Change Management For Content Management Projects

From The Rockley Bulletin, the content management monthly newsletter of The Rockley Group

A content management initiative is a lot about change--changing the way people think and work. Ensure that you have a change management plan in place. If you have change management personnel in-house, get them involved in your project as soon as you make the decision to adopt a content management initiative. If you don’t have change management personnel, consider hiring consultants who specialize in change management.

Areas of change include:

New technology - People find learning new technology daunting. It can bring with it new concepts and certainly new ways of doing things.

New processes - People become comfortable with their processes even if they are cumbersome and not very effective. Changing those processes may bring anxiety and resistance.

New roles - New roles will be created and old ones may disappear or change. People often fear for their jobs.

Structured writing and collaborative writing - If you move to a unified content strategy when you adopt content management, your organization needs to adopt structured writing and collaborative writing. Structured writing is a very different way of writing that is often difficult for authors to adopt initially. They may experience feelings of loss of creativity, or what they believe are invalid restrictions on their writing style.

Filed under: Content Management