Have you learnt your personal power? What about your weaknesses?
One enterprise administration and management idea suggests that individuals and groups will obtain extra success by constructing on their strengths than by making an attempt to repair their weaknesses.
The idea doesn’t imply it’s best to ignore weaknesses. As an alternative, it suggests it’s best to make investments deeply in abilities and strengths and decrease the results of any weaknesses. (You’ll be able to learn extra about it within the e-book Strengths Based mostly Management, based mostly on the Gallup group’s 30-year analysis mission.
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 all the time 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 and marketing technique brings folks collectively below new charters, with new processes, obligations, and applied sciences. Folks name this strategy of getting everybody prepared for the brand new scenario “change administration.”
However, if we’re sincere, it’s actually “new administration.” None of these items has been completed earlier than.
One of many first issues I like to recommend to shoppers on this scenario 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 may be wanted.
I’ve seen many corporations make the identical mistake after the talents 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” could really feel demoralized in the event that they must rent and practice new in-house or outsourced employees on the identical time.
But many specialists argue that focusing solely on strengths has its pitfalls. A number of years in the past, a Harvard Enterprise Evaluation podcast prompt that “so many weaknesses are overdeveloped strengths.”
For instance, amplifying a politically astute workforce chief’s strengths can create a manipulative boss. Specializing in the pace or creativity of the in-house design workforce can result in a workforce that’s overworked and regarded idiosyncratic of their strategy or out of contact with enterprise realities.
Deciding whether or not to concentrate on 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 means, it’s a false selection. Understanding which strengths and weaknesses matter probably the most tends to supply the very best outcomes. You’ll be able to’t assess which strengths or weaknesses to concentrate on till you perceive which strengths and weaknesses have an effect on your operation’s likelihood of success probably the most.
For instance, corporations constructing content material groups usually ask me, “Ought to we rent subject material specialists with deep information about our providers 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 vital – till you determine which can influence the workforce’s aims extra. When you resolve which is extra vital, you possibly can concentrate on 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 workforce 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 and marketing measurement.
As a brand new workforce, 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 workforce’s enterprise case was centralizing content material and making it an inner power. So, their impulse was to shore up their gross sales content material and analytics weaknesses.
To take action, the content material workforce took over these areas from their outsourced company. They have been certain they may “determine it out.”
However they didn’t. And the workforce’s status as a powerful editorial workforce additionally took a success as they tried to stability their strengths with the shortage of promoting and analytical means. When the enterprise pivoted, they let the editorial workforce go. They weren’t thought of able to taking up the mandatory advertising and marketing 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 deal with the talents wanted for gross sales enablement and measurement?
I believe so.
Within the second scenario, a know-how firm I work with had been rising and molding its content material workforce for a couple of years. They preserve an acute consciousness of their workforce’s strengths and weaknesses. Extra importantly, the workforce chief has created transparency and understanding of their ongoing stability all through the enterprise.
At first, they centered on highlighting their strengths as a content material advertising and marketing workforce (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 workforce.
Finally, they partnered with the demand-gen workforce, which continued to create nice advertising and marketing content material. The content material workforce 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 important distinction. The primary workforce thought its job was to excel at content material, and it centered on fixing the workforce’s weaknesses to make {that a} actuality. The second workforce realized its job was to make the enterprise good at content material, and it centered on its strengths to make {that a} actuality.
The usefulness of any content material expertise audit lies within the means to align the workforce’s core strengths to the priorities and expertise of the enterprise.
Over time, when you can hold this consciousness, your workforce’s weaknesses can grow to be its best power.
It’s your story. Inform it properly.
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Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising Institute
