A hopeful metaphor for traditional corporate content
I still occasionally hear someone say, “Build it and they will come.” Wikipedia says it’s a misquote from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. It says the actual words are from a voice in the head of hero Ray Kinsella, which told him several times, “If you build it, he will come.”
I’m not sure how the misquote became a short-lived idiom, but in work settings, I used to hear build it and they will come to imply that if you build systems, channels, or infrastructure, people will eventually adopt them. Anyone working in internal communications — especially those struggling to get people to use channels like enterprise social — know that the premise isn’t true at all.
It’s been 30 years, so let’s quickly recap the plot. Ray (played by Kevin Costner) lives on a corn farm in Iowa, and his family indulges him as he converts part of his valuable land into a baseball field. Once built, long-dead ball players start showing up to play on it. For most of the film, only Ray can see these ghost players.
Contrary to what the voice promised, he built a baseball diamond, and for the longest time, nobody came.
Like his baseball field, traditional internal content is created with grand visions of bringing people together, inspiring dialogue, and driving change. But I often worry that those reading it may be imaginary employees in our heads.
To be fair, near the movie’s ending, dozens of real-life cars start arriving to watch a game, redeeming his crazy vision. (Unless of course that too is a hallucination. Up to that point he’s been hearing voices, seeing ghosts, and time traveling).
Even with that late win, his field is still a useful metaphor. If the baseball fields of our corporate content are consumed at all, it may be by different users and for different ends than we originally imagine. We write inspirational pieces for line-level employees, but they’re consumed only by administrative employees in English-speaking countries or regional offices.
We need to get real. Those players we imagine aren’t showing up for any real games, no matter how well-produced our content. We need to work on facilitating meaningful local content instead of grand productions that we dream up.
Full disclosure: despite my being a Ray from Eastern Iowa, I’ve never actually seen this movie. I relied on Wikipedia for plot details, which brings up another aspect to the metaphor: in the end, commentary on our content may leave more lasting impressions than the original.
feature image: Mick Haupt via Unsplash
