Have you learnt your individual power? What about your weaknesses?
A principle of enterprise administration and management means that people and groups shall be extra profitable by constructing on their strengths than by making an attempt to appropriate their weaknesses.
Principle doesn’t suggest you must ignore weaknesses. As a substitute, it means that you must make investments deeply in your skills and strengths and decrease the results of any weaknesses. (You’ll be able to learn extra about this within the e-book Strengths-Based mostly Management, based mostly on the Gallup group’s 30-year analysis mission.
I completely agree with this concept. I’ve seen this concept work for content material groups that obtain long-term success. However the selection shouldn’t be all the time clear.
Should #ContentMarketing teams double down on their strengths? Or try to fix their weaknesses? Not an easy choice, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. click to tweet
Strengths vs weaknesses
A brand new content material advertising and marketing technique unites folks beneath new statutes, with new processes, obligations and applied sciences. Individuals name this technique of making ready everybody for the brand new state of affairs “change administration.”
However, if we’re trustworthy, it’s truly a “new administration”. None of this has been carried out earlier than.
One of many first issues I like to recommend to shoppers on this state of affairs is to do a expertise audit. A expertise audit finds areas of power in addition to gaps the place extra coaching, outsourcing, or new hires is perhaps wanted.
I’ve seen many firms make the identical mistake after the talents audit: They double down on reinforcing perceived (or actual) weaknesses.
However that method instantly builds a steep mountain to climb. Content material groups confronted with the whole lot “new” can really feel demoralized if they’ve to rent and prepare new inner or exterior employees on the identical time.
Nonetheless, many consultants argue that focusing solely on strengths has its drawbacks. A number of years in the past, a Harvard Enterprise Overview podcast advised that “many weaknesses are overdeveloped strengths.”
For instance, amplifying the strengths of a politically astute workforce chief can create a manipulative boss. Specializing in the velocity or creativity of the interior design workforce can result in a workforce that’s overworked and thought of idiosyncratic in its method or out of contact with enterprise realities.
Deciding whether or not to deal with the strengths or weaknesses found in a expertise audit jogs my memory of the aphorism usually attributed to statistician George Field: “All fashions are fallacious, however some are helpful.”
There aren’t any straightforward solutions.
Which strengths and which weaknesses matter most
In a method, it is a false selection. Understanding which strengths and weaknesses matter most tends to provide the perfect outcomes. You’ll be able to’t assess which strengths or weaknesses to deal with till you perceive which strengths and weaknesses most have an effect on your commerce’s probabilities of success.
For instance, firms constructing content material groups typically ask me, “Ought to we rent material consultants with deep data about our companies and the business or nice writers who can study our enterprise over time?”
The reply to that query is sure.
Should #Content teams hire SMEs that know the industry or great writers that can learn? Yes, says @Robert Rose via @CMIContent. click to tweet
Each approaches are equally vital, till you determine which one may have extra impression on the workforce’s objectives. When you resolve what’s most vital, you’ll be able to deal with enhancing the strengths of the method you’ve gotten chosen.
I’ve seen this firsthand in two conditions.
The primary concerned a brand new content material workforce at a big Fortune 100 firm. After conducting a expertise audit, they recognized their strengths: creativity and journalistic storytelling. Additionally they uncovered some perceived weaknesses: gross sales enablement content material and advertising and marketing measurement.
As a brand new workforce, in addition they understood that the corporate positioned a excessive worth on the power to ship nice content material to gross sales and supply analytics to point out the effectiveness of content material. A key piece of the workforce’s enterprise case was to centralize content material and make it an inner fortress. So their impulse was to beef up their gross sales content material and analytics weaknesses.
To take action, the content material workforce took over these areas from their outsourced company. They have been certain they might “work it out”.
However they did not. And the workforce’s popularity as a robust editorial workforce additionally took successful as they tried to stability their strengths with a scarcity of promoting and analytics. When enterprise took a flip, they fired the editorial workforce. They weren’t thought of able to enterprise the mandatory advertising and marketing analyses.
Would they’ve survived if that they had let the company deal with their weak areas and continued to excel in enhancing or if that they had created a phased partnership with the company to deal with the talents wanted for gross sales enablement and measurement?
I believe so.
Within the second situation, a tech firm I work with had been rising and shaping its content material workforce for a number of years. They keep a eager consciousness of their workforce’s strengths and weaknesses. Extra importantly, the workforce chief has created transparency and understanding of their ongoing stability all through the enterprise.
At first, they targeted on highlighting their strengths as a content material advertising and marketing workforce (creativity, thought management within the business, and structuring content material for translation and reuse). Initially they did not tackle the sales-oriented content material, they left it within the palms of the demand technology workforce.
Finally, they partnered with the demand technology workforce, who continued to create nice advertising and marketing content material. The content material workforce helped them develop requirements and guides to facilitate translation and redesign for a number of channels.
Years later, this mannequin works very nicely for them.
It is a delicate however crucial distinction. The primary workforce thought their job was to excel at content material and targeted on correcting the workforce’s weaknesses to make it occur. The second workforce realized that their job was to make the enterprise good at content material, and targeted in your strengths to make it occur.
The usefulness of any content material expertise audit lies within the capability to align the core strengths of the workforce with the priorities and expertise of the enterprise.
Over time, if you happen to can keep this consciousness, your workforce’s weaknesses can turn out to be their biggest power.
It is your story. Inform it nicely.
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Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising and marketing Institute
– Should Your Content Team Play to Its Strengths or Fix Its Weaknesses?
