Does Your Organization Suffer from “Not Written Here” Syndrome?

If you’ve worked in the tech industry you probably know the acronym NIH, which stands for “Not Invented Here.” NIH often describes engineering efforts where coders do the equivalent of reinventing the lightbulb because they feel they can do a better engineering job than General Electric. In competitive industries, NIH can mean giving away market share.

In one example case, a launch date for a critical product was delayed by over a year because executive management stubbornly refused to OEM a software tool that would have provided a marginally important feature. The execs felt the OEM’d software was a ‘kludge job’, even though it was widely used by many Fortune 500 companies. Fortunately, the rise of Cloud Computing, GitHub, offshore programmers, and rapid release schedules have been the equivalent of the mob with torches and pitchforks that helps drive NIH out of Engineering. The bad news though is NIH found refuge in Marketing under the alias of NWH, “Not Written Here”.

What does NWH look like? I hear prospective clients say things like, “We know we need to generate content on a regular basis, but nobody knows our product or space well-enough to write about it except for our founder”. If that founder loves to write, is good at it, and cranks out articles and blog posts like clockwork, it’s time for you to take a nice soft cloth and polish his or her horn, as they are indeed a unicorn.

For most would-be executive writers, the road to Content Marketing hell is paved with their good intentions, given that their time is 120% consumed with fighting fires, closing the next deal, assuaging investors, preparing for the next board meeting, etc etc. In this case, “Not Written Here” may as well be called NWAA – “Not Written At All”.

If your organization is currently devoid of unicorns, the only logical alternative is to employ a real writer. Have you made that decision yet? If you have, you’ll want to weigh the pros and cons of W-2 vs 1099 writers.

If you’ve learned to ignore the emphatic promises of execs insisting that they’ll start cranking out content, then give yourself a firm pat on the back, as you’re doing your part to vanquish the NWH beast.