How does an operations director or operations manager grow up?

Chief Operating Officer (COO), also known as Chief Operating Officer. This position will be fully responsible for the company's market operations and management; participate in the company's overall planning, improve the company's systems, and improve the company's operation management; promote the company's sales business, promote the company's products, organize and complete the company's overall business plan; establish the company's internal information system, Promote the management of the company's finance, administration, and human resources; be responsible for coordinating the work of various departments and establishing an effective team collaboration mechanism; maintaining and developing external relationships in all aspects; managing and motivating the work performance of subordinate departments.

In the second half of 2011, I entered an internship in an Internet company. After graduating in 2012, I worked as an operations manager for a project invested by Sinovation Ventures. In the second half of 2013, I was responsible for an internal incubation project and achieved profitability. During this period, I published the first book about products. A book about manager interviews. In November 2014, I went to a company founded by a friend to be responsible for operations. On January 1, 2016, I completed the first draft of a 265,000-word operation book.

1. Year 11, senior year, operations specialist

Let’s talk about the first job first, let’s call it community operations. The reason why we gave up the offers from BT and the two companies to do community operations is very simple and simple: because the leader at the time said that this was an internal entrepreneurial project, and the company would go public based on this project. At that time, my thoughts were relatively simple, and I thought: If it comes true, the road to marrying Bai Fumei as CEO is not far away. So I took the offer without hesitation. I had never left Hubei Province in the first 20 years of my life. I came to Beijing alone with my luggage, looked for an apartment, and then joined the job.

At that time, I knew very little about operations, but I could basically get started with any job assigned by the Leader very quickly, so in less than six months after joining the job, I had already done event planning, promotion operations, content operations, and business cooperation. , market launch, plan writing, data analysis and other various tasks.

In the first week of joining the company, I built a vertical community with a traffic of over 100,000 without spending a penny; I obtained a two-week homepage promotion resource from the other party; I made the website’s traffic break through for the first time. Records set new highs.

In the following week, I was responsible for cooperating with the company’s marketing department on the subway and bus launch plans; my senior operations manager took leave due to business reasons, so I was responsible for the basic work of copywriting and creativity of the entire launch plan. As well as the execution of design and placement are all done by me.

Because of these two things, the Leader was very satisfied and then added a separate KPI for me. It is precisely because of KPI that I understand data-related things, GA monitoring, active user sharing, and the most important thing is the input-output ratio.

Then the operation structure at that time was basically like this: below the leader was the operations director, below the operations director were three senior operations managers, and below that were several interns. The interns are basically based in Beijing, and it is very common to ask for leave. Then I seem to be at a disadvantage and do a lot of things for many interns, such as event planning, promotion operations, content operations, business cooperation, and market launch. , plan writing, data analysis, no one was left behind.

This is basically the experience of being an operations specialist.

The abilities and insights an operations specialist probably needs.

1. Trust. When working anywhere, the trust and recognition of team members is very important. Having this kind of trust means that more people will help you, and it also means that the leader will better delegate authority to you. Just imagine, how many interns have not been exposed to the backend of data by the end of their internship? Not having full access to the data backend means that you don’t know the product development situation, user acquisition cost, UV, PV, and registration conversion rate; without these data for reference, you won’t know what kind of suggestions your leaders will adopt next. It is impossible to guess why the leader is worried, so there will be no opportunity for performance.

2. Expectation management. In the process of gaining trust, be careful not to show too much edge. @ Fat Fat Cat talked about something called "expectation value management." If we make every move after joining a team, it will cause the leader's expectations of you to continue to rise. If you cannot meet the needs of the other party, negative evaluations will follow, and eventually you will be labeled as a performance Flat label.

Fortunately, in the third week, the leader asked me some data-related questions and left me speechless, letting me know that there is so much profound knowledge in operations, so that it would not cause other people to feel disgusted.

3. It is easy and comfortable to use. Leaders are just ordinary people. They have worked in large companies for so many years and have seen all kinds of battles. Therefore, no matter how big leaders brainwash them, what the senior operations managers who are responsible for the work will always want is to work less, make more money, and get off work early. As for me, an intern, I have no such demands at all. It’s not that I have any noble pursuit, it’s just for survival. Besides, I don’t have a girlfriend, and I have almost no friends in Beijing, so I can spend almost all my time on my own. Therefore, any needs of senior managers can be fulfilled with added capabilities. For example, the senior operations manager in charge of promotion needs to do SEM optimization and needs to expand the keywords. At that time, he did not find the tools to expand the keywords, so he just used the stupidest way to search for recommendations through Baidu. I searched for related search terms thousands of times, sorted out tens of thousands of keywords, and sent them to my boss at four o'clock in the evening after sorting them out.

LeaderA is going to organize a user event on the weekend. It’s okay. You can rest at home and I’ll do it...

LeaderB has to chat with his girlfriend about work. It’s okay. You can do anything. Say it once and I will do it. If it doesn’t work, you can change it...

LeaderC wants to do EDM and SEM promotion. It’s okay. I’ll write the material plan and develop the lyrics. Just tell me what else you need after finishing it. Get it...

LeaderD said that there is still pressure of 100,000 registered users this month. It's okay. You can tell me what methods you can try. I will try them one by one...

How to use it comfortably , it’s called comfort when you use it like this

4. Really understand the needs. If you understand satisfaction and comfort, then you might as well understand what demand is. Don’t users have needs but leaders don’t? Isn’t it his need that the interns can use it comfortably? Look at the posts on Zhihu at work, for example, “My boyfriend found out that I had an abortion, what should I do?” Such gossip questions are not more interesting than making plans. Isn’t going on a date with a goddess after get off work more interesting than teaching knowledge to interns?

If you cannot understand the needs of leaders, how can you understand the needs of users?

5. Learn summary skills. In fact, it is not enough to be comfortable, you also have to be comfortable, which means not to cause trouble to the leader. It is definitely not enough to be enthusiastic about anything, you must also be able to get things done. The leader said that you can remember things once, and you can draw inferences from one example and improve the details, such as organizing activities.

What to do if the user doesn’t know the event address? Take a screenshot from Baidu and use PS to process it.

It’s troublesome to find a bunch of users’ names every time they sign in. How to improve efficiency? What’s in the sign-in table? Name and mobile phone number, how to save time and reduce the difficulty of searching, can you sort the mobile phone numbers.

What should I do if everyone’s enthusiasm drops during the event? Can you tell a joke to laugh at yourself, or send a gift and red envelope...

When you encounter these problems, you need to find a way to solve them, improve the details, and the efficiency will increase. So one time later, I was alone Sinovation Ventures held an event with 300 people offline and 1,800 people online. It didn’t find any foreign aid. It was all optimized for efficiency...

The key word for leaders to use is their learning ability. , Let’s accumulate the basics

For example, Excel, if you don’t use it well, it is a spreadsheet. Can it be used in pivot tables, can it be used to de-duplicate data, can it be used in various functions?

The product is quite busy. Can you use Axure to draw a prototype of the operation backend?

The design schedule is quite full. Can you use PS to change the font and color?

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Don’t bother with technology for small needs, simple data can be processed without Vlookup;

The leader is going to give a speech, can you design 50 PPTs in 2 hours

Work is actually about being a person first and doing things later.

Let’s talk about specific skills.

1. Understand the product. Even during the internship process, you still need to understand what the product is? What problem does the product solve? As long as you answer these two questions, no matter which subdivision direction you take, you can do well.

2. Communication.

Why put him in second place? Because any work in operations involves communication, with leadership, with products, with technology, and with design.

How to accurately describe your problem?

When are closed questions and when are open questions asked?

If you want to make your communication more convincing, these are all skills

3. Copywriting. Almost half of the operation work starts with copywriting. Whether it is the operation of Weibo or WeChat or even event planning, writing good copywriting is a prerequisite.

4. Creativity. When you first graduate, you are actually the most imaginative, so creative new ways of doing activities are also a basic skill.

5. Content operation. How to effectively improve the efficiency of content operations.

6. User operation. Recruiting, the Leader's KPI this month is still short of 100,000, how to complete it? Retention, activation, etc.

7. Promotion and operation. This is also a common position. Who to discuss cooperation with and how to discuss cooperation test your business cooperation skills. How to plan hot events, cause viral spread, and gain massive traffic. How to promote Weibo, WeChat, Renren, Zhihu, Douban, and QQ groups?

How cost-effective is the traffic, how is the retention, and what are the data analysis capabilities considered?

These are some specific skills. Anyone who studies a specific position for a year and a half can basically accumulate a lot.

Skills of operators or junior operations managers: Be a person first and then do things, and then accumulate a lot of operation-related skills

Second, 12th year, graduate, operations manager

When I graduated, I joined a project invested by Sinovation Ventures as an operations manager.

Although the position is operations manager, I basically didn’t supervise people in the first three months.

What is the difference between an operations manager and an operations specialist?

Operations specialist, if others tell you what to do, just complete it beyond expectations.

The operations manager and operations director tell you the goals, and you just have to complete them beyond expectations.

The biggest test is actually the decomposition of goals and the formulation of plans.

Operations managers are usually responsible for operations in a specific area, or operations in a certain direction. For example, what I was responsible for in the company at that time was the operation of "products, operations, entrepreneurship, technology, design and other Internet-related fields. However, the operations managers of some companies only need to be responsible for promotion operations or content operations.

< p>The difference between the two is that in the former you need to be more proficient in something, whether it is broad or deep, you already need to be independent.

The goal at that time was to complete a certain course. Quantity. This position is equivalent to a content operations manager in the Internet-related field.

The process from 0 to 1 was based on sharing courses through acquaintances.

The process of 10 years ago was to borrow more acquaintances and find more famous teachers to share courses.

At that time, it was too goal-oriented, but it ignored the issue of how to establish a mechanism to find out. A growth engine to accomplish this goal. Unfortunately, when I realized this problem, some time had passed.

The Internet is already a very large field; large and comprehensive means that the energy is scattered. The content has no depth, is small and beautiful, and focuses on one direction, such as products, which means it is more difficult to achieve the goal.

What kind of content is more suitable for entry-level courses to help novices? Understand Internet operations, or take advanced courses to help operational experts become operational masters, or both?

What should be the motivation for users to share? Is it to rely on the attention of acquaintances or to create a kind of experience? Incentive mechanism?

To solve these three problems, we can no longer rely on basic operational skills, but must rise to the operational logic.

The skills required by operations specialists are. How to do content operations, how to do user operations, how to do promotion operations; they are all specific methods

What the operations manager needs to solve is why we need to do this content operation, why we need to do this user operation, Why do we need to do this to promote operations? We need to break away from specific methods, return to the essence of the problem, and use effective logic to think about this problem.

So the skills required by the operations manager are no longer specific about how to do it, but to look at the essence through the phenomenon, understand why you do it, and then choose the most effective method from many means for the operations specialist to implement .

The first ability that operations managers need. Embrace change.

1. Industry changes:

In recent years, one field has entered the mainstream every year, such as online education, O2O, and Internet finance; and the Internet has changed from spring to winter. At the same time, how do you adapt to this change? Some operations managers have pursued their career from online education to Internet finance, and continue to cross industries. For example, when Bitcoin became popular, we witnessed Bitcoin rising from 700 yuan to 7,000 yuan in less than two months. Some operations managers became obsessed with currency speculation. The industry is changing, and it is very important for operations managers to clarify their choice direction.

2. Product changes:

Every revision of the product is a huge challenge to the operation manager, such as from being teacher-centered to being user-centered, how do user personnel adapt? This kind of change; every revision of the product puts forward new requirements for the work of operations personnel. How to adapt?

3. My own changes:

From leading one intern to leading 10 people, how can I learn the corresponding knowledge to alleviate the crisis of becoming a leader? How to change from a Weibo operation expert to a little expert who trains Weibo operation experts? These changes are new challenges.

Another example is the change in work content, such as the content operations manager

In the early days of the product, the core job was to attract users to generate high-quality content, and the focus was on how to get started

The product In the mid-term, the core work is to guide users to produce content, focusing on the incentive mechanism

During the product stability period, screening high-quality content, focusing on review

Corresponding capabilities required by operations managers< /p>

1. Goal

Change is not scary, but for operations managers with certain experience, change means discomfort, and changing work processes means a decrease in efficiency, and it takes time. More energy to find new approaches.

Secondly, the position is different from that of the operations specialist. No matter it is the industry, products, or operations, they all have certain opinions. The existing cognition will conflict with the status quo, which is why The reason why operations often quarrel with products;

If changing jobs means dabbling in one field, although the salary has increased, the accumulation of abilities may not be enough;

Therefore, as an operations manager, the first thing you need to clarify is your own goal:

Whether to switch to products or continue to do operations

Whether to be proficient in operations in a certain direction, or to continue operations I want to try all kinds of jobs

Whether you want to start your own business in the future, you can just find a job with a higher salary

Many people who work in operations are not unwilling to focus on switching products. Yes, in addition, you have a dream of a big company, or you want to be very good in a certain direction of operation. These thoughts are very normal, but once you have them, you must keep your eyes on the goal and do things; there is no right or wrong, only what is more beneficial to you. Choice;

If you have a goal, all the changes and pain will not be a problem, and you will become more concerned.

The first skill of an operations manager is to "clarify yourself goals" and have the "willingness" to complete the goals issued by the company;

The specific method is to start breaking down the goals at the beginning of each month; for example, the goal for the month is to attract 100,000 new users; then through the data To break it down, according to normal standards, under the condition of natural growth, how many users are acquired through each channel, how many are left, what are the existing resources, how much each resource can bring, and whether the conversion effect of these resources has been improved. After the improvement, how many goals can be achieved? If the goal is still part of the target, ask the direct leader for advice, instead of asking for advice when eating with colleagues;

Can you develop some operational products to attract new users, such as user invitations?

Can you increase the registration conversion rate?

Can you find some vertical resources in a targeted way? Which are QQ groups?

Can you find some free Weibo and WeChat accounts?

Can you be a self-media and promote it through your own channels?

In short, when the goal is here, don’t question its completion first; if you can’t complete the goal, you are not even a qualified operations manager, and those who have just become operations managers must not fall into complacency. The so-called "self-high" is to do some activities that you think are very cool, but in fact there is no change in the indicators;

2. Improve the quality of goal completion

What the director gave is 100,000 users, this goal continues to grow, and it is easy to complete;

Then we need to look at the quality of the goal completion, or 100,000 users, if the retention rate of this group of users is higher?

How to increase retention?

Attract users with needs: To attract users to open, click, and register in all aspects, appropriate screening is required;

Produce content that users have needs and related to product positioning: "Undoing my bra with one hand", "My boyfriend found out I had an abortion, what should I do?" Content that satisfies users' gossip, emotions and desires is also what users need, but can our products handle this need? There will be a short-term increase in traffic, but how will you compete with Maopu, Tianya, Zhihu, and Tieba in the long run? Users have more needs. Do you just make content that meets your needs?

Let users have a sense of presence: Whether it is a sense of participation or a sense of presence, it makes users feel valued, especially the core users and seed users who once made a big splash on the Internet. Let them have a sense of presence, be followed, liked, sent private messages, read, commented, etc. If it is not possible, it is OK to set up a WeChat group to make them high. Of course, the premise is that you are not building a social product; < /p>

Precipitate user relationship chains: Whether it is interests, topics, the introduction of existing relationship chains, etc., it is best to let users know how to precipitate a certain relationship chain;

Increase the number of users leaving Cost; for example, network disk product users have uploaded their own resources, and cloud note users have written a lot of notes and cannot import them into other note-taking products, so the cost of leaving is already very good

Build an external incentive system ;

Considering the quality of goal completion, you will then think about some new issues, how to define the user churn rate, how to define the corresponding activity level, and how to recall the lost users. What are the means of recall?

What is the effect of each method of recalling, and what is the user’s heartbeat moment like?

Wait, the process of continuous thinking, the process of constantly improving the quality of goal completion, you will become more proficient in a certain field;

3. Team management

Let’s talk about recruitment first. People who have just become operations managers must have a strong desire to lead. This desire to lead is reflected in recruiting someone who is similar to themselves. The requirements of the people they recruit must be the same as themselves, and they must feel that they are the most awesome. Yes, those who come must obey absolutely. The starting point is no longer what kind of people the team needs, but who are excellent, smart and absolutely obedient to themselves. If there are such people, will they come to your company to follow you?

What @Liu Chui taught me at that time was that if you are used to using dull knives, you will be more comfortable with sharp knives. Recruiting has everything to do with the company's brand and salary. It's up to chance to recruit the kind of person you want. You can't recruit a specialist based on the same standards as a director, so the important thing is to look at potential.

After bringing people in, you are no longer in the same state of fighting alone before. You need to do something new:

Establish a process: there are two types of people recruited, one is Like you, he has a very strong internal drive, a very clear sense of goal, and will give you unexpected surprises every day. For such a person, you only need to tell him what you need and don’t talk about the process; if the person you recruit does not have such a It is best to continuously help him sort out a fixed work process so that he can quickly become familiar with it;

Strengths in employing people: It is difficult for a relatively good operation manager to be a good leader at the beginning. Let’s talk about the reasons. , use your own standards to look at others, why are you so scummy and don’t know how to do this or that? You always think about what I did when I was an intern, and then ignore the strengths of newcomers;

Reasonable goals: Appropriately distribute your KPIs to newcomers. I feel that many people in Internet companies have purely management positions. Even if you are COO, you have to do everything yourself, so don’t try to give them all KPIs;

Appropriate growth path: Operations involves so much content, and every newcomer has his or her own suitable growth path, so try to standardize it;

We are all peers, become friends, don’t pretend Come on, I guess everything can be discussed properly!

4. Understand the product

Operations managers and above need to understand the product. They do not necessarily need to be able to draw prototypes or do user interviews, but they need to understand the logic of the product. , the development direction needs to be understood, otherwise the upward promotion channel will be basically blocked. This is true for operations, and it is the same for product managers. If they are proficient in operations, everything going forward will be easy to handle.

What operations do is just one word, conveying the value of the product, organizing content with the value of the product, and attracting users is the right way, especially in the initial stage.

5. Identify with the product

Now that you know what problem the product solves, you must identify it.

How many operations managers spend much more time playing Zhihu than playing their own products? I believe there are many...

The "well-intentioned suggestions" in the comments said that after working for several years, it is better to accumulate honestly. Don’t write down your experience, I’m sorry I’m too pretentious and really can’t do it

Before I graduated, I started to talk to others about Weibo operations (a Weibo with 100,000 true fans by the end of 2011 can be considered a big one) )

When I graduated, I started to talk to people about product operations

Why do I mention this? Because the value of our products is "systematic knowledge sharing"

I strongly agree that when we are together among three people, there must be someone who can teach me. The principle is also the same: tell everything you know, tell everything, but don’t gossip

So when I was 13, I started to talk about "BAT Product Manager Interview" on the platform "Lessons on Hidden Rules", and in two years, there were probably more than 100 people entering BAT and Google. Then, with the advice of my colleagues at People's Postal Service, I spent two weeks writing this into a book. You have to know, you In the world of Zhihu, not everyone has an annual salary of more than one million, but there are also a lot of students who have just graduated and are unemployed...

6. Improvement of products and operation methods

Why is it necessary to identify the product? Only by identifying the product can you have in-depth experience, and only through in-depth experience can you understand the real needs. Whether it is operations or products, especially the Internet is no longer a simple industry, but has too many differences with different industries. Integration, if you are not an in-depth user, how can you talk about "infinitely approaching" the user's usage scenarios?

Secondly, most users are not in the Internet industry, so don't use your intuition to imagine those in non-Internet industries. Users; only through in-depth experience can we propose effective product improvement methods and operational improvement methods

7. The profit model summarized from in-depth product experience

Experience the product in depth, and then proceed Next, maybe your profit model will be clearer, but I won’t go into details here. In short, there are endless possibilities for one person through sharing. Publish books, sell courses, and share, the income will be beyond your expectation;

8. Summary

You are already a leader, when you rely on the mechanism When managing a team, how to find more effective methods relies on summarizing and sorting out, especially those who are in operations, whether it is user operations, promotion operations, or content operations, every aspect can convince others, which is a great need for summarizing and sorting out. ;

9. Prioritization

Operations specialists are arranged, and operations managers arrange others, so time arrangement and priority differentiation must be in place;

10 , Summarize learning methods and refine work methodologies

This is considered the basic literacy of Internet people

Of course, in addition to this, there are too many unexplainable things, and every How many times things have gone through the pain of repetition is a thing for later. After all, only you will know if you have done it.

After more than two years of accumulation, the above work, especially if you can propose improvements in products, products and operation methods. At the same time, after you can summarize an effective operating model and profit model, you can move to the next level and become a director.

3. Director, end of 2014

The biggest difference between a director and an operations manager is not in goals. Operations managers and directors have the same goal as you;

Do As director, you give the company management a goal;

Required capabilities

Absolute understanding of the industry and the product itself

Establish and cultivate a strong team;

Set the goals of the entire company based on the current situation, and rely on strong logic to decompose goals for products and markets, allowing the entire company to break through and obtain financing or make profits;

I don’t think I’m a good director or COO, so I won’t write it for now;

4. Summary:

Operations Specialist: Talent is very important, and all kinds of talents Important ideas come to fruition. Tens of thousands of reposts on various Weibo and over 100,000 on WeChat are the HIGH points at this stage;

Operations Manager: At the task execution level, the value of responsibility and execution , far greater than talent. You even need to give up your talents and give opportunities to many brothers to complete the task;

Operations Director: In addition to the previous abilities, you also need mental effort. What is mental effort? Liang Ning said, that is The ability to worry endlessly. Resources are always limited, strategies are constantly changing, brothers are all close, and no one is ever satisfied.

Let yourself work hard for your career, and there will be more possibilities for you to go up.