In a post this week, Jonathan Kahn, a strong advocate of content strategy and web governance, reminds us that the culture shift to a web-centric mindset for publishing and communication is still incomplete.
As I described in my recent post about selling content strategy, we need to help stakeholders make this shift in thinking. Web governance is a responsibility that needs ownership. We still need to make the case for it — and to be prepared to do it more than once.
The question, of course, is how to make the case so decision makers will listen. Kahn offers some good advice and tough love.
The only way out is to stop waiting for permission, and to start leading. This isn’t technically complex, but it takes courage: the willingness to leave our comfort zones, face our own fear of confronting the status quo, and overcome our resistance to shipping. It also takes a lot of messy interpersonal work: advocacy, facilitation, diplomacy, pragmatism, and patience. This is what Godin calls "emotional labour". Like it or not, these are the key skills of the modern web professional.
Source: The web professional’s choice: linchpin or cog by Jonathan Kahn, lucid plot, Oct. 3, 2011.
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