The Emergence of a Need

Spath found himself looking at his content origination budgets. What a mess. The origins of the mess go all the way back to day one of the company's life. No body laid out a content distribution strategy. Why? There were no functional business units to create content, so the indigenous content distribution strategy was used by default, by non-management.

Typically, a startup hires one technical writer in the research phase of product development. The technical writer starts to write the user manual and the help, the ultimate single sourcing situation. Until the technical writer is swamped, nothing else is involving content is considered, and that's if the technical writer is lucky. The content bloom begins with a wild garden of linear text.

Then, the engineers write the "training" content, by training we mean presentation content. No instructional design methodology is used. No feedback is provided to management on the efficacy of the instruction. The assumptions of management are embedded and assumed unassailable. No effort is directed towards checking those assumptions. Training becomes a profit center with the engineers presenting. Training may even become the only source of revenue, particularly if training is so bad that it scares away customers. Spath had seen this up close. That company died a long death doing what the accounting system said. Besides the production costs content exists beyond the grasp of the accounting system.

The technical writer might take a run through the presentation content and convert it into "training" manual content. Still, the presentation content isn't altered beyond formatting. Feedback isn't added. Objectives, goals, and learner testing isn't added. And, the management's assumptions continue to live in the content unabated by reality.

The content bloom spreads.

Then, the marketing phase starts with marcom, so some unified identity is created and promulgated across the organization. If the technical writer was managing print production, that responsibility now shifts to the marketers. If the technical writer didn't include any competitive claims, pressure to do so goes up. White papers end up in the peer editing pile.

The content blooms in lots of potted plant planters. Content shows up everywhere.

Then, professional services emerges. They hire a stand-up trainer. The stand-up trainer slowly takes over the presentational content. The stand-up trainer knows instructional design. If the stand-up trainer has worked in the software industry, they also know that plans are not allowed. No testing of the embedded managerial assertions is going to happen. Hopefully, the stand-up trainer is swamped, so they don't have to worry about efficacy. Friday is Bozeman, Montana. Friday is the focus.

In the meantime, the content empire of technical support blooms. Everything asked is everything answered. Everything is in the knowledge base. Content runneth over long before it starts to carry the corporate identity, legal disclaimers, and contact info that turn content into documents, aka members of the enterprise touchpoint collection.

Then, comes sales training, another content bloom.

Ah, and don't let us forget the website and the orthogonal world of ecommerce and search engine optimization. They even have content management systems, but only for themselves. Do they really manage content? Not, in the sense that Spath thought about it.

Each content originator builds an empire to the best of their ability. Each content originator builds content in isolation. Each content originator uses the latest and greatest content technologies to differentiate their department. This continues even as each content originating organization adds staff and management. Just doing what comes naturally, indigenously, guilelessly. Spath knew otherwise. Some people wrestled with pigs and occasionally you hired one. Then, the CFO wrestles the pig as well, which ends ultimately with the butchering of the pig. Oh, outsourcing the whole mess is such a relief.

Braticator was just such an enterprise, heros all round, drowning in content blooms, power allocations, empires constructed, under tooled, over tooled.

Spath knew these budgets were always too high. It was time to reach out and touch the enterprise touchpoint collection

So it was time for another memo:

I am inviting everyone involved in content production here at Braticator, Inc. to the Enterprise Touchpoint Collection Summit 03 to be held Friday after next. It will be an all day offsite. Please adjust your production schedules accordingly, and figure on losing about a man-month as a minimum on follow up.

This means everyone, not just the department heads. I don't know who all of you are. So if you've created any external documents during your employment here, show up. If you don't, then your documents will not be elgible for external consumption, so someone who does attend will be releaving you of your content production responsibilities. Oh, the easy way out? Not really. An audit will follow, then the razor, then the axe. Oh, and boxes.

It is budget time again, and your budgets are out of whack. So before I whack them, or outsource them, or otherwise dance with them, we need to talk, not to me, but to each other. I promise, no HR team building exercises.

Please RSVP via this email. The usual meal options will be offered. More info to follow.

Thanks.

Counting the Invisible Bean Chefs,

Joe Spath CFO,

Braticactor, LLC

Satisfied with the memo, Spath packed away his bedtime reading, the manual for another accounting system the company was going to buy, and headed home. Educate me now, so I can get real work done later. Spath wasn't going to get caught reading manuals at work.