Perception
You think a content intake form and process slows things down. That it adds unnecessary friction and gets in the way of creativity. So you don't implement one, or enforce the one you have in the name of “agility” or “to be collaborative.”
Reality
Skipping intake doesn’t make you nimble or agile, it makes you reckless and unorganized.
The team is drowning in random acts of content. Not because there aren't better options, but because you refuse to control the faucet. If everything gets in, nothing gets prioritized, and everything is urgent. If everything is urgent, nothing is strategice.
Intake isn’t bureaucracy. It’s the difference between running a system and surviving (or not) one. A proper intake process isn’t red tape; it’s a guardrail and compass.
Why It Matters
- Without a formal intake process, you’re firefighting requests all day, everyday, from every direction.
- You can’t prioritise or resource effectively because you have no line of sight into what's in flight, what's coming, or where any of it originated.
- Quality and speed suffer.
What Most Teams Get Wrong
- Treating intake as optional.
- Letting the loudest request bypass the workflow.
- Not reviewing intake data for patterns and trends.
What to Do Instead
- Create a simplified but singular intake form for all content, with key fields being mandatory to submit the form.
- Set up auto-reply emails to requesters to keep them up to date on the status of request so nobody has to Slack/Teams/DM asking "did you get my thing?".
- Review intake weekly, decide what will enter the pipeline and what won't.
- Report on request trends to leadership.
Try this with your team: Pull every content request you got last month. From Slack/Teams/..., email, hallway conversations, from that one exec who always DMs you directly. Count them. Then ask two questions: how many came through a formal intake, and how many bypassed it entirely? If the second number is bigger than the first, you don't have an intake process. You have an intake suggestion.
Seventh Bear's Take
Intake isn’t optional. It’s foundational for scalable content operations and essential to content orchestration. Without it, your team is a help desk with a content calendar taped to the wall.
If your team is drowning in requests and you can't tell which ones matter, Seventh Bear can help. We work with teams to build intake processes that actually get used and workflows that hold up under pressure.
Want more on this topic? Check out: Its Sink or Swim in the Deep End of the Tech Enablement Pool