How to Reach Those Who Control the Power and Purse Strings

Noz Urbina calls this "Storming the Castle." To get to where you want to go, you will need two thing: money and power.

Before you start, you have to decide what the treasure is, what you want and why. If you do not define that, you will fail. An organization is complicated, and there are many points where you can come in. Validate what you think you want. Seen no project where the initial vision survived to implementation. There;s always an evolution. Look at audience, requirements, and ROI.

You have to know all the things that might go wrong, all the things that might fail, so you can head them off. Then ask: How do you know when you have succeeded? How do you define ROI? Money? Customer success? Or?

Audit where you are now so you know what the gap is between where you are now and where you want to go. Make sure you find out if where you want to go, what you want to be, is even possible. Part of that has to do with knowing who runs the organization.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that people care about content. People in this room care about content, but most people don't care about content. We as authors are always trying to get people to see the value of content. If you're trying to storm the castle, you're trying to get them to agree with something they don't agree with. Find out what they agree with and find a way to support that.

The perfect team is a mufti-disciplinary group where everyone knows what they have to do and everyone has something to add.

The content is not the value add. You're there as a communicator, to get information from one head to another. You bring to the table knowing what to do with content and how, not the content itself. If the product is so self-describing because of all the wayfinding you've put in there, that's the real value, not the manual.

Managers don't like to read stuff. They just want to know.