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Critic: Michael Spenceley

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michael-spenceley

Johnson & Johnson

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<hr /> In most organizations, there is pressure to do more with less. As budgets tighten, scope expands and timelines become more aggressive, content teams are forced to get creative about how they deliver value. Here are 5 tips for content leaders and teams to help them not just survive, but thrive, when the pressure is on.  <h3 id="1.-get-back-to-basics">1. Get back to basics</h3>Getting back to basics is about making tough decisions around where to spend our time and energy. There is always more we can do, but when the team is stretched, maximizing the value they can deliver is key.To achieve that, it’s important to stay grounded in what matters most about your content. My team uses a concept called CAR Squared to define the basics. Is the content clear, concise, actionable, accurate, relevant and readable? If certain activities aren’t going to meaningfully improve those aspects of the content, we don’t do them. Focusing on the basics will help teams avoid unnecessary effort. For example, some teams may spend a lot of time on formatting and design. Ask if internal content needs as much branding as external content. Ask whether there are ways to leverage technology to reduce manual effort.It’s also important to question whether certain content is even necessary. Focus on progress over perfection. As content professionals, we always want to do more. That’s what makes us good at what we do, but when facing resource and budget constraints, we have to focus on the most critical work and let the nice-to-haves go.<h3 id="2.-leverage-ai-">2. Leverage AI </h3>It’s important to get teams thinking proactively about how they can leverage AI and to not be afraid of it.As Generative AI continues to accelerate it will, no doubt, have an impact on what we do as content professionals. While it will continue to evolve, there are some practical use cases that don’t require a lot of investment and can support productivity. For example, it’s surprisingly good at rewriting content in a different style or tone. It can also create summaries, FAQs, and identify keywords to aid in search optimization.  I encourage my team to think of Generative AI as a way to help us do what we do more efficiently. It’s like having an assistant we can delegate certain tasks to. The human-in-the-loop philosophy is critical for AI to work effectively for content creation, so you still need a level of review, but it helps save time and effort.<h3 id="3.-keep-the-team-engaged">3. Keep the team engaged</h3>When we’re busy, it’s easy to start canceling teaming events, training, all-hands meetings, and happy hours.  During times when the team is stretched to their limit, these activities can mean the difference between burnout and attrition, and having a motivated team that pushes through the challenges together. A sense of belonging and camaraderie is often what helps a team get through a challenging time.Make the time for team building and training, even when it’s difficult to schedule. If anything, it gives the team a much needed break from the daily grind. Most importantly, it reminds them that they’re valued and you’re continuing to invest in them.     Recognition also goes a long way during challenging times. Leaders should take the time to understand what motivates each person on their team and celebrate both team and individual accomplishments.Additionally, when capacity is limited and scope is expanding, it’s important for leaders to set clear expectations with the team. Leaders who foster an environment where the team feels comfortable discussing their struggles, sharing their ideas and pushing back when appropriate, will set the team up to have more genuine and effective relationships with leaders, stakeholders and each other.<h3 id="4.-get-creative-about-prioritization-and-funding-">4. Get creative about prioritization and funding </h3>One of the most challenging things for a team is knowing that they can make a bigger impact if they had more time and resources. It’s fundamentally important for leaders to acknowledge that we can’t do it all, and they need to help the team prioritize.It can be helpful to have a prioritization model to guide these decisions. For example, content for larger audiences, business critical campaigns and other strategic initiatives should be prioritized over other work.Funding can be challenging when budgets are tight, but when you think quality or delivery might suffer, consider asking for project-specific funding for a fixed period of time. For example, if you need two content specialists to work on a project for 6 months but don’t have capacity, consider asking the project sponsor for budget to cover offshore contract resources for 6 months. In my experience, critical campaigns and projects have some budget to work with, and the cost of offshore resources tends to be nominal in the grand scheme of things.<h3 id="5.-don’t-wait">5. Don’t wait</h3>Challenging times can either bring a team together or pull it apart. That’s why it’s important not to wait until times are tough.These tips are about creating a culture of inclusiveness, engagement, innovation, efficiency, and continuous improvement. These are things we should always be doing. So, applying these concepts during less challenging times will go a long way in preparing a team for whatever they may face in future.A high-performing content team will always weather the storm more effectively. For more on that, see my previous article, <a target="_blank" href="https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcmscritic.com%2Fwhat-it-takes-to-build-a-high-performing-content-team&amp;data=05%7C02%7Cmspencel%40its.jnj.com%7Ca393fe92aac749e2c46208dc1044feba%7C3ac94b33913548219502eafda6592a35%7C0%7C0%7C638403135714032847%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=RS1aV46W%2FoRENyORtEgpTyw61oqlEF34YWAg7zHGOWM%3D&amp;reserved=0">What it Takes to Build a High-Performing Content Team</a>.<h3 id="about-mike-spenceley">About Mike Spenceley</h3>I’ve been working in the content, knowledge management and communications space in some capacity for most of my career. While I don’t describe myself as a content professional, I am a problem seeker and solver who found a niche in the content space. I currently lead a content team at J&amp;J, where I’ve been for the past seven years. Before that I spent 10 years at PwC.<h3 id="about-johnson-&amp;-johnson">About Johnson &amp; Johnson</h3>At Johnson &amp; Johnson, we believe good health is the foundation of vibrant lives, thriving communities and forward progress. That’s why for more than 135 years, we have aimed to keep people well at every age and every stage of life. Today, as the world’s largest, most diversified healthcare products company, we are committed to using our reach and size for good. We strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere. We are blending our heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity.

The Pressure is on: Tips for Content Teams During Challenging Times

Over the past four years, I’ve been leading an effort to transform our organization’s approach to content. That includes everything from how our team is structured, to how we work, to the content itself.
There are many things that go into a great content strategy. Some of those – CMS, governance, and workflow – get significant airtime. However, I’ve found the most critical factor in delivering a successful content strategy is a high-performing team.
This topic is often overlooked, and it shouldn’t be. As the leader of a high-performing content team, I hope that sharing some of my insights and best practices will help others develop their own teams.
<h2>Anchor to your organization’s purpose </h2>
At <a href="https://www.jnj.com/" target="_blank">Johnson &amp; Johnson (J&amp;J)</a>, purpose is a big deal. J&amp;J’s purpose is to change the trajectory of health for humanity. That’s a tall order and is taken seriously among our thousands of employees across the world. My team creates content to help J&amp;J employees solve problems related to HR, payroll, finance and procurement. We help power the people who are delivering on our purpose.
If our content doesn’t meet our users’ needs, it creates inefficiency, which takes them away from the lab or manufacturing line or out of the operating room. When our content is clear, concise, and accurate, our people quickly get back to work helping patients and healthcare providers.
We anchor to this purpose in everything we do because it connects the work we do to something bigger. Without this purpose, we’re just publishing words on a page.
If your organization doesn’t have a clearly defined purpose, create one. Consider what problem your content is solving, why it’s an important problem to solve and how that connects to your work and the motivation of the team.
<h2>Get creative with roles and talent strategy</h2>
When we began our transformation journey several years ago, we focused on solving some immediate challenges, but also drew inspiration from where we wanted to be in the future:
<ul>
<li>We needed to drive more consistency in our content and in our execution.</li>
<li>We needed a deep understanding of our overall business strategy.</li>
<li>We needed the ability to push back and get our stakeholders comfortable with a different approach to content.</li>
</ul>
This thinking led to the creation of a few critical roles in our team:
<ul>
<li>Content Success (think customer success managers but focused on content): Roles that partner with our stakeholders and users to understand their content needs, assess content performance, and steer the content strategy.</li>
<li>Content Standards: Roles that focus on content standards and governance, actively managing and evolving our content standards, while taking steps to ensure we’re following our standards and course correct when we’re not.</li>
<li>Content Execution: Squads that specialize in different types of content. We deal with everything from formal process documentation to intranet content, to chatbot content. These are different types of content that require different skills and strengths.</li>
</ul>
It’s also important to think creatively about sourcing talent. People without content management experience may still be ideal candidates for certain roles. For example, content success roles may be better suited for someone with deep knowledge of the business.
We’ve also had success recruiting from analogous roles in other fields. People with an instructional design background play well across all of our roles. When it comes to content execution roles, we’ve hired people from our contact center, where they gained experience talking with our employees every day and understanding what they need.
<h2>Establish and reinforce core behaviors to drive successful outcomes</h2>
We’ve established some core behaviors that are critical to the team’s success. These include things like ask why, solve the right problem, improve the right content, take ownership and improvise. These core behaviors focus on things we need to get better at or need to do more of to achieve our goals.
We reinforce these core behaviors as part of our recognition program and talent development discussions. When we recognize someone for great work, we talk specifically about which core behaviors they’re demonstrating.
My personal favorite core behavior is “improvise.” Things are changing so rapidly in our business that our standard processes sometimes fail. When that happens, being able to improvise and make judgment calls in the moment, becomes more important.
<h2>Keep the user at the center</h2>
When we stay close to our users, it ensures that we’re spending time and energy on the right content (one of our core behaviors). We are lucky to have dedicated experience design professionals at J&amp;J and have had the opportunity to partner with them to help us better understand our users’ needs.
This has been critical to helping us ensure we’re meeting the needs of our users and gives us actionable insights so we can course correct when needed. We’ve also gone through design thinking immersion together as a team, which has helped us develop creative solutions and ensure we’re solving the right problem (another one of our core behaviors).
<h2>It’s all about the team</h2>
It takes a great team to be successful at this kind of transformation. It takes a team with a growth mindset, willing to try new things and fail and try again.
I want to extend a big thank you to the content team at J&amp;J. While I’m the one writing this article, this is their story, and all credit belongs to them.
<h3>About <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-spenceley-7058a312/" target="_blank">Mike Spenceley</a></h3>
I’ve been working in the content, knowledge management and communications space in some capacity for most of my career. While I don’t describe myself as a content professional, I am a problem seeker and solver who found a niche in the content space. I currently lead a content team at J&amp;J, where I’ve been for the past six years. Before that I spent 10 years at PwC.
<h3>About Johnson &amp; Johnson</h3>
At Johnson &amp; Johnson, we believe good health is the foundation of vibrant lives, thriving communities and forward progress. That’s why for more than 135 years, we have aimed to keep people well at every age and every stage of life. Today, as the world’s largest, most diversified healthcare products company, we are committed to using our reach and size for good. We strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere. We are blending our heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity.

What It Takes to Build a High-Performing Content Team

Illustration of content team working together on developing web content

Mike Spenceley is Content Strategy Director at Johnson & Johnson, one of the largest healthcare organizations in the world. 

Michael Spenceley

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Articles by Michael

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