Pilot: The Practitioner
Weekly field notes to help content designers build a practice, team, and culture.
There’s a lot of noise in our content design world right now.
And there’s a lot of smart people that run courses, do podcasts, set up Slack channels, and provide mentorship.
That work is important and I’m impressed at the voices in our profession. But I’m also craving a medium that is basic, blunt, accessible, and free. I don’t want a side gig nor need freelance income. I also think our practice is at a critical crossroads.
How much can what we do be automated and how much is a profession?
Is what we do a practice or a sub-practice?
Are we writers first or designers?
And why, are we still faced with the same question we faced 10 years ago as a discipline: “Can you edit this string real quick?”
I won’t pretend to have the answers but I will promise to write with empathy, experience, and care. Whether you are a practice of 1 or lead a team of 20, I hope this space helps you feel what what one of my favorite authors (Lewis) penned as he attempted to define the genesis of friendship.
Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one!’
The reality is that many of our struggles as a practice are not unique. And I believe that many of these obstacles are self-inflicted. There’s not a title that can build influence for you. There’s not a magic ratio that can unlock impact.
Instead, there is one thread I’ve seen continue to deliver returns on our discipline. Wherever we lead, we need to establish, document, and share what it means to have a practice that is focused on using language to create clarity.
Because language is accessible to most in our companies, it means opinions on language will consistently create noise. And without a set of standards or a POV on the practice as a whole the craft will be left to the most senior person who has the strongest opinion on language. Sometimes that is the CPO or even CEO. Sometimes that’s the CMO. It depends on the political power you practice in, but without a clear definition of your practice, you will constant feel the pain of bending to the winds of opinion vs craft.
So, as I start out on this writing journey I hope you join me and benefit from the hard-earned lessons I’ve picked up after establishing Content Design at three different fortune 500 companies over the past decade.
I hope this isn’t more noise but more like music. And I hope, at the end of a hard quarter, month, or day, you at least get these words and feel “You too? I thought I was the only one.”
- David