Last post’s first pillar of knowledge management may appear only to be relevant to authors, and therefore to publishing organizations that control their own creation phase of their own complete content supply chain. In fact, I’ve been told that to adopt Pillar One is contrary to traditional and conventional wisdom in commercial publishing, and economically unsound for that domain. But, I’ve seen and experienced the opposite, and together with certain publishing company senior managers and executives, we force the evolution of their organizations’ traditional views, conventional wisdom, and craft-based processes.

The most recent of the many events, projects, and leadership situations from which I’ve guided commercial publishers was New York University’s Center for Publishing symposium ”Future Tense – Emerging Trends in Publishing Workflow Management”. The symposium was attended by a collection of world renowned experts in publishing process and workflow. Some of us presented and taught, some of us watched and learned, I think I even saw one of us taking a snooze! So it was a mixed crowd, tied together only by “commercial publishing expertise”.

One thing everybody accepts, “If you keep on doing what you have been doing up to now, nothing can help you achieve better results.” In the face of empirical evidence to the contrary, traditional and conventional wisdom must evolve. Whether it be one or more of the process steps: product design; authoring; content acquisition; aggregation; editorial practices; fabrication processes; indexing; abstracting; production; preflight; composition; distribution; or the interfaces that exist that tie them together … stop doing what you’ve always done, consider doing what others who get better results have learned to do, and therefore gain the opportunity to reduce future harm. Not really a popular message, but true nonetheless.

Come back for more …

Category: General