Have you learnt your individual power? What about your weaknesses?
One enterprise administration and management concept suggests that folks and groups will obtain extra success by constructing on their strengths than by attempting to repair their weaknesses.
The idea doesn’t imply you must ignore weaknesses. As a substitute, it suggests you must make investments deeply in abilities and strengths and decrease the results of any weaknesses. (You may learn extra about it within the guide Strengths Primarily based Management, based mostly on the Gallup group’s 30-year analysis challenge.
I’m all in on this concept. I’ve seen this concept work for content material groups that obtain success over the long run. However the selection isn’t at all times clear.
Ought to #ContentMarketing groups double down on their strengths? Or attempt to repair their weaknesses? It’s not a straightforward selection, says @Robert_Rose through @CMIContent. Click on To Tweet
Strengths vs. weaknesses
A brand new content material advertising technique brings folks collectively below new charters, with new processes, obligations, and applied sciences. Folks name this means of getting everybody prepared for the brand new state of affairs “change administration.”
However, if we’re sincere, it’s actually “new administration.” None of these things has been finished 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 corporations make the identical mistake after the abilities audit: They double down on shoring up perceived (or precise) weaknesses.
However that strategy instantly builds a steep mountain to climb. Content material groups grappling with all of the “new” might really feel demoralized in the event that they must rent and prepare new in-house or outsourced employees on the similar time.
But many specialists argue that focusing solely on strengths has its pitfalls. A number of years in the past, a Harvard Enterprise Assessment podcast steered that “so many weaknesses are overdeveloped strengths.”
For instance, amplifying a politically astute staff chief’s strengths can create a manipulative boss. Specializing in the velocity or creativity of the in-house design staff can result in a staff that’s overworked and regarded idiosyncratic of their strategy or out of contact with enterprise realities.
Deciding whether or not to give attention to the strengths or weaknesses uncovered in a expertise audit jogs my memory of the aphorism normally attributed to statistician George Field: “All fashions are incorrect, however some are helpful.”
There aren’t any straightforward solutions.
Which strengths and which weaknesses matter extra
In a method, it’s a false selection. Understanding which strengths and weaknesses matter essentially the most tends to supply the very best outcomes. You may’t assess which strengths or weaknesses to give attention to till you perceive which strengths and weaknesses have an effect on your operation’s probability of success essentially the most.
For instance, corporations constructing content material groups usually ask me, “Ought to we rent material specialists with deep information about our companies and business or nice writers who can study our enterprise over time?”
The reply to that query is sure.
Ought to #Content material groups rent SMEs who know the business or nice writers who can study? Sure, says @Robert Rose through @CMIContent. Click on To Tweet
Each approaches are equally necessary – till you determine which is able to influence the staff’s targets extra. When you determine which is extra necessary, you may give attention to enhancing the strengths of the strategy you’ve chosen.
I’ve seen this first-hand in two conditions.
The primary concerned a brand new content material staff 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: sales-enablement content material and advertising measurement.
As a brand new staff, in addition they understood that the enterprise positioned a excessive worth on the flexibility to feed nice content material to gross sales and supply analytics to point out the content material’s effectiveness. A key piece of the staff’s enterprise case was centralizing content material and making it an inside power. So, their impulse was to shore up their gross sales content material and analytics weaknesses.
To take action, the content material staff took over these areas from their outsourced company. They have been certain they may “determine it out.”
However they didn’t. And the staff’s status as a robust editorial staff additionally took a success as they tried to stability their strengths with the shortage of selling and analytical capacity. When the enterprise pivoted, they let the editorial staff go. They weren’t thought-about able to taking up the mandatory advertising analytics.
Would they’ve survived in the event that they’d let the company deal with their weak areas and continued to excel at editorial or constructed a phased partnership with the company to handle the abilities wanted for gross sales enablement and measurement?
I think so.
Within the second state of affairs, a know-how firm I work with had been rising and molding its content material staff for a couple of years. They preserve an acute consciousness of their staff’s strengths and weaknesses. Extra importantly, the staff 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 staff (creativity, business thought management, and structuring content material for translation and reuse). They didn’t initially tackle sales-oriented content material – they left it to the demand era staff.
Ultimately, they partnered with the demand-gen staff, which continued to create nice advertising content material. The content material staff helped them develop requirements and playbooks to facilitate translation and repackaging for a number of channels.
Years in, this mannequin works very properly for them.
It’s a delicate however crucial distinction. The primary staff thought its job was to excel at content material, and it targeted on fixing the staff’s weaknesses to make {that a} actuality. The second staff realized its job was to make the enterprise good at content material, and it targeted on its strengths to make {that a} actuality.
The usefulness of any content material expertise audit lies within the capacity to align the staff’s core strengths to the priorities and expertise of the enterprise.
Over time, when you can preserve this consciousness, your staff’s weaknesses can develop into its biggest power.
It’s your story. Inform it properly.
Get Robert’s tackle content material advertising business information in simply 5 minutes
Watch earlier episodes or learn the calmly edited transcripts.
Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising and marketing Institute
