The week’s are flying and while I had to ponder what my key takeaways this week were I’ve once again found it helpful to slow my thinking through getting some words down here.

3 things this week

Freeing the content

Still working away on content and channel strategy this week I’ve been getting deeper into a significant change: moving away from pulling customers to a website (or App) toward freeing the content to meet them where they are.

To me it feels as if AI has made this more pertinent to those who have been reluctant to let go in this way up to now. It makes talking about and planning structured content higher priority strategically, and leads toward some changes in experience design of all kinds.

While optimising touchpoints we own – the website, embedded chatbots or AI assistants – we must also plan, design and deliver in increasing places where we don’t. On Google search results appearing below the AI summary are seeing up to an 80% drop in clickthroughs – and that is for the highest ranking results so it’s already heading toward a point where you may as well not exist if you appear even a little lower.

This only makes the content you’re producing more important – not only do you have to get it spot on for those who are arriving on your site, you need to optimise it for being picked up and used in those AI summaries, or in other spots where your customers truly have moved or are moving to.

You might not see the traffic in one-place in the future, but you can still get the vital information to the customer – for local government this is needs to be at the core of your content strategy and digital content operations now.

Corporate immune systems against change

I was reminded again about corporate immune systems this week, and more specifically how they are so often the reason change doesn’t work.

The immune system – the culture and all the operational processes and policies which support it – are there to stop perceived threats, which all too often is conflated with innovation and necessary change. The system wants to protect the status quo so curiosity, experimentation, a mindset which is out of line with the majority, and course adjustment of a radical kind can all trigger protection through rejection to kick in.

Even where the change is desired, is supported from the top down and has all the right apparatus behind it the rejection can still happen. If you haven’t reached every cell of the organisation and embedded the change with them there’s a chance they will get defensive to try and protect their status quo. That defence can be extreme and is rarely pleasant for the individual or group who are perceived as the irritant – and unchecked they are unlikely to be able to win against the system, or survive (nevermind thrive) in the organisation long.

Change, as we all know, is hard. But if you’re leading an organisation which has decided its necessary you need to understand what triggers the immune system, and plan to deal with it and stand it down as quickly as possible if you want to really shift the culture, achieve your goals, and do you duty of care to the innovators too.

The years go fast

We’ve been saying goodbye to great colleagues recently – some to new jobs, some to retirement, but all to exciting new adventures. Yesterday in one of these farewell meetings the colleague off to start retirement reflected that ‘the years go fast’.

They said that work wasn’t always easy or great, but it takes up a huge portion of your life and before you know it those days will be behind you. Try and enjoy it as much of it as you can, find the colleagues who will be your work family. Excellent advice I thought.

Reading, listening watching, writing

The end of summer brings a bit of a break from the day job, although not the job of homemaker or record label boss (new chapter loading, release imminent). There’s a little more time and a little more headspace anyway so here’s some of what I’m filling that with: