One of the things that I have noticed over the past 30+ years of owning Content Rules is that people are always (and I do mean always) drawn to new technology. Whether it is a new authoring platform, a new content management system, or a new RAG tool, people tend to focus on technology as the answer to all of their problems.
Findability problem? There’s a tool for that. Grammar problem? There’s a tool for that. Image problem? Yep, a tool for that, too. Tools abound. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these tools are really good. They provide features and benefits that can really help solve a lot of problems.
So, companies spend money, sometimes lots of money, on buying (or building) and deploying new tools to fix old problems.
The Missing Piece: Content Still Has to Change
Often, they forget that the content itself may need to change. Very often, when we adopt new tools, we need to do different things with the content. For example, we might need to break the content into chunks (componentization). Or we might need to organize the content differently (taxonomy). Maybe we are going to create a single-source of truth (reuse). Or we need new ways to find the content we have (metadata).
In response, companies often spend quite a bit of time and another round of money migrating the content and transforming it in ways that take advantage of features in their new tool.
That’s all we should need to do, right? Put in a tool and change the content to use it. And all of our problems should be solved.
Unfortunately that is almost never the case. In fact, the Go Live date is often where the problems begin. And I don’t mean problems with the content or problems with the tool. I mean problems with the people.
The Real Linchpin: Change Management
Change management is the linchpin for any type of problem-solving success. You can have the best tool, configured perfectly, with all your content neat and tidy. But if you leave the team out of the process, your chances of success are very slim.
Technology is easy, people are hard.
It’s Not Resistance—It’s Fear
But why? Why are people so difficult? Why is change so challenging for some people?
I am asked this question all the time. And the answer is fear.
We often label people as being stubborn, or inflexible, or downright ornery. And while some people are stubborn, inflexible, or ornery, none of those traits are usually the source of the problem. At the end of the day, fear is at the heart of resistance to change.
All sorts of fear makes people resistant to change:
- Fear of not understanding
- Fear of other people noticing you do not understand
- Fear of ridicule
- Fear of failure
- Fear of losing your job
From Resistance to Advocacy
If you recognize that fear manifests as resistance, you can create a shift in how you work with someone who does not want change. If you put in guardrails to address the fear – for example, readily available training, someone to ask questions, other types of support and job aids – you stand a much better chance of changing your most resistant person into your change champion.
If you simply see a resistant person as difficult, stubborn, or in the way, you will react to them from a place of annoyance or even anger. If, instead, you acknowledge the fear behind the resistance and address it, you stand a much better chance of winning them over with compassion and empathy.
The Trifecta That Actually Works
If you have complex problems that you need to solve (and don’t we all?), technology alone is not the answer. Combining technology with the way you do content helps but is still not the answer. You need to affect the trifecta:
- People
- Content
- Tools
In that order. Sometimes, you can solve a problem without changing the content or the tools. Sometimes you can solve problems by changing the content and how it is done. But you will never solve complex problems with a shiny new tool alone. If you’re navigating similar challenges in your own organization—whether it’s content transformation, AI adoption, or improving how your teams manage structured content, we’d love to talk.
