Presentation to the Sydney Content Strategy Meetup 27 September 2021
From 2019 to 2021 I was boss-person for the digital Australian Government Style Manual. This is a talk I gave to other content people about my experiences. A big thank you to Elle Geraghty for inviting me and all the friendly content folks who turned up.
You can make the SlideShare go to full-screen mode by clicking the square icon on the bottom right corner. The substance of my talk is in this post but if you’d like a more accessible version of the slides, please get in touch.
I am so happy to be here today at a birthday party for a 10 year old and a one year old. The 10 year old of course being the Sydney Content Strategy meetup and the one year old being the Australian Government Style Manual. It really is an auspicious occasion.
There was a bit of hubris involved in calling my presentation today ‘6 things I learned when I tried to change the world with a style manual’. I mean, I don’t think I’ve worked with anyone in content who hasn’t wanted to change the world, or at least their small part of it. If we didn’t want to change the world for good, we’d be using our skills in different jobs altogether. And many of us would probably getting paid a lot more too.
Every time we listen to our users and help them with our products, we’re making change. In tiny increments, we make more things work for more people.
And did I only learn 6 things? No, of course I didn’t. I went home every night ruminating about a hundred things I could have done better that day. Many wiser minds than mine have also learned the same things before me, and I’m willing to guess you may be in that group.
But even though we often work in isolation from each other, we’re all treading the same path. We all have similar challenges and similar responsibilities to make the digital world more accessible, more inclusive, and more diverse.
So today’s preso is not so much about changing the world with a style manual, but changing the world with content. Depending on the area you work in, the style manual I worked on might well be the armour you use when you next go in to fight the good fight.
Australian Government Style Manual
I’m assuming you’re already familiar with the Australian Government Style Manual if you’ve given up your lunch break to be here today. I’ll give you the short version of the backstory.
lt is, simply, a national treasure. The first edition was published in 1966 and included a foreword by Prime Minister Harold Holt. Five revised editions were published to 2002.
After that it languished for nearly 20 years while the digital revolution happened around it. To put that timeframe in perspective, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad, the Kindle, Android, Blockchain and digital personal assistants like Alexa have all come into existence since the last hard copy edition.
20 years ago, we couldn’t have imagined that it would be possible to run the world’s biggest taxi service without vehicles. Or the world’s biggest accommodation business without properties.
Style Manual would have remained a relic of the pre-digital era there if it weren’t for its champion, Susan Baird, who worked tirelessly over many years to bring it back into the list of government funding priorities.
Our team undertook the biggest update in Style Manual’s history. We had to change it from hard copy to digital.
That might not seem like a radical idea to anyone on this call. I mean, it’s just a website, right? But one of the most frequent questions I was asked in the early days was, ‘Are you turning the hard copy into an e-book?’ The idea of a digital style manual and all that entailed was still, in 2020, an idea that was hard for some people to get their heads around.
For us though, the idea of what a digital style manual could be was, of course, bigger than any resource allocation we could possibly have been given.
But, like every other content project ever, we didn’t have unlimited funding. It’s hard to get non-content people excited about content, and it’s even harder to get them excited about something like a style manual, which only its users really understand.
We also had a short amount of time to deliver. And we started with around half of the people we needed.
At this point I could talk you through how we decided on what went in, and what stayed out. But I think the more interesting story is around what I’ve come to call the elements on the periodic table.
1. Find your periodic table
The first thing I learned is you need to find the pure elements that can bond together in unique ways. No matter how much funding you have, you can’t buy these because they are priceless.
There were 12 elements I discovered on our periodic table. They were:
- Creativity
- Discipline
- Logic
- Curiosity
- Empathy
- Humility
- Accountability
- Openness
- Trust
- Passion
- Frankness
- Fun
These were the components we started with. As the team grew, the periodic table remained constant.
These elements were what created the magic that enabled us to deliver 300,000 words of contemporary content guidance in the unbelievable timeframe of 12 months. When I look back now, it doesn’t seem possible.
If you had unlimited funding, time, and people, but no elements that naturally wanted to combine, I think there’s not much you could create beyond endless layers of approvals. But if you put some dynamic building blocks in a contained space, alchemy happens.
If I ever had to choose between having all the tools and funding I ever needed but never delivering anything of value, or having the elements to create something special and managing my backlog on sticky notes, I’d choose the latter every time.
2. You don’t need to be great. You just need to have a great team. And work bloody hard
On paper I wouldn’t appear to be immediately qualified for the role of Style Manual product owner. I’ve had a lot of jobs, and a lot of jobs in content, but none of them have had the terms ‘linguist’ or ‘accredited editor’ in the title. And I certainly didn’t put myself forward for the role.
It took the wonderful Libby Varcoe to believe I could do it. I’m forever grateful because Style Manual is the most significant thing I’ve done in my professional life.
But I did realise one thing really quickly, which was it wasn’t my role to be the resident expert on all things relating to style.
My role was to create the rules and the playing field, then let the people on the team do the things they were good at. It was to protect them from outside interference so they could focus on what we were delivering. It was to keep reminding them of what we were creating, and why.
And, contrary to what more experienced people were telling me to do, it was to be across the detail, because detail matters in content. I don’t mean to say that it’s good to micromanage, and I hope I didn’t do that. But it does mean you need to be across the front end of delivery – which is to say the product backlog – and the final result, which is to say the words on the page. What happens in between doesn’t really matter. But making sure all the individual pieces add up to the product vision does. That’s where the component of working bloody hard comes in.
I also think one of the biggest mistakes you can make when you’re building a team is to hire people like yourself. You might have an easy time of it if you do, but I don’t think you’d ever deliver something that will make a difference.
And it’s not only important to find people who have the strengths you don’t. Find the ones who will challenge you, debate with you and tell you your user stories are crap. Find the ones who will make sure you do actual product owner stuff like backlog prioritisation instead of going to pointless meetings. Find the ones who have hidden depths and don’t put themselves forward. And above all, find the ones who will call out your bullshit. You’re still in charge of the decisions. You might as well make them with all the information you can get.
I don’t make any claims that our team was as diverse as it should have been for a product of this significance. But the kind word for our debates over content is ‘robust’. We had many robust discussions. It wasn’t the easy road to take as a product owner, but it was the right one. It made for the best possible product in the end. And it made for the best possible team too.
And I also need to call out here that we stood on the shoulders of giants. While I led Style Manual Beta, there was a Discovery team and an Alpha team that set us up for success. Some people remained in the team throughout, but most changed.
The great achievement of those teams was to do the purest implementation ever of what was the DTA’s service design and delivery process. They found out who our users were, what they needed, and decided on what an MVP should look like. Countless design decisions were made easy in Beta because of the legacy they left us.
I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who worked on Style Manual. I would use up all my time if I were to name them here, but please check out the Acknowledgements page one day if you haven’t already.
3. Make decisions based on how things should be, not how they’ve always been done
We talk a lot about roadmaps when we’re working in agile. But I think the more important thing, to borrow an analogy from Seth Godin, is to have a compass. Unlike a roadmap, a compass allows you to explore new territory.
The true north of my compass was this: every user of government services should be able to access, understand and see themselves in the information they need.
That meant reimagining what a style manual could be.
If we’d done what had always been done, we would have focused on grammar and punctuation, shown people how to produce documents, and maybe included some cursory information about non-discriminatory language. Maybe we would have shown people how to build websites.
But we went beyond that to emphasise above all else that government content, in whatever format it’s consumed, must first meet user needs. It should recognise the diversity of the Australian community, and the way people engage with government, has changed in ways that we couldn’t have conceived of when the 6th edition was published nearly 20 years ago.
Ironically, this was the point at which we needed to leave our own users’ stated needs behind and show leadership.
We showed that content needs to accessible – and unlike any other style manual that I’m aware of, we embedded guidance on meeting WCAG standards on the page, rather than hiding them away in a separate section.
Some people didn’t like this because they thought accessibility wasn’t in their job description. Some objected to having to follow accessibility requirements because they only created content for internal use or for senior leaders. I still don’t know if that’s a reflection on approval processes or diversity processes.
We also showed that content needs to be readable, and despite all the usual cries of ‘dumbing down’, we advocated Australian year 7 level to meet the needs of all users.
And we showed that content needs to go beyond the basics of non-discrimination to be actively inclusive of all users. We included detailed guidance for referring to gender and sexual diversity, disability and age diversity, to name a few. Personally I think some of these pages could have gone a lot further. For some others, they went too far. Which brings me to the next thing I learned.
4. Time is relative. Whether you are ahead of your time or behind it depends on the observer’s frame of reference
Well of course I didn’t discover that. We all know Einstein did.
But I learned the concept applies in much the same way when you’re making change. Which is to say, whether you’re ahead of your time or behind it depends on the observer’s frame of reference.
We sought a lot of feedback while we were writing the Style Manual rules and guidance. A lot.
Overwhelmingly, the feedback was constructive and supportive of what we were doing. We had a lot of input as to how we could make our guidance even more inclusive. I hope we reflected most of this in the content that went live.
I would say those observers were viewing us from a frame of reference that was similar to our own, and at times ahead of ours.
But there was a minority for whom the embrace of digital and diversity was just way too much. This feedback came from a different frame of reference. I think it reflected a time when the standard against which services were created was white, male, cisgender, heterosexual, and non-disabled.
Those who are in the space that has always been included, which is to say, those who have traditionally been the gatekeepers, can find it hard when other voices and identities begin to populate that space. Words are important, as we know. The way in which they are framed can include or exclude.
Our community has changed. Authoritative guidance needs to change with it. Style Manual, as released in 2020, was neither ahead of its time nor behind it. Some things already need to be in the pipeline for updating.
But I hope the one thing that remains constant is the principle that people should be able to determine their own way to access government services, regardless of their literacy, ability, or identity.
5. Stay the course, even when some try to drive you away from it. (It’s a sign you’re doing something that matters)
During the course of delivering Style Manual, I was cornered by a small number of various angry people in our team’s workroom, in lifts, foyers, and random other places. I was sent emails. I had aggressive fingers pointed at me and my personal space invaded. The message was the same – that I didn’t know what I was doing. I was messing with something that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to do research because it was all on sticky notes. And yes, I was dumbing it down.
All I can say is that if you ever get reactions like that, it means you’re doing something that matters. People are taking notice. And remember there are way more people who need you to succeed than those who want you to fail.
Turn that negative energy into something that fuels your work. It will help you to serve the people who need the thing you’re making.
6. No change happens without a critical mass of people who care
And the last thing I learned was about the importance of community, as if we ever needed reminding of that. You can labour away on something forever, but if there isn’t a critical mass of people out there who care about what you’re doing, change will never happen.
Through the untiring efforts of Susan Baird, we cultivated community early. We had a working group that reviewed all draft content before it was published. And we had a wider group of interested users who joined us on the journey through Beta.
Within days of going live, we’d received thousands of comments.
By May this year, which was the last time I had access to the analytics, we had 100,000 unique users.
And I know from many comments people have made to me over the past year that they not only use Style Manual, but love it.
Style Manual may have looked like a radical overhaul, but it’s just the tool. Real change is made in the adoption, as tiny decision by tiny decision compounds into a normal way of doing things.
Style Manual is so good that it now has competitors in the market. The one we produced is free for all to use, and hopefully reflects something of what our community looked like at a point in time. I think of it as the people’s style manual.
This will probably be the last time I’m indulged to talk about Style Manual so the main thing I’d like to leave you with is this: don’t take the gains we made for granted.
I’d like to think Style Manual will continue to evolve in a way that holds up a mirror to all the diverse needs of users, and that in turn, any user can feel seen by the products and services they need.
I’d also like to think that the way it might look in another 20 years time will be just as inconceivable to us as the current one would have been back in 2002.
At the very least, I’d like to think our gains won’t be wound back.
But we all know nothing is guaranteed.
So I guess all I can say is that every time you make a decision to make something more accessible, to make something clear rather than obscure, and to include those who aren’t always seen, you’re working in the spirit of the Style Manual we created.
The Pale Blue Dot
If you looked at my intro slide carefully, you might have recognised the image. It’s called the Pale Blue Dot and it’s a photo taken of Earth by Voyager 1 on Valentine’s Day, 1990.
The photo is one of the most significant in history but was only taken due to Carl Sagan’s tenacity in lobbying NASA for years to turn the space probe around.
In his famous comments on the photo – you can Google them – he reflects on the foolishness of the cruelties and hatred we human beings inflict on each other so we can dominate a tiny fraction of a pixel.
You might be wondering at this point what any of this has to do with content.
Only this – that cruelties can be inflicted in small ways as well as large. We practise a craft which, for all its complexities, comes down to a simple binary algorithm. Include or exclude.
It makes me happy to be part of a community that not only chooses the former, but is always willing to defend that choice. And really, I think that’s how you change the world.