Strategy is what you say "no" to
Last week, I proposed a model for what I think “content strategy” should mean, based around the idea of choosing how you want to distribute content along multiple factors. But while this can be a very effective operational framework, it doesn’t address the real reason teams have a hard time adopting any kind of strategy: Strategies are defined by what you say “no” to, and people don’t like saying “no” to things.
In fact, the main reason a strategy is useful is that it tells you what to say “no” to. If your content strategy is to sell CSOs on how flexible your software is, then it forces you to say “no” to that blog post for CIOs about enforcing strict data standards. Maybe that’s an extreme example, but you get the idea.
For a team, a strategy tells everyone to say “no” to the same things. Which is the second reason teams have a hard time adopting a consistent strategy: To the extent people are willing to say “no,” they have different ideas about what to say “no” to.
So adopting a strategy is hard. But it isn’t impossible.
Usually, with the right questions, you can tease out the things that each team member is willing to say “no” to, whether or not they realized it. Then it’s just a matter of finding a common core of “no” between all the team members. This may involve some creative reframing, but if the team is relatively aligned in general, there should be something there. (If the team isn’t aligned in general, that’s a different conversation…)
So a lot of the techniques that I’ve adopted, from the core stories/ICP narratives to these more formal forms of content strategies, are basically tools to tease out these ideas from individuals and teams, and quickly get them to a consistent strategy.
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