I’ve got so much to think about and so very little headspace for anything right now.
Nonetheless, I have a bunch of things I need to get down before they slip my mind. At least one I should have copied down on the whiteboard or somewhere.
First is the most recent. In response to a tweet stream about content by @mgrocki
https://twitter.com/mgrocki/status/1138451500873801730?s=21
Here’s a dirty little secret about content. It exposes operational inefficiencies in your org. So when you seek outside council to assist in content endeavors you often uncover these inefficiencies, and rather than triage and do the real work, you scapegoat the outside council.
Their recommendations are often misidentified as brash, complicated, too much, or very disruptive. Which is all a very fancy way of saying most orgs are too lazy to do the hard work around content.
Push button, get content does not exist.
There are no 5 minute abs, investing silver bullet, or one size fits all model for content production and maintenance.
Did you build your business which a strategy or idea that was implemented overnight? Why would you think your supporting content would now follow the same path?
I agree and I disagree. To me it almost feels rather optimistic. If by operational inefficiencies, you meant dysfunctions, then that’s probably a lot closer. I feel I’ve got a rant in me on this, but I’m not going to get into this now.
Then there’s a more rounded idea (post) on content. The basics, as I’m sure I’ve argued before, are that content is a lot more than words and pictures.
The two pieces cross-over possibly in many places. Ultimately, the idea of content and the reality (I’m going to stick with intranets here) really don’t match up. We have an idea for content, which we don’t really figure out the many needs of user categories for content, audit and align the abilities of the business to produce the content, figure out the information architecture to put it in the right place(s) and make it findable, and organisationally ensure it is continually deliverable and governable. And we don’t stop internal bickering over what is done/not done.
I’m also thinking a little about my transformation of location/time/xyz inspired by The Exponent. I’m too tired to actually recall the details, but it does need something.
Lot’s more, already forgotten. At least something has been stored tonight.