Until recently, I had 2 very big dogs. Combined, they weighed more than I do. They were young dogs, too, so they had a lot of energy and, like all young creatures, they fell over where they were when they got tired.
Typically, they fell over near me or my husband, usually me. Which was fine with us – we liked them very much and liked having them close. We didn’t think anything about having a very large pile of very large dogs in the middle of the room. Or right under my feet.
They’re our dogs
However, when people were at our house, inevitably someone commented on the big pile of large dogs in the middle of the room. “Really?” we’d say, “You think it’s hard to step over/around/between the large dogs to move anywhere in the room? No, you just step over them here and then wind around there and…”
We didn’t notice how difficult it was to step over and around the pile of large dogs because it happened all the time. When someone pointed it out, my husband groused that we should teach the dogs to lie elsewhere. And then we forget about it until we fell over one of them.
Your dogs
I suspect that you have business content issues that are big dogs spread out in the middle of the floor. You’re used to stepping over and around and sometimes falling. It’s normal to you.
But it doesn’t have to this way. You can still have your dogs and you don’t have to trip over them all the time.
For example, if you’re trying to manage business documents in Word, you (or your content developers) know you as a company spend roughly 50% of the time trying to make Word do that which it’s not designed to do.
Don’t believe me? Go ask. I’ll wait.
Reusing content is called copying and pasting in your company. And when things get out of synchronization, you call it normal and hope the auditors don’t notice.
Repurposing content in your company is also called copying and pasting. No one likes doing it so a lot of content is simply not available to the people who need it. Without meaning to, you’re upsetting your information consumers – your users.
Does this keep you awake at night?
If you’re responsible for business content in your company – maybe you’re an author, a director, or a C-level person – this should be keeping you up at night.
When is the lawsuit going to hit because you shipped some critical document that was wrong? When are the regulators going to ask for your Gulf of Mexico disaster plan and you discover it includes removing and caring for walruses? Who haven’t lived in the Gulf for 200 million years?
This “process” is also costing you a lot of money. If you’re paying your people up to 50% of their salary to fight Word, then what are you doing? That means you pay 4 people to do the work of 2. 8 people to do the work of 4. And so on.
Is your company doing so well financially that you can afford to waste this much money? How much more could your company do if you (or that team) could be twice as productive?
It doesn’t have to be this way. Many tools will help.
I can help you make sense of the options.
