About the Killer Ops series:
How can creative teams increase their Value Proposition? How can they become better strategic partners in the organization? Following the entrepreneurial model of Product Development, creative teams – and organizations – can learn to think and act like a startup, to develop a framework for continuous innovation, improved operations, and greater success.
What This Is: Put on the thinking cap and come up with broad ideas about how to improve Creative Operations.
Why It’s Important: Without a plan, we won’t know where we’re going.
The opening act for Product Managers is The Big Idea — to conceive… to dream, to imagine, and to form a plan.
It’s also the first step for Creative Operations managers who embrace the challenge to improve the productivity of their creative staff through better tools, systems, and methods.
This is a road of discovery. But where does our journey begin… exactly?
We’re going to borrow the methodology of Product Management. We need to step back from the daily grind and devote energy to better understand the value we are creating, how we accomplish it, and the benefits we bring to our organization. We will emerge with ideas for numerous ways we can improve our environment, develop a team of Creative Ops ninjas, and enhance our value to the organization.
Let’s ask ourselves: ”What might better Creative Operations look like, here, in my place of work?”
Product Management protocol breaks down the Conceive phase of a project into identifiable and manageable chunks.
- Customer Development
- Testing and Validating the Idea
- Market Research
- Business Model Design
As we build out these pieces and put them together, the future will begin to come into focus.
For startups and app developers, the Conceive phase is where the prep happens — laying a foundation for everything that happens next. These guys are building the basis of their business model and applying the first level of rigorous scrutiny and testing of their Great App Idea. They’re staring at a blank canvas. In Creative Ops, we’re starting with a little more baggage!
Bottom Line:
The hard work of revitalizing Creative Ops begins with a lot of hard thinking. By the time you hit the end of the Conceive phase, you’ll have a pretty good idea where you want to go, and how to get there.
Resources and Inspiration:
- How to Research Your Business Idea
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Read more on my blog at ABetterWorkflow.com.