective judgment” I mean a slap on the head, a random decision.
First of all, we must understand that not all decisions are made with sufficient data or clear market research. Besides, data and research are only auxiliary tools, and the final decision still depends on subjective analysis, which is the manifestation of operational value. If you have data and research results to do a good product, then things are simple.
Secondly, the subjective judgment mentioned here is also based on the most basic analysis, such as product positioning, target user analysis, analysis of requirements and implementation forms. This information can help us make good decisions, but there is no direct answer.
I can give you a rough idea of where you’re going to land after you try it.
3. Find growth
The core responsibility of operations is to drive growth. Whether it is the number of users or transaction volume, the specific product positioning varies.
When you get the operation work of a product, it is not systematic to comb through all the work first, nor can it quickly take into account every corner. The most important thing is to analyze the current situation of the product and quickly find the growth point.
Get to the core of the problem and focus on getting results so you have more time to systematize. After all, people’s energy is limited, everything should be prioritized before investing resources.
I posted the following message on wechat:
Do a product operation, how to start. Theoretically speaking, it is all about positioning and then data analysis and market research. In fact, when it comes to real work, who will give you this time, such ideal support and such a process from scratch is not practical at all.
So, when you’re actually operating, it’s like fighting. You can’t have a complete set of moves against your opponent, but you can figure out where his weaknesses are and then use your own way to kill him.
That’s the best way to beat them. If not, move on.
The “competitors” here are not competitive products, but to find out where the soft ribs of their products or growth space is, and then focus on human resources and savage growth.
This is a first extensive and then fine play, there is a sequence, but also the process of progressive development.
A lot of companies can start with the extensive, because I’m sure few have data that’s good enough to be refined.
At least for unicorns like Meituan, the operating model is not particularly refined. The first two years only focus on new customers, old customers rarely care. In the past two years, I began to make user portraits and RFM models, but the specific implementation is still based on promoting such extensive gameplay.
The reason why Meituan did this is definitely because a few years ago, it focused on grabbing new customers and getting users first. This was the growth point at that stage. Then in recent years, we will start to do fine, because the new customers grab almost, the focus is on the old customers on the re-purchase, which is the growth point of this stage.
Above, from the pursuit of reasonable plan to implementation, and then to find the growth point of the product, it can be regarded as providing a non-mainstream but very practical operation idea.
My book super Operation is available on JD.com, or click “Read the original article” in the lower left corner.