Why Your Content Strategy Feels Like Group Therapy (And That’s a Good Thing)

Building a content strategy sounds like it should be a straightforward exercise. Set some goals, define an audience, wrangle a few writers, publish with purpose, repeat. But if you’ve ever actually tried to do this inside a real organization—with real people, politics, opinions, and turf—you already know: it’s not a playbook, it’s a process. A messy, emotional, deeply human one.

This past week, the student group I am advising in the Philippines as part of the BYU-Pathway program was learning about the team building model developed by Bruce Tuckman, which got me thinking about how it could be applied to my Content Strategy series.

Back in the 1960s, Tuckman gave us a model that I first learned about in business school, and which still holds up today: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and later, Adjourning. It’s a framework for how teams develop over time, and it turns out it’s also a pretty accurate mirror for what happens when you try to launch (or reboot) a content strategy.

Let’s walk through it. And yes, it’s going to feel weirdly familiar.

Forming: When Everyone Nods and Nothing Gets Done

This is the kick-off meeting. The brainstorm. The deck with inspirational quotes. Everyone’s polite, caffeinated, and slightly too agreeable. You’ve got a room full of hopeful people sharing platitudes, like, “We should create thought leadership,” or “We want content that tells our story.” All true, and none of it helping actually move things forward.

At this stage, most people are still clinging to their individual hopes and fears. Nobody’s sure who owns what, what the rules are, or how anything will actually get made. But the energy is there. There’s possibility. And possibility is seductive.

If you’re the one leading this effort, your job here is to set structure without killing momentum. Clarify the purpose, define roles, and start mapping the landscape: Who’s involved? What are we solving for? Where are the gaps?

This is also when you should revisit (or introduce) your content strategy pillars. If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series, now’s the time. Forming is where you lay the groundwork for all of it: goals, audience alignment, editorial scope, voice, distribution. It’s all seed planting.

Storming: Why Is This So Hard?

Welcome to conflict. This is the part nobody likes to talk about, and where the real work begins.

Suddenly, you discover that “thought leadership” means completely different things to different teams. Marketing wants SEO. Product wants credibility. Sales wants assets that close deals. Legal just wants to survive. And everyone’s pretty sure someone else should do the writing.

Storming can be brutal. Turf wars flare up. Priorities collide. The strategy starts to wobble. You’ll hear things like, “Who approved this calendar?” or “This isn’t our voice,” or my personal favorite: “Why do we need a strategy at all?”

But here’s the thing: this is necessary. Healthy teams fight. They wrestle through ambiguity. Storming is what prevents you from launching another lifeless content treadmill that nobody believes in.

If you can hold the line here—with empathy, transparency, and a little bit of structure—you’ll move forward. It’s messy, but it’s movement.

Norming: Alignment Without the Kumbaya

At this point, people start to find their rhythm. They know who to ping. They’ve agreed on the editorial themes. The calendar makes sense. You’ve got content operations in place, even if it’s held together with duct tape and Airtable.

There’s still friction, but it’s productive. People disagree without derailing. The feedback loop is functional. You’ve survived your first cross-functional review session without wanting to light the brand guidelines on fire.

In content strategy terms, this is where systems start to stick. You’ve got your voice and tone guidelines. You’ve defined your audience personas. You know what good looks like. Your team isn’t just reacting anymore—they’re planning, iterating, and shipping.

This is also where you want to bring in content measurement. What’s resonating? What’s performing? How do we know? Metrics should start to feel like instruments, not blunt objects.

Performing: The Content Flywheel Spins

This is the dream. You’ve got a real strategy. You’re not just pushing content—you’re building a content machine. The team moves with confidence. They’re aligned around goals, not just deliverables. The work is consistent, compelling, and surprisingly fun.

Leaders start to trust the system. Stakeholders start asking, “How can we help?” instead of “Why weren’t we looped in?” The quarterly content calendar becomes a real strategic tool and not a graveyard of missed deadlines.

Here’s the trick though: performing isn’t permanent. A reorg, a new executive, a viral moment, or just the slow creep of entropy can pull you right back into storming. That’s okay. High-performing teams expect this. They build processes that can flex. They document what works. They assume things will break, and they know how to rebuild.

Adjourning: Yes, Even Content Strategies End

Sometimes the project wraps. The campaign ends. The team disbands. Or you realize your beautifully crafted strategy doesn’t fit the new direction, and it’s time to sunset it.

This is where reflection matters. Not just the perfunctory post-mortem, but real, intentional sense-making. What did we learn? What would we do differently? What’s worth carrying forward?

And yes, celebrate the wins. Especially in content work, where impact is often slow and invisible. Acknowledge the humans behind the process. Send the recognition email. Raise the glass. Archive the deck with pride.

So What Does This All Mean for Content Strategy?

It means that strategy is a living process, not a PowerPoint. It means your content team isn’t broken—they’re probably just storming. It means that the work of alignment is never done, and that’s not a failure, it’s the job.

Understanding Tuckman’s stages won’t fix everything. But it gives you language, expectations, and empathy for the very real human dynamics that drive your strategy’s success, or stall it out.

The next time your content initiative hits turbulence, take a breath and ask: What stage are we in? And more importantly: What do we need to move forward?

That’s leadership. That’s strategy. And yes, it’s basically group therapy. Own it.