This is a very famous Zulu saying— which means that we are what we are because of others. (see more on wiki). I used it in one of my slides in my talk at Utterly Content Conference 2020.
Content is not a single function. Neither is design. Content design, product content strategy, and design—these support every other team in the organization.
You cannot build and scale marketing without content.
You cannot build and scale design without content.
You cannot build and scale code without design.
You cannot scale content without design.
Product onboarding is more meaningful for the customers because of content design—the message and the interactions.
You cannot design your sales narrative without content strategy (and you should not even try it).
Your support center experience will be fragmented, diluted, and uncertain in the absence of strategic intersection of content and design.
We are what we are because of other people.
This Zulu saying is fitting to our work in digital teams, as Sam Dresser mentions in this Aeon essay (opens in a new tab)—”Language is what makes us human. It is not merely a conduit for information, it is also our way of organising social agency.”
Organizations rarely invest in this distinction between the social agency and an individual’s agency. Their leaders spend thousands to join an accelerator program in SF, an online product marketing cohort, a design thinking conference in Berlin but they rarely try to understand how their people work, and for longer enough.
We use scientific frameworks to support our product decisions. Why not a piece of literary advice?
