How to Create the Right Organizational Structure for Multiplatform Publishing
Organizational structure can make or break multiplatform publishing success
Multiplatform publishing is the cornerstone of what we do at Mequoda. If you can create one content product, you can create many content products. If you've been following along with us through our daily newsletter then you have a general foundation for building a multiplatform publishing business. But one of the most critical stages of building a multiplatform publishing business is hiring and creating an ideal organizational structure.
If you want to build a multiplatform publishing machine, the roles you create and the people that fill those roles should be a top priority.
Because multiplatform publishing (by its very nature) requires the continuous shuffling of content around for different purposes, like audience development and revenue generation, working effectively in teams is a cornerstone of success. And using the Myers-Briggs personality types as a tool to guide your organizational structure can help your employees be better team members by understanding how they see the world and how their view differs from their coworkers.
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It helps team members understand themselves better, know their teammates better, and ultimately understand how to combine their strengths to create an efficient, effective team. Do you:
Know your Myers-Briggs personality type?
Know how different personality types can affect a larger multiplatform publishing team?
Know which types have historically worked best in different executive publishing roles?
Knowing the answers to these questions could save you a ton of money and time on re-hiring.
Understand your MBTI Personality Type
People are not the same. They gather, perceive, and judge data differently. The writings of Swedish psychiatrist Carl Jung have been used to categorize these seemingly random differences into 16 psychological types that can help us understand ourselves and those around us. These types can play a key role in modern team building.
Jung's observations can now be accurately measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) developed by Isabel Myers (and her mother Katharine Briggs). Myers used Jung's theory of opposites (Sensing or iNtuiting, Thinking or Feeling) and a battery of test questions that ask subjects how they prefer to interact with the external world to discover each individual's MBTI Type. Learn about the MBTI and take the test…
Play to Strengths in Order to Encourage Growth Within Personality Types
While there aren't good or bad MBTI types, some tend to correlate more to success in certain positions. When the MBTI types aren't as natural a fit, it's particularly important to be aware of that and how individuals and the organization can act to compensate.
Teams that take time to create efficient group work processes can become extremely effective at furthering the actual work of any organization. Taking time to build and maintain these high-performance teams can thus have a very positive impact on productivity, return on investment, and worker morale. Is it any wonder that American business has grown willing to invest time and resources into a process that would have been thought unproductive by management experts like F.W. Taylor, who believed in treating workers as parts of a process, rather than as part of a team? Learn how to engage with different personality types most effectively…
Build Multiplatform Teams That Play Well Together
People who are in jobs where they're a good fit tend to be happy. They are also more productive. Just as there is no good or bad MBTI type, there is no "ideal" team profile, there are only examples of very effective executive team combinations. We've created a base model that you're welcome to emulate in your hiring that's similar to many effective leadership teams we've coached over the past 20 years since we started using the MBTI as a team-building tool.
When hiring, hire to lead revenue, don't attempt to reach your revenue goals, and then hire; You will get to that level having hired the right officers. Feel free to use the MBTI profiles of the senior executives in our composite case study, as an example. See how we'd structure an effective multiplatform publishing team…
Please feel free to add your additional hiring insight into the comments. Is there a team combination that has worked well for you in your organizational structure? We'd love to hear how you've used the MBTI in your own organization.
If you're rebuilding a multiplatform publishing team or in the midst of an organizational structure transition, schedule a call to talk about how we can help.
What have you learned about creating an ideal organizational structure for your publishing business?
Over the past two decades, we've guided more than 300 niche publishers through the process of transforming themselves from legacy print publishers into multiplatform operations that often dominate their industry niche and generate operating margins that surpass those created by their legacy print business. Learn more about how we can help you apply these strategies to your publishing business by scheduling a FREE consultation today.
This article was originally published in 2015 and has been updated.
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Article tags: ad, audience development, content, daily newsletter, mequoda, multiplatform, multiplatform publishing, newsletter, online publishing, open source software, portal, publishing business, publishing team, text ad.