Content is a bottleneck — website redesign update 2

We’re pretty keen on content. We’ve been aiming to be ‘content first’ for about 4 years and we’ve learned the importance of that decision and the impact on project success. Because of that, we often take the hard line with clients when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain and deliver content late. Well, the chickens have come home to roost.

Content is a bottleneck. I’m the bottleneck. This won’t be a post about ‘1 weird thing you can do to not be a bottleneck’, unless that weird thing is to clone yourself— but we’re a few years out on the wide availability of that kind of medical miracle. Instead, this is a whiney post about content being hard.

We’ve made some great strides in our website redesign. Most of the pages have been designed, interactions have been prototyped, we’ve even run through the merits of an application framework, and now that we’re almost done, have scrapped it—I’m going to call that progress as that’s the healthiest way to look at it. Yet, the box that sits beside content stays empty. Void of anything looking like a tick mark

It’s not because I don’t give a shit, it’s because my day, for the most part, is split up into hour long chunks which, I’ve recently become aware, is known as the ‘Managers’ schedule. Writing, which is a creative endeavour, requires me to be on the ‘Makers’ schedule, and allows for much longer chunks devoted to one task. In fact, I relish those long stretches of time but recently, in my line of work, they’ve been hard to come by.

I’m not perfect and at times I’m prone to not managing time well because I focus on the wrong things. Sometimes I need a kick in the ass. A few team members have called me out on my accountability and I’m grateful for that. The content should match the calibre of work the team has already produced and to a large degree make their lives easier. I haven’t done that. I also want to ensure that the tone of voice is uniquely Filament and stands out, rather than the fade-into-the-background just get it done.

I’ll need to recommit myself to chunk out the time needed to not only deliver on my word but also win back some trust with my team. That, above all else, weighs on me the most. This week, I’ll be working through team biographies and the remaining loose ends. If there’s a follow up post I think I’ll be in pretty big trouble. So, here’s to the beauty of unserialized, stand-alone posts!