Efficiency over chaos
Efficiency has The power of framing the brand narrative
I’ve never been that comfortable with chaos. Unstructured days. Meetings without a purpose. Doing something without a goal. Worst of all in my experience are inefficient processes: double work, repetitive tasks, lagging deadlines.
Interestingly, the word chaos comes from the Greek khaos, meaning a vast chasm or void, the primal emptiness before creation. Efficiency, on the other hand, traces back to the Latin efficientia, meaning “power to accomplish” or “productive capacity.” In a way, choosing efficiency over chaos is choosing creation over the void. It means building something meaningful from nothing. That framing resonates deeply with me, especially when it comes to content creation.
Throughout my career, I’ve often inherited stalled or chaotic projects that frustrated me with their inefficiency. Like the seemingly impossible contract negotiation I took over as a new in-house lawyer back in 2014. At first glance, it was chaos. There was no version control on documents, the negotiations had ground to a halt, and the lawyers on both sides weren’t even speaking to each other directly. Instead, all communication passed through intermediaries. The inefficiency staggered me. What a waste of time and resources for a contract worth just a few thousand euros in broadcast rights.
Restarting the negotiations wasn’t that difficult. I insisted on direct communication with the opposing counsel, aligned on the most recent draft, and together we negotiated a compromise that satisfied both parties. Within a few weeks, the contract was signed. This came after 18 months of standstill. It was incredibly satisfying. But success can be a double-edged sword. I gained a reputation as a fixer, and soon more chaotic projects began landing on my desk. My knack for organising chaos has followed me through careers in law, non-profits, international policymaking, and content marketing.
Structured Content Creation
Creating content for a business is essential and serves many objectives:
Product or service explanation
PR and marketing
Sales enablement
But without a strategy or structure, content creation can become an overwhelming, Sisyphean task. When I started as Head of Content at e-Residency of Estonia, the slate wasn’t entirely blank, but it was early enough that I had room to build a strategy from scratch. It was exciting and daunting. The freedom to create content for product teams, marketing channels, sales presentations, and more meant the possibilities were endless. But there weren’t enough days to create everything we needed. I had to impose structure, identify focus areas, and design for efficiency.
Choosing efficiency over chaos is choosing creation over the void.
Over nearly six years, I helped produce a tremendous amount of content: blog posts, website pages, videos, webinars, presentations, email campaigns, and more. At the same time, I introduced processes and frameworks to reduce chaos and build sustainable systems.
Framing the Narrative
One of the most powerful ways to bring order to chaotic content creation is to focus the narrative. Many artists and writers thrive under self-imposed limitations - constraints that spark creativity. It’s no different for businesses and brands.
About seven years into the e-Residency programme, we developed a new growth strategy, including a refreshed vision and clearly articulated values. The timing was perfect. Our PR and marketing team had already been exploring ways to shape a brand messaging framework. The new strategic vision and values became our north star. Our brand story. We fleshed it out with benefits-driven messaging, key talking points, case studies, and data-backed evidence.
Building the messaging framework took months of collaborative work, including rounds of feedback from the team, community, and partners. But the result delivered exponential returns in clarity, cohesion, and efficiency. The team could now speak with one voice. Our content became more consistent and comprehensible. Trust and interest grew among our audience. And we saved significant time by reusing and adapting messaging across teams, channels, and formats.
Focusing Content
A well-framed narrative sharpens content strategy in several key ways, as exemplified by my experience at e-Residency:
Topic selection: The constraints of a structured brand narrative can really help declutter the noise of topics and ideas. With a clear framework, we could cut through the noise and focus on ideas that aligned with our goals. This didn’t stifle creativity. In fact, it made room for it.
Working with creators: Knowing what you need to write about means you can hire the right people. At e-Residency, I brought in a well-known author to write human-centred stories about e-residents. I hired an e-resident journalist to explore adjacent themes. I also commissioned a digital nomad blogger for a themed content series.
AI and efficiency: When combined with the power of generative AI, having a brand narrative can lead to even more productivity in content production and processes. Training a custom GPT model on our messaging and tone of voice effectively added a new team member. One who could draft or edit content for multiple audiences and formats.
Editing with purpose: The framework gives authority and clarity to content editors to improve drafts with confidence. I could tighten copy, improve titles, and sharpen introductions much more cohesively and clearly with the backing of our brand narrative.
Conclusion
Time is finite, and thus our most valuable resource. We don’t choose how many days we have, but we can choose how to use them. While some people may thrive in chaos, others - like me - find peace in clarity and purpose.
As an ambitious person with a full life outside work - playing music, spending time with family, staying active, travelling - I’ve learned that efficiency isn’t just a productivity hack. It’s essential for my mental health and sense of self. Structured work allows me to embrace unstructured joy elsewhere.
In the end, choosing efficiency over chaos is choosing meaning over mayhem. Direction over drift. And in the world of content creation, it’s the only way to make the work not just manageable, but meaningful.
I’m really interested to know: Does your business / brand have a narrative framework? If so, how does it work for you? If not, could it be useful?