Content Pragmatics
Some Thoughts on How to do Content Differently
Philosophizing with a hammer. That’s what Nietzsche advocated. And while I am routinely teased (and not without cause) for being irredeemably theoretical, this is what I in fact do when it comes to content. Yes, I do explore the theory of content and here, in my own defense, I like to summon up Kurt Lewin’s point that there is nothing as practical as a good theory. But I have primarily proceeded by implementation – by trying things out in the real world and often on a monumental scale. We might call this content strategizing with a hammer.
Cutting to the chase, I should probably blurt out a few maxims on how we can, collectively, drag content, our tools, and ourselves into the twenty-first century, into the age of the smart machine. Here are some points that come to mind (there are seven points offered, of course). I am eager (perhaps a little too eager) to discuss them should someone be inclined to do so.
1. Content must flow. It must move between many applications and therefore many representations. This calls for radical portability and this, in turn, calls for simplicity. This then means that every single step we might take towards sophistication must be matched with two steps towards understandability and usability. This is a hard discipline to live by, but it is essential.
2. Content implies automation. My annoying definition of content (OK, one of my annoying definitions of content) is that it is ‘potential information’ and the word ‘potential’ is key here. It is latent. It awaits realization. Its value, such as it is, lies in what it will become when it is published into a form that someone can use. Publishing entails selection, transformation, and delivery. Each of these calls on automation. That automation must be something the organization can actively control. That automation cannot be relegated to a backwater of inefficient and esoteric tools. It must be part of the mainstream (the main stream).
3. Content is an organizational asset. The accountants are quick to remind us that an asset is something that has potential future value – there’s that word again, ‘potential’. Content is everybody’s business. Working on content means elevating the level of discourse amongst everyone involved in what the organization does. Content work is hard because it means coordinating across organizational, and disciplinary, boundaries to establish ‘what the organization has to say’ on a topic.
4. Content benefits. The benefits that come from investments in how content is designed, managed, and leveraged, need to be balanced across all dimensions. Specifically, every internal benefit in efficiency must be matched to an at least equal external benefit in effectiveness. Neither survives long without the other.
5. The full content lifecycle. If we are to understand our content and thus be in a position to manage it for the better, then we must take into account all the sources from which it is drawn, all the ways in which it is created, modified, managed, delivered and used, all the representations it can adopt, and all the rules that will apply to it at every point in the lifecycle. This is a lot. For this reason, we are encouraged, once again, to keep things as simple as possible (but no simpler, as Einstein would say). We might also be encouraged to apply a genuine modelling methodology and notation, one that works to illuminate rather than obscure what is important in the content lifecycle.
6. Content integration. Content, the work around content, and the tools we often use to work on content, all need to fit into, and play nicely with, the working infrastructure that exists in the organization. Isolation is not a virtue. Optimized isolation is a recipe for disaster. Accordingly, we need to integrate the content lifecycle into the fabric of our organizations. Multiple benefits will flow from this.
7. Content responsibility. Organizations, and the teams who have typically carried the content ball within those organizations, need to apply the lessons of the last 40 years to how they approach content, content work, content tools, and content integration. It is patently irresponsible to do otherwise.
Conway’s law (from Melvin Conway in 1967) runs “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.” Note that this insight was not novel (and it gains strength from this fact) and we can point to several precedents including the works of the early pioneer in automation, Charles Babbage, in the 1820s. However long its providence, this insight is nowhere more true than in the case of AI today. How well the communication structures operate in an organization will determine how well, and how beneficially, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be engaged.
As I have touched on previously, AI is arising in part to redress the breakdowns in organizational coherence that have become a pressing problem today. AI can be usefully understood as an organizational amplifier and to the extent an organization articulates its understanding of the world, its place in it, and how these things might be changed (its goals) AI will amplify the impact and accelerate the realization of those goals. If the organization remains fractured and dissolute, then AI will amplify these features too and accelerate the inevitable outcome.
So if you want to take the initiative with AI, to lead at a time that calls for leadership, then pick up your content hammer and get to work. Learn from what has been done before (perhaps taking my seven points as possible road signs) and put your name onto the next generation of content solutions in your organization. Square off against the hard problems, the ones that your organization really cares about, and show how content work can be a material part of the answer. I am inviting you, or perhaps challenging you, to content strategize with a hammer.