Uncertainty is usually a big deterrent. When you encounter the unknown, the thing that you know is unknown to you, human instinct is usually to retreat to safety. It is especially true in professional situations because humans naturally don’t want to appear incompetent or uneducated professionally. However, it is important to take this fear of the unknown and let it motivate, rather than paralyze you. When you practice this way to navigate through your fears, it helps you develop better intuition to guide you in future uncertain situations. It’s like the adage, “Practice makes perfect.”

This week in our course Digital Content Strategy, we began to get into the nitty-gritty of conducting the content inventory for our client. As I worked through Module 4, uncertainty crept in about applying what we learned about performing a content inventory to our team project and our real-life client’s needs. My initial instinct was to retreat and wait until someone else told me what to do. However, I recalled the previous module that focused on gathering the raw content data using the Content Management System (CMS) MadCap Flare. While working through that module, I wrote about being hesitant in learning to use Flare in my previous blog post. The approach that helped the process click for me was to persist, continue through the module, engage with the learning materials, even though I felt clueless, and the pieces finally came together. It was good practice that I drew upon this week, and in the end my audit team and I had a breakthrough moment in our weekly team meeting.

What did you read or watch that surprised, delighted or disappointed you? Why?

In Chapter 8 of our text Content Audits and Inventories: A Handbook for Content Analysis, author Paula Ladenburg Land writes, “Keep in mind that you will select different criteria for different kinds of content, because each type of content may have its own goals.” I had no idea how broadly that statement would apply to a real-life content inventory until I worked through selecting criteria with my teammates. It felt like choice overload. How were we supposed to choose when there were so many options?

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However, as we kept talking with each other and working through the information from the second meeting with Client Z, the criteria we needed to select became clear to us. That was a breakthrough moment for both my team and myself, and I gained a deeper understanding of why Colleen Jones wrote, “Your content decisions are like poker bets, not chess formulas,” in her book The Content Advantage (2019). You’ve got to put your money down without knowing which cards are in play.

What was most meaningful for your own career goals? Why?

This week in the Digital Content Strategy course gave me a deeper appreciation for the art of team collaboration. I have always preferred to work alone, so this course has forced me to step out of my comfort zone and rely on teammates to help me with my part of the project. It became obvious to me when I began to construct my content inventory spreadsheet, and I questioned whether I classified correct information in the correct categories. My first move was to pose the question on our Microsoft TEAMS site. However, it was a time-sensitive question and I didn’t know if or when my teammates would respond with their help. I then turned to our team Kanban board to see if I could find some clarification, and there it was. Our team leader had meticulously created task cards for each of us with all of the details included, and I had the answer that I needed right at my fingertips. From this experience, I learned that it’s important to rely on teammates, and it’s also important to be thorough and detailed to give teammates support when they need it.