The Silent Productivity Killer
#3: The “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”
You may remember the age-old question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” In Content Mismanagement’s world, the analog is, “If someone is looking for a piece of content but they can’t find it, does it really exist?” In one sense, of course the content exists. Someone spent real time creating it, with a real audience in mind. However, if no one can find it, then no one can use it. This makes “out of sight, out of mind” one of Content Mismanagement’s greatest hits.
#4: The “You Got a Sec?”
I like my colleagues. I like them even when they stop by my desk to ask me a question while I’m in the middle of something, and I have to interrupt my work to answer them. But at the end of a long workday, I realize how much time I’ve spent responding to friendly, well-meaning shoulder taps, and that I am now way behind on my own work. This can be quite the wake-up call. And most of us, as knowledge workers, need to produce output that requires longer periods of thinking and quiet reflection. While the root causes of the “you got a sec?” shoulder tap are complex, everyone can agree that this is one of the ways Content Mismanagement kills productivity.
#5: The “Is Anyone Actually Using This?”
The last way that Content Mismanagement manages to infect otherwise healthy organizations is by eliminating all visibility into whether certain content is actually being used, and if so, how often and by whom. These are important questions. The answers to these questions can be tremendously helpful for content creators, who often work hard to create and deliver content with little insight as to what “the market” (i.e., content consumers) actually wants from them. In addition, once content has been created, wouldn’t it be delightful to see who is using it and how frequently? Yet, this information is almost never available, which results in an incomplete loop between content creators and content consumers within an organization.
As you can see, Content Mismanagement is a large problem, because it is impossible for knowledge workers to create value for our organizations without being able to access the right content at the right time, every time. The five tactics that Content Mismanagement uses to destroy productivity all tend to happen away from the limelight. This doesn’t make them any less dangerous—it just means that Content Mismanagement is a destructive force to be reckoned with. Will 2019 be the year that we rise up and do something about it?
At Guru, we believe the knowledge you need to do your job should find you. Guru is the world’s first Revenue Empowerment Network, utilizing AI to make sales, support, and customer success teams better at their jobs.