Not everything, but not nothing

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week:

• I started pulling together discovery findings for a strategy project. Diary studies, stakeholder interviews, desk research, process review – it’s a lot of material. I’ve decided to write a short central report focused on the core diagnosis the strategy needs to solve for, then a set of reports tailored to different stakeholder interests. I’d normally do a big report for the core team, and a short presentation for all stakeholders. This time, several more specialised docs feels like the right way too go.
• More manual content inventory work. In-depth, painstaking, and completely necessary. I know I’m saying this a lot right now, but AI cannot do this. The work is in the judgement, not the cataloguing.
• I kicked off a new content audit project: Sitebulb crawl, making sense of the automated outputs, and a good conversation with the client about where to focus.
• I ran some user testing. It’s always interesting — and humbling — to watch how differently people navigate a website to how you’d expect them to.
• I’ve also been thinking a lot this week about work stress and pressure, and what a content strategy can actually do about either. I don’t think I’ve landed anywhere new. My answer is still: not everything, but not nothing. A strategy can shift systems, change how a team works, and have a real organisational ripple. What it can’t do is turn every difficult stakeholder into a champion, conjure budget that isn’t there, or totally change the whole culture of an organisation overnight.
• First narcissi bloomed too, which made me very happy.