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Listen and Learn: Intro to B5: OPERATIONS (Commercial)

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INTRODUCTION: B5 Operations (Commercial)

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How to WIN: Recruiting for gender equality

If women played an identical role to men in labour markets – e.g. equal labour force participation, number of hours worked and equal numbers in top-paying sectors and roles – it would contribute $28 trillion to the global economy.

A Harvard study found 76% of men and women to be unconsciously gender-biased – raising questions about how such bias affects recruitment.

How to avoid gender bias when hiring:

Consider the language of all job adverts and internal communications.
Anonymous recruiting can help remove implicit bias. Ask the person receiving CVs in the company to remove any names or gender-specific details before passing them on to management.
At the interview stage, ensure there is a diversity of opinions in the room. Get second and third opinions.

Job adverts with masculine-coded language are less appealing to Women and that they belonged less in those occupations. For men, feminine-coded adverts are only slightly less appealing with no effect on how much men feel they belong in those roles.

Use the Gender Code Tool to find subtle bias in job ads: http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/

Advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth - McKinsey Global Institute

“If you exclude 50% of the talent pool, it’s no wonder you find yourself in a war for talent.”

INTRODUCTION: B5 Operations (Commercial)

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What is covered in this lesson?

INTRODUCTION: B5 Operations (Commercial)

SECTION 1: What is Operations Management

Operational areas in news businesses
Editorial and operations: the “separation of church and state”
Cross-functional / matrix team structures

STOP AND THINK: Could you see the value of establishing matrix teams to deal with certain business issues or projects?

SECTION 2: Sales, Finance and HR

Finding champions and allies to work with in your organisation
Operational areas
People, Processes and Technology framework

SECTION 3: Data and Operational Innovation

Three operational reasons to invest in data
Operational innovation

STOP AND THINK: How much contact do you have with areas of the business out of your immediate environment?

Individual Assignment: Share good and bad examples of cost-cutting or operational efficiency exercises in your own organisation

TIME FOR REFLECTION: Write a short plan for a matrix team project

This section is about operations - not the most exciting part of a business, but really one of the most important. The support structures in a media business can make or break it as a success or a failure - HR departments, finance, circulation etc all have to run very well and very efficiently to support a organisation going through change, as we all are.

Everything that happens within a company to keep it running and earning money is referred to as business operations.
Operations management is concerned with “converting materials and labour into goods and services as efficiently as possible”.
In a news organisation, this will cover the act of converting newsgathering (labour), into content that in turn is made into newspapers, websites, TV broadcasts, videos, podcasts and radio channels (goods and services), and monetised for a profit.
In teh next session we will look at editorial operations as a separate operational area in the business

In this lesson we will take a closer look at the operational areas of a media business and I will also highly recommend that you establish allies in these areas of the business.

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SECTION 1: What is Operations Management?

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What is the definition of ‘operations’ in a business?

Operations management is “the administration of business practices to create the highest level of efficiency possible within an organisation”. (See Investopedia)
Everything that happens within a company to keep it running and earning money is referred to as business operations.
Business plans often include a section dedicated to operations so that company founders understand the systems, equipment, people, and processes need to make the organisation function.
Operations management is concerned with “converting materials and labour into goods and services as efficiently as possible”.
In a news organisation, this will cover the act of converting newsgathering (labour), into content that in turn is made into newspapers, websites, TV broadcasts, videos, podcasts and radio channels (goods and services), and monetised for a profit.

SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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Operational areas in news businesses

The operations of a business are usually run by a chief operating officer, but can also fall to an operations manager and sometimes even to the finance director!
The job of operations management is to try to balance costs with revenue to maximise net operating profit
Examples of operational departments in news businesses are Finance, Human Resources, Advertising, Sales and Marketing, Information Technology and Circulation.
Editorial is also an operational area, but we will deal with editorial operations in Lesson B6
The main aims of operational departments should be to work continuously to improve the business: optimise performance, cut costs, improve productivity and streamline or automate processes wherever possible

SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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OPERATIONAL AREAS SUPPORT THE BUSINESS

Managing Information Systems: https://paginas.fe.up.pt/~acbrito/laudon/ch2/chpt2-1main.htm

SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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Editorial and operations: the “separation of church and state”

For many years in publishing, there has been a rule that editorial will have as little as possible to do with operational or commercial areas of the business, especially sales
The reason for this has been to protect editorial integrity at all costs and ensure that editors have been able to do their jobs without interference or influence
The blanket interpretation of this truism has changed over the years, however, as the concept of an aligned organisation develops
Successful media companies ensure their editorial staff are in close contact with operational staff:
Editors should oversee budgets and be in touch with finance, as well as work closely with circulation; managing editors should have as much knowledge about labour law as HR, news editors and reporters should work with IT to develop better products (especially digital) and ALL editorial staff should understand what readers and advertising clients value.
A closer collaboration between editorial staff and operational areas (which can be “functional silos”) can only lead to better products and experiences for customers

A provocative thought: is it possible that this deep separation between the producers of the goods (editorial) and the sellers of the goods (commercial) has in fact contributed to the inability of many news businesses to pull together strategically and pivot to deal with immense change?

SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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Listen and Learn: Matrix teams

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SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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One way to achieve collaborative working across operations ‘functional silos’ is to use matrix team structures

SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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Cross-functional / matrix team structures

One way to achieve close co-operation between editorial and operations is to work with Matrix Teams
These teams come from different areas to focus on a business challenge - usually reporting to a business owner rather than a manager of a functional silo
Definition: the practice of managing individuals with more than one reporting line (in a matrix organisation structure)
Also commonly used to describe managing cross-functional, cross-business group teams.

Employees report to both their immediate manager and a cross-functional leader on certain vital project streams
Agile, highly specialised project teams with differing areas of expertise can be brought together on a temporary basis to maximise quality and revenue on products, and to work quickly to achieve results
Examples of matrix teams might be on reader revenue, native advertising, alternate revenue streams and would comprise of staff across editorial, marketing, sales, and tech

SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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MATRIX TEAMS NEED CLEAR ROLES AND REMIT

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Having clear roles, remit, reporting lines and designated time is essential for a cross-functional team to work together and ensure the success of a project: without these delineations, the team is set for failure

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Stop & Think

Let’s stop and think for a moment:

Could you see the value of establishing matrix teams to deal with certain business issues or projects?
What examples of project streams could you think of in your own business that would benefit from cross-functional attention?

SECTION 1: B5 What is Operations Management?

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SECTION 2: Sales, Finance and HR

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Listen and Learn: PPT framework

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