The First Steps for Creating Must-Read Content

I recently had a blast doing a speaking event for the Louisville Society of Human Resources, and I credit much of my success to the hours I spent writing and preparing my speech. Before this event, I wasn’t the biggest fan of preparing, but as I worked on my speech, I came across many valuable lessons about the importance of preparing.

How to Find—and Prepare for—Your Audience

One of the biggest insights was the importance of finding the right approach for your audience. Whether you’re writing a book, giving a speech, or simply talking to your team members, it’s crucial to appeal to your audience.

In her book How to Write a Must-Read, AJ Harper distills the idea into something called a “reader first” mindset. With a reader first mindset, you recognize that your audience is using some of their valuable time, energy, and attention to read or listen to your words. To honor this, give them something of value in return. Recognize the energy they’re giving you by making them feel acknowledged, supported, or valued.

To practice a reader first mindset with your own words, the first step is identifying your audience. To do this, ask yourself questions like:

Who is my audience?
What do I want my audience to get out of reading or hearing my words?
How do I want to make people feel when they read or hear my words?

How to Craft Content for Your Audience

Once you’ve found your audience and discovered what they want, it’s time to craft your ideas. While preparing for my speech, I found three easy steps for finding the best way to communicate your message:

Look at your calendar and find an opportunity to lead or be directly involved in a conversation
Write out the “big idea” you want to share, three points to support your main idea, and notes about how you want others to feel about your message. By starting with this, you can frame your ideas in a way that works for you.
After your conversation, ask for feedback. This will shape your future preparations and give you the inspiration you need to improve!

Ready to Get Started?

Whether you’re writing a speech, newsletter, social media post, or communications with your team, crafting great content is hard work and takes practice! If you’re ready to learn more about leveling up your content, check out AJ Harper’s Write a Must-Read or listen to her great episode of my Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast, where she talks more about using a reader first mindset and her other tips for creating compelling content.

At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop floor. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website