The ability to remain neutral can be one of the toughest skills to acquire for the ad operations professional. There are those who believe that Ad Ops is diametrically opposed to sales – sort of the yin to their yang. Get any group of ad traffic managers together, and the top complaint will always be salespeople (followed closely by third party ad issues.) This is the way of the digital advertising operations world, and I would go as far as calling the level of conflict between sales and ops “healthy.”
An organization needs a wide array of personality types to thrive. Salesfolk are motivated by their commission check. Many of them will tell you that they just want to help customers or enable the company to maintain a large profit margin, it all goes back to their sales goal. That’s the way it should be, and they should not have to apologize for that. I only mention this to put things into perspective. It is important to understand the motivations of your internal customers.
That’s right, the salespeople are your customers. They are seldom right, but they are always your customers 
. This is where the important of being neutral really comes in handy.
So now we have established that your customers are driven by money, and often you are the person that will help or hinder them to make that money. The labels for operations people that don’t help them achieve their sales goal are numerous: roadblock, obstacle, bottleneck, and (my personal favorite) “hostage taker.” The list of names for when you help them? It doesn’t exist.
Being in operations means that you sort of have a negative recognition or “recognition in reverse” standard. It means that if everything is operating smoothly and no one pays attention to your team, then you are doing your job well. Attention usually gets focused on ops people when all hell is breaking loose, and believe me it’s not the attention you want. Though this might seem unfair, it’s part of the territory and is pretty universal no matter what field you work in. Logistics only get noticed if something fails.
There are no shortage of bad ideas out there. In the digital advertising/publishing industry, the adops professional has (or probably will) hear the majority of them over the course of their career. Often, you will be approached in a way that makes it seem as if your permission is needed to proceed. This is a trap! Don’t be lulled by the false sense of entitlement to weigh-in on issues just because you are an expert. Ultimately, you can huff and puff all that you want to. You can give every logical reason why it’s a bad idea. You can attempt to use solid reasoning, or come just short of calling the other person an idiot. The end result will probably be that it’s really not up to you, no matter what your opinion is. In fact, the more you say NO, the more someone will want to do it.
So your goal when approached by anyone with ANY idea is to not say “NO!”
Here are some basic steps that I like to use when approached with a bad idea:
- Listen to the person. Take notes while they are speaking. This will make them feel like you are paying very close attention to every word of their master plan to deliver a full screen streaming video in high definition to all users of your site before loading the home page.
- Nod. A lot.
- Ask a few questions for clarity, even if you fully understand what they are asking for. Write down the answers. Or just doodle – but make it look like you are writing.
- Instead of following your gut reaction and listing all of the reasons why this is the most horrific idea since the invention of the <IFRAME> tag…just say “interesting.” Any time you feel compelled to describe their idea, instead of using negative words, just say that it is “interesting.”
- Take some time to get back to them if possible. If you’re put on the spot (the client wants this by close of business today!) then start to list some of the things that might be affected by this idea. Never say words like “shouldn’t” or “can’t” or “won’t.” Here’s an example: Instead of “We can’t stream live video to users that haven’t asked for it” say “We usually wait until a user requests video before serving it to them, but if (whomever will make this final decision anyway – it isn’t you and probably isn’t your boss) is cool with it, we can explore that possibility.”
- Figure out who will make the final decision on this, and lay out some concrete, yet very short scenarios. Don’t get too caught up in the details. No one cares why, they just want to know if it can be done. During this process, it’s important to set aside your personal feelings about the question. You may see a question as a violation of common sense or of ethics. Ignore these urges to listen to your inner voice. You are simply there to answer if something can be done, not if it should be done.
- Wait for the stakeholders to make the decision. Once it has been made, support it wholeheartedly.
Follow those steps and you will never be seen as an obstacle. The decisions are usually out of your control anyway. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t prevent really bad ideas from happening. Just pick your battles, and when you do decide to fight them, remember to appear neutral.
I’ll leave you with an over-exaggerated scenario that I use from time to time:
A rep walks into my office. They have an idea to light kittens on fire and juggle them in front of a webcam. It will make us a million dollars in one day.
Now, I love kittens, and it would personally bother me to see this done to them, but my logistical mind is so well-trained that the first words out of my mouth are:
“…you’re going to need a fire extinguisher. I’ll call the fire department and see if we need a permit. Might want to check with P.E.T.A. in advance but I’m pretty sure I know where they stand on this. So what’s the CPM?”
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