To Make or Not To Make
Here’s the deal: making things is fun and not knowing how things are made is not.
In the business world, there are makers and managers*, but too infrequently makers who manage or managers who make. It’s a time-honored dichotomy, as true in marketing strategy and branded content as anywhere else. Today’s note isn’t about breaking it — at least not entirely or all at once. It’s about the small steps anyone can take to preserve their instincts and maker muscle.
Of the two primary options for closer connectivity between makers and managers, more management is less frequently the answer. Management is undoubtedly necessary and good management can work wonders. However, when it comes to better comprehending the forces influencing great content, one way prevails. Roll up those sleeves.
Before sharing a few suggestions, an important caveat: making or managing is not an either/or lifetime proposition. It can be (especially for makers). But it doesn’t have to be and I think both sides are better off when it’s not. The key is keeping realism — and with it empathy and perspective — nearby.
Now for those suggestions, some of which you may be acquainted with, others you may not. Either way (and quickly because you could be making something right now), here goes:
- Consider your day from a higher altitude than usual. As you gaze from above, how are you investing your time? What can you cut? Where are the pockets of opportunity for not only big thinking but also daily making? They’re in there. Everybody has them. Now what would you do with them? What will you do with them?
- What have you profited by making? For individuals and businesses, this changes over time. It’s the classic build vs. buy vs. partner discussion, driven by a combination of scale and expertise requirements. Again, you don’t have to make everything. But if you’re not making — and launching! — something, you risk commoditization and that’s not good for profits.
- What’s the one thing you wish you could make? Why aren’t you making it? What are the factors that if different from today would require you to change your stance? And the flip side, what do you no longer need to make? It’s a continuous balancing act. Still the only way to reach an answer is to know what it’s like to make or have close relationships with those who do. In this as ever, answers appear where making begins.
I’d like to circle back on the applicability of Making-with-a-capital-M to the content world. All-up, I have yet to encounter a situation where lack of practical experience didn’t result in less than optimal work. Meaning those stretching themselves and their capabilities, those evolving and making stuff through hard-fought trial and error, position for more of what they want by virtue of more of what they’ve made. I’ll abbreviate to a simple four-part suggestion. Make: test: learn: repeat. It works.
In closing, an important question from a big thinker by any standard: “People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, “Why wasn’t it done the other way?” -Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Don’t get caught on the wrong side of that one.
All for today.
*Also see the classic Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule by Paul Graham.
John Tintle is the Director of Content and Communications at Highspot, the leading sales enablement platform for content management, customer engagement, and analytics. Twitter: @highspot. Also: highspot.com.
