Chapter 8. Where does it really hurt?

You’ve done your customer needs analysis and you probably have tons of ideas about how to address the needs, so you think you are good to go. Right? Wrong.

You can have the best ideas in the world and highly skilled people to follow them through, but if you don’t have a handle on how content is created, managed, and delivered in the organization, your project, and subsequently the content, may never make it out the door.

To build an effective, unified content strategy you need to understand your organization’s goals and needs. When implementing a unified content strategy, it’s good to start “where it really hurts.” Start in areas with the most pain, where processes and tools and technology are failing or inadequate and your organization is feeling the negative results from customers or management. This will help you realize a higher return on investment; it will also show other areas in the organization how a content strategy and a more effective content lifecycle can help them. Change typically occurs when the pain becomes too great—when organizations are held back from meeting ongoing requirements as well as profiting from new opportunities. Deadlines are missed, content is inconsistent, content is missing—and customers complain.

To discover where your organization is hurting the most, you need to understand the dangers and challenges facing your organization, the opportunities that can be realized if change occurs successfully, and the strengths your organization can build on to implement these changes. In most organizations, individual departments know the specific pain they are feeling; they may be frustrated by the inability to find relevant content, by duplication of their efforts, by tight deadlines. Talking to management and groups involved in the content lifecycle is beneficial because it helps to identify where the pain points are throughout the organization and it helps you determine where the focus of your unified content strategy should be. Management has a broad-picture perspective on issues and can assist in determining the key issues and strategic goals that must be addressed. And a mix of management and group feedback will paint a more realistic picture of the organization’s issues.

This chapter discusses ways to identify the organizational dangers, opportunities, and strengths, as well as the goals you want to achieve in order to move ahead with a unified content strategy. Identifying these issues helps you figure out where a unified content strategy fits within the big picture, ensuring that you’re addressing the real issues and goals of the organization and better positioning you to differentiate your product and service to meet ongoing customer needs. Identifying these issues will also help you define your strategy for helping your organization achieve its goals.

Who to interview

Talking to management or senior stakeholders is key to really understanding the big picture and the organization’s overall goals. Interview as high up the organizational structure as you can go, such as directors and C-level management. Remember that these are the people who will ultimately sign off on your content strategy and make the decision about which projects get funded and which don’t. But be aware that these are really busy people, and don’t ask for more than 30 minutes of their time (you might only get 15 to 20). Make sure they understand the purpose of the interview and the project, but don’t ask leading questions or draw any conclusions before you start. Stick to your questions.

Provide the questions in advance. Some won’t look at them until the interview, others will have worked through the questions and prepared their answers.

Identifying the D.O.S.^®: Dangers, opportunities, and strengths

In a competitive business environment and sometimes difficult economy, every organization faces dangers such as lost customers and lost sales and, subsequently, lost revenue. Yet even in difficult and challenging times, organizations can pursue many opportunities and build on their strengths. In fact, challenging times are often the best times to improve processes. However, before charging ahead, you first need to determine the dangers. Only then can you address them by identifying opportunities and strengths.

The concept of D.O.S.^® is a registered trademark, protected by copyright and an integral concept of the Strategic Coach^® Program. All rights reserved. Used and modified with written permission from www.strategiccoach.com.

Dangers

At some point, every organization faces danger. This is especially true in a competitive environment in which it is difficult, if not impossible, for organizations to maintain their desired competitive position. After all, someone else is always coming up with a newer and better solution, and customers’ needs are always changing. From a business perspective, potential or perceived danger reflects the fear of something: the fear of losing competitive position, the fear of not meeting desired revenues, the fear of missed opportunities, and so on. The dangers to your organization can be enterprise-wide or related to a specific department. The first step in overcoming dangers is to identify them; danger can be a positive impetus to effect change. Once you know what dangers you face, you can define how your strategy can help to overcome them.

To help you identify the dangers specific to your organization, ask key people to identify the three top dangers the organization is facing, or will be facing, if you don’t meet your goals.

Opportunities

Even when there is a multitude of dangers, opportunity exists. In fact, opportunity often arises from danger. However, when there are few dangers, there are even greater opportunities available—opportunities that you can pursue without feeling pressured by the need to address dangers and that you can pursue solely with the prospect of success.

With many opportunities available, it’s important to focus on key ones. To identify where your best chances for improvement or growth lie, ask key people in your organization to identify the opportunities that they hope to take advantage of with a project like yours.

Strengths

Every organization has its strengths. Recognizing and building on your strengths is important because strengths allow you to realize your opportunities. Sometimes in difficult times it’s easy to overlook your strengths and focus on the negatives. Focusing on your strengths provides a positive focus for moving forward and helps you build your content strategy using the strengths of the organization. Ask the key people in your organization to identify what they feel are the organization’s greatest strengths and why.

Identifying the goals

All organizations have many goals, often reflected in corporate and department strategic plans. Naturally, goals are based on the opportunities organizations have available to them. While not all corporate goals can be addressed with a unified content strategy, you need to identify which ones can be. Goals may be the same as your opportunities; however, they should be more tangible and measurable.

Determine goals by examining strategic plans, and by asking key people what their specific goals are for the coming year. It’s important to have long-term goals as well. You can also ask about two-year, three-year, or even five-year goals. In fact, many organizations have five-year strategic plans, broken down into what they hope to accomplish each year.

If you want to sell your content strategy within the organization, you must tie into the corporate goals. Without alignment to the corporate goals, your content strategy will not gain executive support.

Identifying the challenges

Along with goals come challenges, whether they’re challenges of money, time, technology, or people. It’s important, before forging ahead with change, to identify challenges the organization may face in successfully moving forward so you can address those challenges during implementation. The best way to identify challenges is to ask key people, and everyone else you interview as you get started on your project, what they perceive as the challenges that may impact your ability to meet the goals. When you know what the potential challenges are, you can put a plan in place to avoid and address these challenges.

Sample questions

• What are the business reasons behind this project?

• What problems do you hope to solve?

• What are the greatest dangers facing the organization right now?

• What do you believe are the opportunities available to the organization?

• What do you think your organization’s greatest strengths are?

• What challenges do you think the organization may face bringing this project to success?

• What are the success factors for this project?

Where a unified content strategy won’t help

A unified content strategy will not be a solution to all the dangers you identify (for example, employee turnover). Its focus is on helping to solve the problems your organization is experiencing in the area of content creation, management, delivery, and communication with your customers. A unified content strategy is just one piece of your overall corporate strategy to address your dangers, realize your opportunities, and build on your strengths; it’s not the whole solution. As you gather your information, ensure that you and the rest of your organization understand what a unified content strategy will help you do and what it won’t.

Summary

To successfully move ahead with a unified content strategy, you need to determine where content management and authoring issues are really causing pain in the organization and jeopardizing your organization’s ability to support a robust content strategy. You do this by determining the dangers and challenges facing your organization, the opportunities that can be realized if change occurs successfully, the strengths your organization can build on to implement these changes, the goals of the organization, and the challenges you may face while implementing a unified content strategy.