Better governance, better workflows

Better workflows,
stronger governance
Ahava Leibtag
President
Aha Media Group
September 21 2016

Today’s Schedule
1. Time travel
2. Exercise #1
3. Break around 10:30ish
4. Exercise #2
5. Exercise #3

Why do people just groan when
they talk about content
governance?

Exercise:
1. Gather in groups of 2 or 3 people
2. Discuss two governance problems that
you may have under each category of
people, process and tools/technology
6
@ahavaL #confabintensive16

You know you’re in trouble when:
 There is not executive or upper-level management support for
governance
 No one person is dedicated to being in charge
 Politics take precedence over expertise
 You have no documentation around governance
 You have no training programs around governance
 People are not held accountable for governance issues
7

A good governance plan:
 Has executive buy-in and support
 Identifies who is responsible for making decisions in various
scenarios
 Has documentation and training based on expertise, not
guesswork
 Minimizes politics
 Makes governance a part of people’s annual review process
9

Content strategy takes the
guesswork out of execution so
creativity around content will
flourish.
12

Workflow vs. Governance
Workflow
What processes, tools and
human resources are required
for content initiatives to
launch successfully and
maintain ongoing quality?
13
Governance
How are key decisions about
content and content strategy
made? How are changes
initiated and communicated?

Content Governance
• Content level (writing)
• Structural level (models)
• Reuse level
14

To-do list: Process
 Map current workflow to understand weaknesses
 Design workflow based on roles and responsibilities, not
people
 Clarify roles and responsibilities, each and every time
 Choose technology that will support your process
16

Types of Content Teams
1. Siloed
2. Distributed
3. Centralized
4. Rogue
17

Types of Content Teams
18
Type of content team Pros Cons
Siloed  A lot of content gets created because there is no over-arching
process to go through
 Departments do not communicate with each other
 The audience is confused
 The Departments are confused
Distributed  Can be useful in situations where you don’t have enough
manpower on your central content team to keep all of your
content fresh
 For multi-national organizations, can deal effectively with
language, culture, and other differences
 Difficult to govern
 Difficult to achieve consistency
 Need careful, thorough training
Centralized  Have complete control over content  Not enough resources or staff
 Massive backlogs of content
 Confusion over priority
 Lack of clarity about ownership
 Lack of subject matter experts
Rogue  Are extremely motivated to converse with their target audiences
 Understand the value of web content
 Unhampered by political concerns
 Almost impossible to govern
 No interest in adhering to workflow
 No stake in overall quality or consistency

Siloed
Pros
• A lot of content gets created by different teams because there is no over-
arching process to go through
Cons
• Departments do not communicate with each other
• The audience is confused
• The departments are confused
• Executives have no idea what’s happening on the ground
19

Distributed
Pros
• Can be useful in situations where you don’t have enough manpower on your central
content team to keep all of your content fresh
• For multi-national organizations, can deal effectively with language, culture, and other
differences
Cons
• Difficult to govern
• Difficult to achieve consistency
• Need careful, thorough training
• Accountability?
20

Centralized
Pros
• Have complete control over content
• Not enough resources or staff
Cons
• Massive backlogs of content
• Confusion over priority
• Lack of clarity about ownership
• Lack of subject matter experts
21

Rogue
Pros
• Are extremely motivated to converse with their target audiences
• Understand the value of web content
• Unhampered by political concerns
Cons
• Almost impossible to govern
• No interest in adhering to workflow
• No stake in overall quality or consistency
22

Map current workflow to
understand weaknesses
23

Why workflow?
• Break down the content process into manageable tasks
• Identify each piece of content’s stage of development
• Identify each step for the content to receive approval
• Know who is responsible for each step and when
24

Why is workflow so hard?
• Information flow
• Misplaced talent
• Lack of guidance and clear models
• Lack of training
@ahavaL #confabintensive16 25

Work the problem.
26

Workflow Mapping: Phase I
Identify:
• Why create the content (the business objective)?
• Who is involved (the roles)?
• What each role does (the tasks)?
• When the tasks get done (the flow)?
• How you will assess (the result)?

What are the steps?
How is content:
• Requested
• Sourced
• Created
• Reviewed
• Approved
• Published
• Analyzed
28

Requesters
Providers
Creators
Reviewers
Approvers
Publishers

Roles Definitions
Requesters
Providers
Creators
Reviewers
Approvers
Publishers
Distributors
Analysts

Questions to ask while mapping
1. Who currently inhabits the above roles?
2. What is the current process in place for that role?
3. What happens when that person is unavailable?
4. Who gets to make decisions about change in process?
5. How does information flow from one role to the next?
6. How does information get shared? (Files, shared drives,
project management software)

Roles Definitions
Requesters Creates Assignments
Providers Sources Content
Creators Writing & Sourcing
Reviewers Editors
Approvers Final Approval
Publishers Prepare content for distribution
Distributors Distribute content
Analysts Analyze content performance and
behavior

Roles: Phase II
1. Understand current workflow
2. Write up or use current job descriptions
3. Rearrange workflow to be appropriate for the end content
product
4. Rewrite job descriptions
5. Examine who is in those roles

Roles Tasks Who?
Requesters  Requests content
Providers  Sources Content—could be multiple
subject matter experts
Creators  Writing & Sourcing
 Video editing (if necessary)
 Photographic editing (if necessary)
Reviewers  Edits
 Legally approves
 Approves for messaging and branding
Approvers  Final copy editing
Publishers  Prepare content for distribution
Distributors  Distributes through different digital
channels
Analysts  Analyzes the content over time to see if
it is performing well

Design workflow based on roles
and responsibilities, not people
35

FOCUS ON THE ROLES.
NOT THE PEOPLE.
NOT THE TALENT.
36

Put the Right People in the Right Roles
• Evaluate talent fairly
• Structure for experience and personality (where possible)
• Don’t be afraid to experiment

May Need…
• More guidance
• More training
• Different job
• More documentation
• Rewards

Clarify roles & responsibilities
39

Examples: Define roles and responsibilities
• Project Manager: What is your job? Explain it to the content
people.
• Content Strategist: EXACTLY what are you in charge of doing?
• Writers/Content Creators: Who is responsible for each of the
steps?
• Quality Assurance: Who performs and to whom do they give
that information?

Who is a part of each process?
• Project managers
• Content strategists
• Writers
• Graphic designers
• Subject-matter experts
• Marketing managers
• Business owners
• Reviewers (legal, HR, department heads, etc.)
• Developers
46

Showing Workflow
1. Spreadsheets or editorial calendars
2. Content flows
3. Swimlanes
4. CMS
47

Identify potential bottlenecks
NOW.
48

• PLAN
• CREATE
• REVIEW
• APPROVE
• PUBLISH
• MAINTAIN

Plan
Create
Review/Approve
Assemble
Publish/Distribute

Establish
Content
Governance
Content
Analysis
Content
Creation
Establishing
workflows
Content
Planning
• Persona Development
• Messaging Architecture
• Identity Pillar
Identification
Build OR
clarify the
business
case
Content
Auditing
Discovery
YOU ARE
HERE

Writer
Email web producer
(builds it and puts in alt
tags)
Writer
(looks at it in staging for QA)
Publisher
Writer/Project Manager
Program Director and Interviewees
(for comments)
Project Manager
(collates comments)
Publisher
Extensive changes
Go back?
Non-extensive
changes
Push to go live
Announce to
reviewing staff
Chooses
photos

Reporting Structures
Content
Rep
Sales
Marketing
Internal
Comm
PR
Content
Rep
Product
Engineering
Service
Engineering
Customer
Support
Content
Rep
Finance
Accounting
HR
Logistics
Content Team

That’s how content strategy
scales; it’s owned by everyone.
59

Exercise:
Sketch your current workflow; just
the highlights—not the details
Notice the bottlenecks.
60

Choose technology that will
support your process
62

Discover where breaks in
governance can be automated
63

Where can we automate this?
• Understand what your CMS can do
• Create authoring tools that provide guidance
• Create content models that only allow certain inputs
• Show the ROI on tagging and proper authoring
• Select tech tools to evaluate that might help you
• Use technology to remind you to archive
64

Don’t be fooled.
Technology is not governance.
It’s a part of your toolbox.
67

To-do List: Tools
 Create or modify style guides, playbooks & templates
 Content workflows
 Editorial guidelines
 Style guides
 Business rules
 Page tables
 Taxonomies
 Playbooks and checklists
 Archiving standards
 Reporting
 Create cheat sheets for meta data and some basic style issues
69

The right tools for your
organization are rooted in your
culture and attitude.
70

Create or Modify Style Guides,
Playbooks & Templates
71

Common governance tools
1. Content workflows
2. Editorial guidelines
3. Style guides
4. Business rules
5. Page tables
6. Taxonomies
7. Playbooks and checklists
8. Archiving standards
9. Reporting

Workflows
73

Style Guide

Business Rules
77
What happens when: Decision
A source component is changed by someone other than
the owner?
The changed component becomes a derivative.
A source component that has been identically reused
changes?
Authors who reused the component are notified of the
change to determine if they want to make change to
their usage of the component.
If they choose not to use the changed component their
version of the component becomes a derivative.
New content is created? It is not part of the source until approved.
Authors can resume unapproved content which is in
progress, but their information product cannot be
published until all components are approved.
From: Managing Enterprise Content, Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper,
pg. 242

Business Rules
• Govern your reuse
• Implemented in your CMS
• Controlled by CMS or by staff (manually)
• Develop the business rules before they are implemented
• Once you know what they are you can implement them
78

Page Tables
79

Page Tables: 2
80@ahavaL #confabintensive16

Page Tables: 3
81

Word with Character Limits

Excel with Character Limits

Taxonomies
• Identifies content
• Defines metadata
• Manages the relationships between those pieces of content
and metadata
• Manages the organization of information so that people can
find the information they need
84

Your goal is to have a shared
and controlled vocabulary.
87

Playbook and checklists

Archiving Standards
• Use your CMS
• Use your content models
• Have people be in charge quarterly
• Create digital handshakes and handoffs—If this happens…that
happens
90

Reporting
• Non compliant pages
• Spelling errors
• Dead links
• References to out of date info
• Improper keywords
• Bad metadata

Create cheat sheets for meta
data and some basic style issues
93

LINKS add depth to your site. Here’s how to use them:
 Use action words
 Match links to the page title (H1 tag) as much as possible
 Link 3-7 words only
 Label links if they don’t jump to a web page (example: [PDF])
 Ensure active and visited links use consistent colors (i.e., blue and purple,
respectively)
 NEVER: use “click here”, put links in places where you’ll lose the reader in the
conversation, or make headlines links

To-do list
People
 Gain executive buy-in by emphasizing business goals
 Create multidisciplinary governance bodies
 Assign decision makers
 Train people how to use governance documentation and who to contact
when there are questions
 Make governance a part of people’s annual review process
 Measure how you are doing; not just in reporting metrics but in
organizational commitment
98

Gain executive buy-in by
emphasizing business goals
99

Convince them
1. Sell it to them
2. Show the mistakes
3. Find a head cheerleader
4. Advise that it’s a process; not an overnight change
10
0

Create multidisciplinary
governance bodies
10
8

PRITUX
Executive
LeadershipMarketing
Customer
RelationsVisual
Design
Sales
110

Content Councils
11
1

Why multidisciplinary teams?
• Adapt to changing technologies
• Break down silos
• Better ideas
• Look at things from different perspectives
• See problems and solutions in a variety of ways
• Have different kinds of political connections

Who to look for?
• Executive sponsor
• Product management
• Business intelligence
• Creative/editorial
• Information technology
• UI/UX
• Legal
• Training
11
3
• Marketing
• Taxonomy manager
• Content creators/editors
• Content managers
• Regional representatives
• Search specialists
• Business line owners

Option #1: Create two teams
1. Strategic authority: bird’s-eye-view decisions like site
objectives, resources and budgeting, audience definition and
annual planning.
2. Implementation authority: decisions related to day-to-day
operations (requests for the home page, new content,
content maintenance, editorial oversight.
11
4

Option #2: Create three teams
1. Steering Committees: they make business decisions about
priorities and allocation of resources (they get the final say
when politics or conflicts amongst different groups arises)
2. Work teams and working groups: Day-to-day implementation
authority; report to the steering committee on a regular basis
3. Task forces: Groups that focus a unique project for a limited
duration
11
5

Pick a Captain Content (or a few of them)
11
7

Somebody has to be the final
say on each and every content
project.
11
8

Train people how to use
governance documentation and
who to contact when there are
questions
11
9

Training
1. Model good governance (show people what it really means;
either with mistakes or best practices examples)
2. Invite to training meetings (serve food)
3. Send our reminder emails
12
0

1. Model Good Governance

2. Invite to training meetings
• Writing workshops
• CMS workshops
• Updates to governance standards

3. Send out reminder emails

If you have a distributed content
team, you should hold 4
trainings a year and make at
least 2 mandatory.
12
5

Make governance a part of
people’s annual review process
(seriously)
12
6

Measure how you are doing;
not just in reporting metrics but
in organizational commitment
12
8

Measurement
1. Look at reviews
2. Create personal case studies
3. Use software to show decreases in mistakes
4. Track workflow to find ways you’ve shortened time to
publication
5. Show how often tools are being updated or used
12
9

Exercise:
What’s three ways you could
measure how you’re doing with
governance?
13
0

In reality, these activities are
part of a continuous life cycle
that repeats and repeats and
repeats.
13
1

Remember!!!!
• The law of tiny changes
• If you can affect 10% of change in behavior in a year, you’re
doing great!

Content guides the interactions between
customer and vendor. And it’s [our] job to
orchestrate these content assets—these
touchpoints across the entire customer life
cycle—to deliver a winning, high-growth
customer experience.
13
3

Questions?
Ahava Leibtag
Aha Media Group, LLC
ahava@ahamediagroup.com
@ahavaL @
ahavaleibtag
THANK YOU!
136

Better governance, better workflows

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