First, let’s describe what an orchestra is. An orchestra is an ensemble of instruments that includes woodwind, brass, string, and percussion sections. A group of musicians performs various pieces of music with these instruments, creating a captivating experience for an audience. Under the direction of the conductor, everyone needs to play music in harmony to ensure that the audience enjoys the music performance. An orchestra performance is an example of leadership, collaboration, coordination, learning, and exemplary execution, a lot like the characteristics needed to successfully manage knowledge in any organization. 

For the purpose of this blog, organizational content is the equivalent of the music that is delivered by an orchestra to the target audience. Let’s take a look at how similar content management is to an orchestra performance.

Orchestra Performance
Content Management
Music
Organizational Content
Conductor	Instruments	Musicians	Music Sheet	Audience
Content Lead	Content Types	Content Authors and Content Owners	Business Taxonomy	End Users (internal or external)

The Conductor (Content Lead)

An orchestra conductor has a vision of how the orchestra should sound when playing each piece of music. The conductor keeps an orchestra in time and together, lets each musician know their time of entry, and is able to give each musician direction about what they should be doing at any given moment during the performance. One of the main responsibilities of a conductor is to fully understand each piece of music and effectively communicate to the musicians so that they understand it completely, which is mostly done with gestures and the aid of a baton. Additionally, by being readily available to the musicians prior to the performance as well as visible from a podium during the performance, the conductor ensures that the communication channels with all orchestra members are effective at any given time (e.g. during rehearsal, on stage, etc.).

Similarly to an orchestra conductor, a Content Lead needs to have not only a clear vision of all key content areas in the organization, but also the ability to effectively communicate with content authors and content owners, so that they can create, tag, and maintain quality content. Defining a content governance plan, a taxonomy governance plan, and identifying effective communication channels and tools (what would be the gestures and the baton for the orchestra conductor) are essential to transfer that content management vision to content authors and content owners successfully. Examples of communication channels and tools may include recurring group meetings, one-on-one discussions, centralized content repositories, portals, and any other tools that can help govern content and taxonomies consistently. 

The Instruments (Content Types)

From the lively and sparkling sounds of violins to the dry and rattling sounds of percussion instruments, the graceful and clear sounds of a flute to the vibrant brass sections, listening to all the instruments playing together and in harmony in an orchestra is an impressive musical spectacle. Each instrument has a different appearance, a different purpose, and requires a specific technique to be played. They all produce different sounds that when put together, produce a magnificent piece of music. 

Even though content types are not as graceful as musical instruments, in content management, content types represent types of instruments, each with a purpose to create and manage a specific type of content. Content types are like templates for categories of content with corresponding taxonomies that allow managing information in a centralized, reusable way. Some content types are designed to create announcements, others to create corporate policies, but together, all content types help communicate key organizational content to the end users in a standard and consistent way. 

The Musicians (Content Authors and Content Owners)

Without exception, successful orchestras around the world have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. If the conductor has done a good job communicating the expectations of the musical performance to the musicians, and the musicians have mastered playing their own instruments, then they can play their instruments accordingly and transmit a unified vision of the music to the audience. Every musician must not only follow the same set of music sheets, but also understand their own role, the roles of their fellow musicians, and when the handoffs need to take place during the performance. 

Similarly, in content management, the content authors and content owners are like the musicians. They are tasked with very specific roles, in this case to create, tag, manage, and disseminate organizational content. If they have a good understanding of the organization’s content management objectives and have the knowledge management skills needed to perform their roles, they can effectively create and maintain organizational content, communicating a clear and unified vision of the content to the end users. In the same way that musicians spend time practicing and learning the skills to master their instruments, content authors and content managers need to clearly understand how to leverage content types and taxonomy to create and manage content and master the skills needed to meet their content management responsibilities.

The Music Sheet (Business Taxonomy)

In an orchestra, even though every instrument gets their own music sheet, the conductor gets a full score, or in other words, a music sheet that contains the musical notation for all instruments, so that the whole orchestra starts playing together at the same time and performs at the same tempo throughout the performance. 

An enterprise taxonomy represents that standard point of reference that can help orchestrate organizational content, so that content authors and content managers can ultimately leverage content types and taxonomy together to collaborate and produce consistently tagged, high-quality content.

The Audience (End Users)

Focusing on a particular target audience when planning and rehearsing for a performance helps musicians connect with their audience during the actual performance. Who is the audience? What is the music really trying to convey to the audience? From behind their music stands, the musicians sitting nearest the audience typically sit at a diagonal facing partly toward the conductor and partly toward the audience, so that the audience can be more engaged. Those in the front rows can look at the musicians closely, see them smile at the end of each musical piece, and more naturally react to the music with joy.  

In content management, learning about your audience is indispensable to serve end users with the content they need, when they need it. Depending on the type of organizational content and where it will be displayed (e.g. Intranet, portal, dashboard, etc.), your audience may be internal, such as employees, or external, including customers, partners, and even prospective groups. Understanding your audience means gaining a clear understanding of their motivations, needs, goals, and challenges, so that the content is delivered in a manner that meets their content needs, resonates with them, and appeals to them. The use of personas and user stories help organizations move from knowing their audience to most importantly, understanding their audience and delivering timely, targeted content. In the same way that a venue may solicit feedback from the attendees to identify how well received the orchestra performance was, there are multiple approaches that organizations can take to measure the effectiveness of their content and identify whether the content is performing as expected. Only if content is measured, it can be managed and improved.   

Conclusion

By helping your organization focus on these five elements, you could find yourself delivering an exemplary knowledge management performance alongside a content management team that earns a standing ovation. Next time you go to an orchestra performance, and while you enjoy the music, try closing your eyes and think about all that was required to make that performance happen. 

Need help with orchestrating your organization’s content management journey? Contact us.  

The post Five things that Content Management and an Orchestra Performance Have in Common appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

The Solution

Alongside Enterprise Knowledge (EK), the organization embarked on a phased approach to develop a scalable knowledge, data, and information management strategy. EK began by designing a global content and data strategy in parallel with an enterprise search redesign effort that featured an information architecture overhaul. A taxonomy and corresponding content types were designed to support auto-tagging and the automated organization of unstructured content, while also allowing for the transformation of the organization’s content into a machine-readable format.

The second half of the approach included identifying scaled integration points across the organization’s content, allowing for advanced inter-content relationships to be utilized by recommendation engines in the future. Ontologies and knowledge graphs were introduced as a means of automating the application of these relationships while also optimizing the use and reuse of the organization’s data and information. To further support the management and scalability of the strategy and design efforts over time, an organizational model and governance plan were developed to support change management, implementation, and adoption.

The EK Difference

Because this large, global organization was seeking to successfully complete an initiative that traversed multiple departments, the effort required alignment and support from department leads, staff, and executives. EK leveraged our proven facilitation and prioritization approaches tailored specifically to information and data management strategy and led strategic discussions with the company’s executives, global program leadership, and staff to align on the “as-is” and “to-be” states of the effort. We developed relevant business impact and ROI measures by identifying prioritized success and performance factors that were evaluated and adjusted consistently throughout the effort. 

EK further leveraged our expertise in ontology and enterprise knowledge graphs to design an information architecture that defined the relationships across disparate content and built the foundation for advanced capabilities, such as automated tagging, content governance, natural language search, data analytics, and future AI and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities.

The Results

The knowledge and information management program allowed the organization to better understand and capitalize on their market insights and, as a result, discover and utilize otherwise inaccessible data. Connections between knowledge assets are now defined and the information architecture and content strategy benefit from a taxonomy and metadata design that account for both structured and unstructured data. 

EK also revamped the company’s internal search experience by redesigning indexing processes and leading Design Thinking sessions to inform both UI and UX search design decisions, ultimately integrating action-oriented results across the intranet. Consequently, users found that returned results were more relevant to their queries and a user-friendly interface personalized for the organization’s staff facilitated system access and ease-of-use.

The KM organizational structure will ensure that stakeholders are enabled to make informed investment decisions about their data and content management systems and will better understand the relationships required to bring them all together. As AI capabilities become more advanced and accessible on a global scale, the organization will not only be operating ahead of the curve, but will be able to adapt and apply these capabilities on a regular basis.

A-Global-Knowledge-and-Information-Management-SolutionDownload

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The Risk of Inconsistent Information and Content

When information’s presentation, delivery, design, and voice is inconsistent and erroneous, the validity and authority of that information erodes, leaving it up to the user to determine what is or isn’t true. Sussing out the truth of your organization’s content can often result in games of email or phone tag, and lots of asking around. And if the answer fails to make itself apparent sooner rather than later, the initial task at-hand is not only at risk of being delayed, but completed according to incorrect protocols and in need of a do-over, ultimately delaying the successful completion of the user’s goal.

The Inconsistency Problem: Avoidable Inconsistencies vs. Necessary Changes

Avoidable Inconsistencies

Trust in content begins to erode when its presentation becomes inconsistent. We most often see this inconsistency online, where different sources of content present different spins on the same information and the end user is forced to pick that which they believe to be the most correct “version.” The risk still exists that the consumer can walk away with the incomplete story or an incorrect set of facts. The same applies to the realm of professional information and content: when content items are labeled incorrectly, or created without consideration for consistent voice, design, or presentation, the user must put in extra work to terse out what is the most ‘true.’ Oftentimes, inconsistencies in ‘storytelling,’ or information presentation, can be avoided when adequate and robust content governance policies are regularly practiced. 

Necessary Changes

However, there are other times when inconsistency is inevitable (e.g., the change is necessary). Imagine that the employee handbook was moved to a different location on the intranet without notice. All of a sudden, employees can no longer access the handbook from its previous location and, if left unaddressed, this change spawns concern and distrust between information owners (e.g. HR) and information consumers (e.g. employees). It’s easy to imagine what type of  questions can quickly abound from this small change, such as “Are they updating the handbook,” all the way to “Am I losing PTO,” or “Is the remote work policy changing,” and so on. 

When inconsistency in the delivery and design of content can’t be avoided, we’ve found the best means of mitigating consumer distrust is with early, clear, and explanatory information. Instead of moving the employee handbook’s location without notice, maybe an HR representative would instead send out an email to the company to notify them that, yes, the employee handbook has been moved, identifies its new location, explains the reasons for the move, and invites questions or concerns. This notice allows all content consumers to modify their truth without questions or trepidation, as well as avoid losing time searching for content they can’t find. 

Truth in the Professional Realm

Consistency enforces the truth value of information. Statements like:

• The Employee Handbook is located under ‘Employee Resources’ on the company intranet;
• To adjust your state tax withholding amount, speak to HR; and
• Blogs by Enterprise Knowledge employees are posted on the website’s ‘Knowledge Base;’

are truths because following these statements consistently guarantees user success. It’s the same reason that folder structures are a preferred means of personalized information architecture because the information architecture is not only designed to meet the needs of its creator, but the user’s path to information results in consistent goal achievement (e.g., locating a specific document or picture). 

How to Design Trustworthy Content

If you’re in the position to avoid introducing inconsistency all together, rejoice! You have the opportunity to design content that’s trustworthy from the start of its introduction to your consumer. When making content design choices, there’s a single maxim to remember to guide you through the process: Familiarity and Consistency > Novelty. At EK, one of the ways we help our clients practice consistent content messaging is through the implementation of consistent content design. Content design can include the implementation of a content type, a template, descriptive metadata, writing standards, style guides, or any combination of those. These considerations allow all types of content to appear the same and standardize the users’ interactions with that content. As the consistency of that content design continues to be upheld, your users will know what they’re going to consume before they even begin interacting with it.

Conclusion

In summary, look for opportunities to implement consistency, regardless of where you are in the content creation and design process. You can begin with standardizing styles across a single content type, like templatizing your newsletters. Consider the voice of your content – are your content creators writing or speaking with a ‘one-ness’ across each iteration of that content? And remember, if inconsistencies in your content delivery can’t be avoided, communicate changes and their reasons early and clearly to avoid user wariness. At the end of the day, don’t abandon your content consumer and remember that you always have the opportunity to design things better.

Does your organization need assistance in developing or managing its content? Feel free to reach out to us for help!

The post Designing Content for the Apprehensive Consumer appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.