Intuitive Stack Content Strategy Operating Model

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Intuitive Stack Content Strategy Operating Model

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It starts with a story. Their story, not yours.

Presented by

Lief Erickson

lief.erickson@intuitivestack.io

www.intuitivestack.io

February 24, 2026

I need an airtight ship

Why me

10 years as a technical writer

10 years as an information architect

B.A., Technical Communication & German Studies

M.A., Content Strategy

Thesis: The Role of Taxonomy and Search in Content Usability

Information architecture lecturer

DITA-OT contributor

Intuitive Stack

Content strategy is my why

Instructors, advisors, and colleagues

Rahel Bailie

Deane Barker

Roger Sheen

Noz Urbina

Margot Bloomstein

Hilary Marsh

Paula Land

Carrie Hane

Heinz Wittenbrink

Amber Swope

Content strategists are doc product owners

 

 

 

Content strategists

are the product owners

of user assistance content.

 

 

 

Content strategists skills

Business strategy

User experience

Information architecture

Metadata & taxonomy

Web designer

Content operations & automation

Analytics & metrics

Domain expertise

Communication theory

Technically conversant in systems

Risk & compliance

AI literacy

Oh, yeah, and you can write

Facets of content strategy

Content strategy as a your practice

Your content is everywhere

Content affects and is affected by your

Business case

How one piece of content becomes hundreds

Content in many contexts

What do users need

User experience

Elements of user experience

Content strategy

Management information architecture

Delivery IA

What it’s like in real life

Stories

Your brain on stories

oxytocin

cortisol

dopamine

Hero’s journey

The User's Journey by Donna Lichaw

The User's Journey by Donna Lichaw

The User's Journey by Donna Lichaw

The guide

Lucas Films

New Line Cinema

Village Road Show

Characters in conflict

  • Stories are character driven

  • Characters are goal driven

  • Goals are measurable

  • There’s no story without conflict

  • Where does your documentation fit?

Your hero’s journey

The User's Journey by Donna Lichaw

Customer journey map

Every topic is a microstory

AI

It’s here to stay. Some might call it ‘automation.’

Can a submarine swim?

Can a submarine swim?

Why AI Projects Fail

Goal is too broad.

Let’s build an AI that answers all customer questions

Assuming AI can fix bad content and bad data

The AI will clean it up as it learns

Full-text search + embeddings = “semantic”

We don’t need taxonomies or ontologies. The LLM will find the connections automatically

Vector databases = understanding

Embedding the content captures its meaning, so we don’t need metadata or structure.

Ignoring governance (until something goes wrong)

We don’t want to slow things down with policies or review boards.

Trying to corral chaos

You're making me deal with questions I'd rather avoid.

Best Available Human

Study of 5,172 support agents at a Fortune 500 firm

+14% productivity overall (issues resolved/hour)

Biggest gains for newer or lower-performing agents: +34%

Strongest impact in moderately rare situations where agents lack experience but data exists

If top performers stop contributing new approaches

Brynjolfsson, E., The Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2025)

Not as good as a true expert

Better than trainees or novices

GenAI often performs as well as or better than the best available human, even if it falls far short of elite expertise

GenAI is a proxy for a tutor, mentor, or laziness

Not automation, but access to top-performer judgment

What do you need your content to do?

What do you need your content to do?

Recommended reading

Connect with me

Appendix

 

Content maturity

DITA Authoring maturity

Semantic content maturity

End

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