Foundation 4: How to plan and manage workflows and operations
The lesson
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The transcript
Alan: The School of Splice wants to help you build a viable media business.
I’m Alan, one of the cofounders of Splice.
Rishad: I’m Rishad, the other cofounder.
If you're like us, and you're running any part of a media startup yourself, you'll have to do many of the things that the regular big-news folks do — and better.
You'll need to figure out branding, product, acquisition, marketing, retention, ad sales... and providing great services to your client. It's all messy. And it's going to be all on you, buddy.
A: The whole point to operations is to create something. And to do it more efficiently and more accurately, and more consistently, over and over again.
Otherwise known as... a system.
Welcome to the fourth School of Splice foundation lesson. This one is all about building the right workflows for the outcome you're looking for.
Many of us are journalists, or former journalists — and so we often start with content creation as the objective of designing a workflow.
Sometimes that workflow starts and ends with content. Traditionally, newsroom systems have always begun by creating a story — or content, publishing it, and then amplifying it so that as many people read it as possible.
R: But defaulting to content can sometimes be a mistake. And we'll explain why later in this lesson.
There's a fine line between OUTPUT and OUTCOME.
An output could be an article, a video, a podcast...whatever.
An outcome speaks more to your mission and what you're trying to do. You gotta align that outcome with your mission. After all, you're spending your day and precious money on all of this.
There's a place for each of these but it's important that your workflow takes both into account — otherwise you're just creating stuff for the sake of creating stuff.
You don't want to conflate OUTPUT and OUTCOME.
A: Let's go back quickly to our first School of Splice foundation lesson and revisit this important principle: What you do — both in output and in outcomes — must match the needs of the people you're trying to serve.
As a simple rule of thumb, if you start with the OUTCOME in mind, it's a lot easier to figure out the OUTPUT.
So start with what you want to achieve, and then figure out the steps to get there.
Too often, media startups we come across begin with OUTPUT — which is the content — and then try to work backwards. And it's never pretty.
So focus on the OUTCOME.
R: So Alan, let's get an example going here. If I'm writing a story about how climate change is affecting life in a small town in Indonesia, I need to think about the outcome I want my story to achieve.
Maybe it's that I want to raise awareness and drive action around the issue. Which means that focusing on the outcome would give me more options to consider.
A: Right. So focusing on the outcome would mean asking: Do people need community meetups to discuss necessary policy changes?
And, do people need more accurate weather data to adjust for changes in commodity prices?
None of this is about articles. And that's why it's important that workflows begin with outcomes — otherwise it's easy to go down the path of creating content that doesn't connect with your mission.
R: And here's the other principle that we spoke about in previous lessons: Content isn't the point — content is meant to start a conversation, to trigger an action, to bring other ideas — or products — together.
So don't start with content. And don't end with content either. Instead, think about how content will help you achieve your mission — and build your workflow from there. It's important to get that right.
Building a workflow around the outcome you want begins with
Restating your mission
Assess your story — or whatever product it might be — against that mission
List the outcomes you want from that product
Finally, list the actions you want your audience to take so you can achieve those outcomes
For Talha Ahad of The Centrum Media, he's not just producing content in order to engage his audience — his content is a result of his engagement with his audience.
“Hi, my name is Talha. I'm the founder and CEO of The Centrum Media. We are Pakistan's first digital news network specialising in video content... The really important thing is to give them the sense that you are listening to them and whatever people are commenting and everything, you start engaging with them and then produce content according to that.”
R: Fight the urge to default to content — because often, the mission of your company probably has nothing to do with content production.
Remember, news is not your mission. (And if it is, you need to rethink your mission!)
By the way, if you're still fuzzy about how to frame this thing we're calling MISSION, go back to the first Foundation lesson. Take a look at the worksheet, and work out that mission statement.
A: Now, you're probably aiming to be the leading source for information in a niche space... to provide information and knowledge... maybe to entertain... maybe to enrich society. Or something.
Think of five ways to execute against your mission WITHOUT having content in there.
I know. It's a hard one.
Here's something for your worksheet. Download it by hitting that pink button below.
Write down a list of outputs that speak to your mission — and remember, don't put content in there. But if you have to, put it down as number five.
For example, if you're a media company built around LGBTQ rights, you might want to shift government policy around a specific issue, or to raise funding for a community activity around inclusion. These would be your outcomes.
Hit pause now and get that list of outputs down in your worksheet. Unpause when you're done.
R: Ok. So you now have a list of things you need to do — stuff that speaks to your mission. It could be events. It could be merch. It could be a monthly dinner for a segment of your audience.
Now this is where the fun begins — pick one thing and imagine how you'd operationalise that in a workflow.
Now think about how you'd do that over and over again — figuring out a system that operationalises how to do something consistently is part of the plan.
Delivering consistently in quality and quantity matters if you're building a brand.
A lot of people especially ask me, or generally, just Google how to produce viral content. There are a few techniques of knowing what works and what doesn't work, but one of the most important thing is to produce very consistent content on your platform. That is the formula of virality. A lot of people are not consistent.
— Talha Ahad
A: So do this. Draw your plan out on a sheet of paper, or on a whiteboard — or the lesson worksheet.
Write down every single step — use verbs so you have tangible steps, like create a wireframe, commission a story, hire a writer, or segment a mailing list.
Rishad, I was talking to our friend Janie Octia, who works in Facebook's news partnerships team, and here's what she told me about breaking down a workflow:
She said:
When you're planning your workflows, write all the tasks and steps, no matter how mundane it is.
For example, when publishing a story, you often look for a photo.
If it requires you to go to your photo archives, then download the image and re-upload that in the CMS, that can easily take a lot of your time.
She said you can solve it by finding ways to build a photo archive within your CMS (if that's even possible) so whenever you need a photo, you can search within that archive.
R: Nice. So you've got to count the number of steps involved. That's your baseline.
Then, look for ways to take out say, 20% of steps from that process. And do that with automation — what tools can you use to automate those few steps?
For example, could you use Zapier to notify you on Slack every time a new member signs up? Or when someone comments on your website?
And by the way, this is where newsrooms often fail when it comes to workflow — failing to see what's possible through automation because it's just easier throwing people at the problem instead of simplifying it or automating it through software.
A: Sure, you may be able to hire an intern to get something done — but you'll still have to invest the time interviewing, briefing the person, and managing them for the outcome you're looking for.
So figure out what's worth automating and what isn't based on trade-offs. Look for ways to automatically, for example, update the home page whenever a new story is posted.
Or to send a tweet or schedule and send a newsletter at a specific time of the day.
Maybe to fire off a confirmation email to a new subscriber with details on your next meet up.
R: No system or workflow is set in stone. In fact, the beauty of a great workflow is that it will lend itself to constant refinement, because there will be new tools, new people, different technology, and whole new audiences to redefine your outcomes for. But the important thing is to set it up first, and refine it as you go...instead of waiting for the perfect workflow, which could take years.
The best systems need minimal intervention. And here's another point worth remembering — there are no people problems — there are only process problems. The best person in your team will fail if the processes are wrong to begin with. Whereas an average staffer would still be able to get the job done if the processes were right.
A: In fact, as tools become more efficient and more powerful, every newsroom should be asking themselves: how can I take 30% of steps out of this every single year — and still deliver on quality?
As you distill your process, one thing should start crystallising in your head: the outcome. Does this process help you create the outcome you want? Remember, outcome is not output.
Ask yourself — what are three things you need to do, or to review, in order to optimise your processes for efficiency?
These could be
Cutting down the steps it takes to create a social post
Removing unnecessary steps in making a bank transfer to pay your freelancers
Reassessing how many stories you really need to do every week in order to be useful and relevant to your audience
Reducing the number of meetings that could just have been done on emails, or Slack
Hit pause now, use your worksheet, and write down your list of three ways you could optimise for efficiency.
R: At this point, you may be asking yourself — how do I know if I'm delivering the outcome I want?
This is the first rule of management: You can't manage what you can't measure.
You'll have to create meaningful ways to measure if your workflow is indeed creating the outcome you want.
Ask yourself: If this works, what's the most ideal manifestation of that? What does success look like?
Depending on your goal, it might be easy or difficult. If you're selling merchandise, it's as simple as counting your orders. If you're creating content, you'll have to go deeper and figure out whether that content was consumed or used in a meaningful way to your company's mission.
Want to do a quick example, Alan?
A: Sure. Let's go back to our town in Indonesia that we spoke about earlier, as an example. If your mission is to address their problems around how the climate crisis is affecting them, a successful outcome would mean that they were able to, say, affect policy, or agree on a plan for mobilising people in an emergency.
So figure out two things: what success looks like, and how you can measure it.
According to Janie Octia, whom we mentioned earlier in this lesson, it's important to understand the differences when it comes to measurements.
Sometimes newsrooms treat all the metrics the same. For example, you can look at the breakdown of a social post's engagement and see which stories drive likes, but not comments. Or stories that drive a lot of conversations and reactions, but are not being shared. If you have a specific goal on how you want your audience to engage with your stories, whether by driving conversations in comments or empowering them to share your stories, you have to decide which metrics you'll want to focus on to drive your strategy.
— Janie Octia
A: Hit pause and think of how you'd measure the success of those outcomes. Be honest — because there's nothing worse than creating vanity numbers that add nothing to the viability of your media business.
By the way, if you end up counting just page views, you might want to go back and think this through again.
R: Ok, one last thing here. And it's something we've often said in these Foundation lessons. The only way to figure out if you're doing something right is to test quickly.
Build something quick. Start moving. Get this in front of people so that you can get their feedback.
Testing quickly also means testing cheaply — making your mistakes early means you save a whole lot of money, and a chunk of time.
Here's Shubangha Pandey at Himal Southasian in Colombo.
“So our team built and tested a newsletter last year, which basically explained current affairs, two very short summaries of three books on that subject. And the biggest takeaway from that experience was to make sure that you keep good track of all the time spent on all aspects of production. It always takes longer and more work than you imagined.”
A: Don't bother with too many drawn-out debates internally. Whenever possible, get the product out there so that your users can make that decision for you. Learn to outsource decisions that way. After all, your user is the person you're building that product — or outcome — for.
That way, you're also developing a deep understanding of your customer/user/subscriber/member and what they care about.
Remember, there are no cheat codes; you actually have to spend time with them. You have to ask them what matters to them, in actual conversations, and then internalise those with your team.
If you're the CEO of an early stage media company, YOU'RE the chief customer officer. Don't leave this in the hands of someone else on the team — or wait to get that grant to hire that person to fill that position. This isn't about PR or marketing or product. This is on you.
Our friend Darshini Kandasamy, the editor of the Between The Lines newsletter, picked up the skills she needed to run her newsletter business.
"I definitely had to pick up so many skills along the way. For me, there was the backend technical skills and in the front, a lot of partnership development so that we could really expand this product that we were building because the newsletter was a bit more unique compared to other newsletters. There wasn't really a model that we could follow. And a lot of it was trial and error."
R: As startup founders, we're all figuring it out as we go.
Every media product is different, so make sure you're creating the right workflow that works for yours.
We hope you found this useful.
Go check out the other lessons from this foundation course.
If you have questions, send us an email here, and we'll get right back to you.