Where I work at the intersection of brand design and content design, communication and change leadership, I keep seeing how content actually comes about in a large, complex organization — how structure and org charts matter, and what it takes not just to make something, but to make something that can keep living.

Content is a bit like data. Data on a data platform needs formal ownership — someone responsible for governing and evolving it. Content needs the same. An article is just another bit of data. But who should own it? And who is responsible for communicating what? You might assume leaders sort that out, but leaders are often too far from these details.

It’s us — designers and people who work with change and behavior — who pick up the needs, gather them, structure them and make them visible. Then we go to leaders and say: “Someone needs to own this — can you? Then we can be the editors.” We have to teach leaders to lead. We have to teach leaders to own.

No one wants to take responsibility if they don’t have to; that’s a job in itself. And you have to balance that and build structure around it. What does the responsibility cost? How much time does it take? What has to be deprioritised as the price? I haven’t been used to thinking about those things. I’ve been used to thinking about the craft itself — the experience, the outcome, making something that works and conveys the right message in an intuitive way.

But content is also this — organization, structure. At least in a large organization. A piece of copy or a channel isn’t “done” when it’s published if no one owns the truth in it and has a mandate to update it when reality shifts. Then the delivery is a beautiful draft no one is accountable for, and it may not survive for long.

Content isn’t only a creative process (even though that would be nice). First we have to turn the soil, do the groundwork, figure out how to make it keep blooming season after season. That means making the needs clear to people who can decide — not only writing well.