Workloads evenly spread. Lack of time prevents innovation. Making room for creativity.
But most only class it as a "small problem".
Too much work and not enough time seems to go with the territory. But does it prevent innovation?
The issue seems to be roughly equal across all job roles, locations and company types. Everybody noticed it, but few seemed particularly worried.
Workload is slightly more of a serious problem for European respondents, marketing managers, and marketers in tech companies. Content creators and American respondents have an easier time.
But importantly, workload does have an effect on content. The research suggests the need to get stuff done leaves little time for creative ideas.
The marketing team was growing, but they all had to funnel through a tiny content team that was being pulled every which way. We were constantly asked to check emails, event invites, flyers, presentations, the whole lot. Content is more than just the team's writers and grammar experts, so give them the space and resource to do their job.
Too busy to innovate?
Respondents who cited workload as a "big problem" were 25% less likely to say their best content had a clever, original concept.
I see people stop in the idea creation phase, because it's near impossible to justify an idea that came naturally. There's no point in starting.
The idea phase of content creation is brilliant. I get to dive into a project I'm passionate about. But soon it gets a reputation, and suddenly it's like all these people are putting gambling chips on what you're creating.
As the stakes get higher, ideas get interrogated. You need to predict the business benefit, or the pipeline, and justify yourself on all these levels, which is not where the idea came from. It's demotivating.
Creative content leads to better engagement, but it's not necessarily easy to measure that.
Creativity can be realistic, but a lot comes down to performance. Palo Alto Networks is a hyper-growth company, and in my early years there was a lot of freedom to be creative, because we were hitting our number and exceeding it. As the numbers get bigger, that's more difficult.
You can build space to be creative. There's one manager here who doesn't like job titles; your role is based on an outcome, and how you get there is up to you. So you can come up with an idea, and go and create the content.
Marketeers are always trying to justify their place in the company, so it's difficult to spend time on something that isn't easily measurable.
