Andrea Wilson’s Blog

When I was in management in corporate life, one thing I learned was to work with my staff’s strengths and not try to get them to improve in areas they weren’t good at or cared about. My star customer service rep had a desk piled high with papers and made grammatical faux pas that made me cringe… but customers adored her. Did I insist she keep a tidy desk? Did I send her to grammar school? No, I gave her the most difficult, demanding customers we had… and she flourished and so did they.

I applied this thinking to my own work recently. I was totally stuck and stressed out trying to put out a Camtasia video on “how to create a simple template in XSitePro” (something my clients have been clamoring for). Then it struck me, my forte is writing, not speaking. So I wrote a step-by-step report, added dozens of screen shots, created a nice little bonus report… and in a few days the job was done. No more stress!

The Web is evolving and audio and video seem to be “the thing” right now, but they aren’t “my thing”? If the thought of having to use audio and video to create products holds me back, then they aren’t effective at all… for me! Maybe I’ll work on mastering Camtasia. Maybe I’ll do small videos first so I don’t become overwhelmed and stuck. Or maybe I’ll stick to what I know. I don’t think the written word is dead… not just yet anyway!