More People, More Problems
How internal content strategy keeps growing teams from grinding to a halt.
Imagine your content team doubles in size.
On paper, it’s a dream come true! You finally have more creative people to tackle those “someday maybe” ideas on your wishlist.
But, the reality isn’t so tidy.
Writers are marooned in draft purgatory, refreshing inboxes for feedback that never comes
Designers are trapped in déjà vu, re‑exporting the same banner in slightly different shades of blue
Project boards are cluttered with half‑finished tasks and urgent requests (all marked “ASAP”)
And you spend more time on version control and approvals than shipping worthwhile work.
Growth doesn’t always create momentum. In fact, it can easily slow you down.
Size ≠ Speed
When you work on a small, “agile” marketing team with just a few people, you can get away with having little to no process in place. You all just agree on how things should get done, and then you do them. Easy.
But as your content team grows, process becomes exponentially important.
Every time you hire someone new, it’s like flipping on fluorescent lights in a room you’ve worked in by lamplight.
Now you see (in harsh detail) every shortcut, every faulty step, and every rickety workaround. What felt like scuff marks now look like craters.
On a small team, it’s easy to overlook small points of friction. But as your team grows (even by just one person), those small speed bumps can turn into real barriers to growth.
That’s because adding people multiplies dependencies. Every new hire means more handoffs. More reviews. More opportunities for miscommunication. More friction that slows you down.
Think of It Like Directing the Flow of Traffic
More people producing and more projects in flight. It sounds great in theory, but it means more content traffic.
You need to keep that traffic moving smoothly—ideally at a brisk pace. Which means you need the infrastructure to support the extra people moving through your production process.
Without clear lanes, signs, signals, and rules, you end up in gridlock.
The symptoms look like this:
Blurry accountability – Work overlaps, people duplicate effort, and projects stall because everyone assumes someone else is driving
Version chaos – You waste hours reconciling edits, comparing a file called “final_v6_reallyFINALnew” with “final_v6_reallyFINAL2.” And nobody’s sure which to publish
Inconsistent execution – One week your brand feels polished. The next, it looks and sounds like three different companies mud wrestling for attention
Stale project plans – Project plans become a documented formality, while no one really knows what’s changed or the status
Aimless output – Teams crank out content to look productive on paper but it seldom makes an impact to your audience (or your business)
This is the worst kind of environment to work in, by the way.
Not only are you constantly frustrated by the lack of process, but you’re also forced to continue to deliver work despite all the potholes and detours along the way. It’s a listless existence in content purgatory, where you do just enough to meet expectations, and creative space feels like a luxury you will never experience.
The good news is that content marketers already have the skills to avoid these problems. Content people know how to build project plans, content briefs, and enablement tools to make their audience’s lives easier.
The trick is to treat your internal team like a second audience.
The Engine Behind the Content
You have an content marketing strategy (I hope). But you also need an internal content enablement strategy.
Think about it: With content marketing, your job is to anticipate questions and remove friction for your buyers in their journey. You create helpful guides and resources that keep them informed and moving forward.
Internal content enablement works the same way.
Your team has recurring questions, too: What does good look like? Who reviews this asset next? Where do I find the latest brand guidelines?
If you treat those questions like signals, they point to the internal content you need to create—documentation, templates, playbooks, review cadences, and so on.
So, before you start pining for that one extra headcount that’s going to solve all your problems, think about giving the people you already have the tools to work more efficiently.
A Few Moves to Make Your Engine Hum
Here are some easy ways to get your internal content strategy started.
Document while onboarding. Every time a new hire asks you how to do something, capture the answer in a shared doc or wiki. Over time, you’ll build a lightweight knowledge base. It means you don’t have to answer the same question five times, and it makes you look organized and prepared in front of leadership. One teammate once told me they solved an issue in minutes because they found the answer in our knowledge base instead of waiting for me to reply.
Define clear swim lanes. Without them, people don’t know what to send to who, who’s doing what, and it starts to feel like a very unfunny performance of “who’s on first?”. When people know exactly what they own, projects move faster. Plus, you look decisive rather than reactive. Swim lanes give everyone—including your boss—a clear view of who’s driving what. Leadership knows where to look for progress, and the team knows exactly who to call when they need something.
Shorten review cycles. You don’t need five rounds of reviews if you set the right checkpoints. Two or three defined reviews—draft, final, design—give you quality control without inviting too many opinions. The reality is, everyone has different taste. If you invite too many people into the review cycle, it only slows things down and waters down your work.
Leave space in your structure. Process can become constrictive if left unchecked. But the right amount of structure is liberating. Guardrails mean your team can create confidently without second‑guessing every decision. Your team gets more space to express their creativity, and that creative confidence gets noticed by top brass. It makes your team look sharper and it shows that you trust your people to do their best work.
Scaling a team can be messy. Every new person adds another layer of dependencies. But when you have a solid process in place—and the internal enablement to keep it running—growth becomes a whole lot easier.
Napkin Notes
“Stop Creating Media Like Inventory” – a short punch in the gut from Dark Star Crashes. The takeaway is to stop treating content like parts on an assembly line. Make work that carries an idea, rather than just filling a slot.
“Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.” – James Clear