People - the biggest challenge in content management

I had a flick through a slide deck by content strategist and author Sara Wachter-Boettcher the other day. A couple of quotes really stood out for me and set me reflecting on the major CMS project we're working on right now.


The slides are great. For all they're image and headline heavy, Sara's message still comes across loud and clear. Just hoping an article or transcript or video is coming soon.

Anyway, the quotes:

"You know exactly what to do, but not everyone here is ready for that. You’re jumping to the answers, but they don’t understand the questions." - a client

"Content is easy, people are messy." — Sally Bagshaw

 Easy for some maybe, but I find information architecture and content strategy pretty hard. But the point is, however immersed we get in our content strategy or tech development or whatever we always have to remember that most folk aren't as interested in this stuff as we are. They're bound up in the politics and processes and people and relationships of their day to day work.

I really need to work harder to get stakeholders to ask the questions I want them to, rather than identifying a problem they didn't even know existed and then trying to fix it...


Content & Control - slides on slideshare.com by Sara Wachter-Boettcher for Web Design Day 2013 Sara's website and book - Content Everywhere