Diagram: Partners for the content strategist

When every facet, subset, and silo is boiled down the task of understanding how an organisation can be effective with their content is, in essence, what content strategy is all about: everything we do is driven and measured by it.

Working out why and how an organisation’s content needs to change cannot be achieved without three key considerations: the status and potential of the content itself, the platform that supports its delivery, and the people involved in its creation. The potentially dizzying amount of skills and responsibilities this requires means the content strategist must seek out all the available knowledge within an organisation, capture it, and use it effectively. Clear communication, a respect for each other’s skills and time, and a shared common goal can help forge the working partnerships that make such changes possible.

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Bureaucracy: a tale of fear and loathing

Not only do bureaucrats have to contend with being widely regarded as life’s great water-carriers and spoilers, they frequently find themselves being used as a collective political punchbag — one which everyone, regardless of their political leaning, is invited to take a free swing at. The problem, I believe, is this modern toxic image that bureaucracy conjures up in our minds: one of dull, overly-fastidious drones stifling genuine and blindingly obvious progress, safe within the confines of their ivory towers of power. But wait: wasn’t it bureaucracy and systems of government at their most pure and infantile that helped elevate human civilisation from the laborious rigours of jabbing one another with sharp sticks and trading nothing more than furrow-browed stares? No, not really, but looking back through history we can confidently point to bureaucracy as one of the chief reasons how one empire could outlast another by centuries.

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