Hey folks, I'm trying to get establish and get buy-in for a standard content creation workflow for our small marketing department of 5 people, and I wondered if I could pick everyone's brain. Our main issue right now is that no one can agree on who does what when and under what circumstances (so basically our entire process) and my boss is sick of hearing about "process" and yet we need desperately to clarify our processes. Does anyone have a favorite flowchart template they use for visualizing? Our project management has gone off the rails in the last month or so, and content creation as a result has slowed down dramatically.

First of all: that sounds stressful! If you’re looking for a flow chart builder, Miro or Figma are nice. If you’re looking for a template for a pre-built content process, Airtable has a good starting point. (*Take this with a huge grain of salt because I haven’t tried it myself:) And if you’re looking for advice on building the process as a team, it could be fun to run a workshop with your team (e.g. in Miro) where you design the ideal process together. I’d suggest ignoring everyone’s roles at first and just defining all the jobs that need to be done and what a good flow would look like, and then worry about who does what after.

I second Miro as a low-barrier-to-entry flowchart tool 🙂 I might also recommend clarifying roles and goals since you mentioned lack of alignment on those. And I'm sure you know this already, but process and team alignment are non-negotiable elements of scaling your team's output--maybe that's how to get your boss on board

Yes! Maybe it’s more of a messaging thing: You’re creating alignment, not process

I'd keep it simple simple simple and just start with a bullet list in a doc.

Tools like Notion and Asana make it possible to templatize who is in charge of sub-tasks so that might be one way to kill two birds with one stone

It sounds like you need to get buy-in and clarify everyone's roles before you just introduce another tool into the mix. A couple of suggestions for how to do that: 1. Show your boss what's at risk of not establishing a process. How does the lack of process affect production, goals, and ultimately revenue? Connect key metrics to the strategic initiatives they care about, and show them what they stand to lose if you don't get this sorted (and soon). This hits on a behavioral concept called Loss Aversion, and it's a proven way to get executives' attention and motivate them to want to solve the problem. 2. Get the team together for a design thinking session/workshop. Telling them a new process to follow will only get so far. Instead, get them involved in co-creating the solution so they feel more invested in the strategy. At the beginning of the session, present the challenge, the goal for the session, and then open up a brainstorming session for everyone to come up with ideas on how to solve the challenge (no wrong answers and no judgment). Give them time to write their ideas on stickies and put them up on a board. Then, have everyone take turns going up and voting on their top three ideas from the board. You can then take the top ideas and get everyone's agreement to start moving toward next steps for implementing the solution. I'd also look into some project management frameworks for planning projects. The RACI matrix is very helpful, for example. Hope this helps!

Create a RACI chart. Search Templates online. Have everyone contribute to it and then agree as a team. I like to use Scrum methodology using a Kansan board in Asana. You'll have to define rules of engagement for the size of your sprint, how you estimate workload and prioritize work. Publish those as an untouchable task to the board. Each sprint try to focus each person on one goal for the sprint to start.