I’m no Lone Ranger. But, I am The Content Wrangler. As a content strategist, I help organizations create, manage, and deliver the information they use to run their businesses, something most organizations are ill-prepared to do, at least not efficiently or effectively. Don’t get me wrong, not every firm misses the mark. Some organizations do it right. But, chances are, your organization doesn’t.
Don’t be offended. That’s not meant as an insult. Wrangling content is tricky proposition for most. It’s a discipline, informed by years of information engineering research, made possible by an increasingly powerful array of software tools and guided by business decisions based on science and mathematics.
Most organizations have yet to master the art of content wrangling, let alone see the value in streamlining their content life cycle. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. By taking time to examine how you do things today, you can find ways to improve the way you create, manage, and deliver information, too.
The first step, as 12 step programs have touted for decades, is to admit you have a problem. Most organizations go about tackling content challenges by starting from the wrong vantage point. They don’t start with the problem, they start by jumping toward what they believe is the solution – software. It’s only natural. We’ve been programmed to think that software solves problems, when in reality, software introduces as many problems as it helps us to solve ... especially, when you select the wrong software tool for the job.
Avoiding the tool trap is easy. The first step is to admit you are addicted to software and that your addiction, like all addictions, can cause you to make decisions that may have very negative consequences. Don’t allow yourself to start talking about software tools until you understand what your real challenges are. What problems are you trying to solve? Why are they problems? What do those problems cost your organization? And, what are you willing to do to make those problems go away?
Once you’ve identified what you think your problems are and what you’re willing to do to solve them, it’s time to start looking at the way that you do things today – your content life cycle. At a high level you are going to examine how you create, manage and deliver content.
More specifically, you will look for the things that slow you down and that impede your productivity. Are the manual tasks you perform today necessary or could they be automated? What roles and responsibilities will be different if you change the way you do things? What training will be required? How will these changes impact others who need access to your content? What people, processes, and systems rely on your content?
By understanding how you work today, you’ll be able to build a model for how you would like to work tomorrow. And, once you know what your problems are, what you are willing to do to solve them, what your perfect solution looks like, and what changes will need to take place, you’re ready to start talking about software tools.
Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler
August 28, 2010,
Palm Springs, CA