My last post covered managing web content as a team sport with the implication that the tactics we apply at work depend on how well the players are functioning as a team.
Being in a great team makes doing hard things feel easy, whereas in a dysfunctional team small things become painfully complicated.
If we’re lucky there are times when things click – you have common goals, great ideas are flowing, there’s a healthy respect between teams and individuals, the right thing just seems to happen by itself.
That’s amazing when it’s there! But it isn’t as common as it should be.
What stops us getting there?
Of course, many of the barriers are common to all fields where you have lots of people working together.
But from my observation here are a few specific issues web content teams face in working well within their organisations.
1. The work isn’t well understood
Anyone can write, right? At a certainly level that’s true – most people with a school education can put together a serviceable email/report/post.
But the fact that writing is something everyone does makes it hard to see there’s a gulf between writing and writing well.
In content teams we’re often:
- editing to let go of the words while still conveying the message
- bringing different people’s writing into a single tone of voice
- applying the finer points of style and grammar that make content professional and trustworthy
- using what we know about web usability and our users to craft the message effectively.
This is subtle and it takes discernment to see the quality of the work and the benefits.
It can be hard for others to see the benefits of the editing we’re doing and why it’s worth spending time on.
2. Writing is personal
When we get into full blown conflict with a colleague over reordering a few sentences or substituting one word for another, it’s a sign there’s much more at stake than grammar.
That’s because when we write something, whether it’s a novel or the most mundane departmental status report, it ceases to be just words and becomes an extension of our selves.
It’s the feeling you get when you see a wall of red tracked changes on a draft you’ve written – even the most thick-skinned of us might flash back to primary school and feel a little attacked. You know it shouldn’t be personal but it feels like it!
In content teams we deal with this dynamic all the time. Unless you’ve had time to build trust or have ninja-level people skills, editing other people’s writing is bound to create friction.
3. Having to be referees
Doing our jobs involves adjudicating all the rules in place to help the organisation achieve its communication goals.
Style and grammar guides, which channel or sites to publish in, usability and accessibility principles, design systems – all these things need to be checked and enforced.
It’s a difficult position to be in because it often involves telling people things they don’t want to hear or do, so it’s not surprising that referees tend not to be the most popular figures either on the sports field or in organisations.
To play this role effectively there needs to be a shared understanding of why the rules are there and for them to be seen to be enforced fairly and practically.
4. Politics
Politics is a fact of life whenever we work with other people, but it can be a killer combination having to enforce rules without the power to do so.
Whether it’s because you’re a lone content professional in your organisation area, or because your team is in an area of the organisation that doesn’t bring in the profits, often we don’t have political clout when things gets contested.
The less functional organisations are, the more decisions are based around political power of individual areas as opposed to what’s best for the organisation, its customers and community.
5. Us getting it wrong
There are plenty of traps we fall into ourselves. The converse of others sometimes not understanding our skillset is that it can be easy for us to misunderstand what we’re writing about.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein – quote he probably didn’t say
In the well-intentioned drive to make things snappy and concise we can miss the fact that our editing has changed the meaning for the worse.
The standards and guidelines we love and spend much of our time with can cause us to miss legitimate cases for doing something that’s a bit quirky or different.
Combining points one and five creates the perfect conditions for an unhelpful cycle of mistrust.
What to do about it?
The odds are you won’t be starting from the perfect situation, so there are two broad approaches to dealing with these obstacles.
1. Structural/systemic
AKA changing the system. This starts from the top down, setting up governance in your organisation to deal with these problems. For example a formal governance document; clear roles, ownership and decision-making responsibilities; practical content guidelines that everyone can follow; good reporting lines and organisational structure.
- Pro
- Helps everyone be clear on the rules and why they exist.
- Can remove controversy from decisions by taking general principles out of the hands of individuals and politics, turning them into norms.
- Con
- Needing to rely on ‘big stick’ approaches to resolving disputes that invoke the power paradox.
- Can mean that less time is spent collaborating on the best outcome in a given situation.
2. Tactical/trust based
Starting from the ground up to build trust and good relationships amongst all the players using tactics like co-creation, knowledge sharing, artful persuasion etc.
- Pro
- Can lead to enduring results through creating a joint shared understanding gained through experience.
- Collaboration and change happens voluntarily through actual understanding rather than force.
- Opportunity for true collaboration that takes advantage of everyone’s skills and knowledge.
- Con
- More labour intensive.
- Relies on individual relationships which are subject to staff turnover.
To gain the rewards that come from being in an amazing organisation we need to combine both these approaches. They’re both essential and feed into each other.
Regardless of the current state of your work environment, they key is to work with people to create great results in a way that builds trust and relationships, codifying the effective approaches that emerge into enduring rules and structures.
That’s where we need our full bag of content wrangling tricks.