Have you ever pulled and presented a regular report on the progress of your work? Congrats - you’ve done ops!

It only took around 15 years for a totally organic interest sprinkled around the internet to become a multibillion dollar industry fueled by ops-natured marketers like me, who love when a plan comes together. Again, and again, and again.

Bear with me now, while we start with a slight diversion.

If you have any familiarity with fashion design, you’ll know that sewing and tailoring are the main skills needed to:

• bring any wearable piece to life.

• repair a beloved garment or preserve it for posterity.

• adjust a garment to conform to a specific, unique person’s body shape.

Precise seams, secure buttons, and perfectly tucked zippers all with no hanging threads or garish pin holes make a garment great. But great fashion is so much more than great garment construction. And great construction cannot save an unfashionable garment.

Process is the underrated backbone of a marketing function that not only delivers but lends itself to iterative improvement.

A while back, I was keeping an eye out for Content Creator tips and how some of my recent favorites were managing to stay in that sweet spot between visible and obnoxious. Initially, that caused me to be preoccupied with one of the biggest pieces of advice the gurus give out: