The editorial work that happened before the campaign

How I helped develop Sage’s Hidden Hours story, why the groundwork preceded the wider activation, and what the work demonstrates now.

A research programme has several beginnings. There is the point when the research is commissioned, the point when the findings arrive, and the point when an audience encounters the campaign. Between them sits a substantial amount of editorial work that is easy to miss if you judge the project only by its launch.

I have been thinking about that gap as the Hidden Hours of Accountancy programme landing page goes live on Sage Advice. My involvement stretches back through the written coverage and the development of an editorial framework around the research. Some of that thinking was in place months before the wider programme had the resources to take its current form.

My involvement was concentrated in a particular phase. I was deeply involved editorially while interpreting the research, developing the editorial framework and writing the connected coverage. I then moved on to other projects as the wider team continued developing and delivering the programme. My later contributions should be understood in that context rather than as continuous ownership of the campaign.

That interval is part of the story. I could develop the argument, write articles and identify what the material might become. Turning it into a broader programme required the business to commit resources and colleagues to bring their own expertise. The work now visible is the result of those different contributions meeting.

The first job was deciding what the research meant

Sage’s Hidden Hours research examined the experience of 1,000 UK accountants and bookkeepers. It offered plenty of potential headlines about workload, unpaid support, changing expectations and the difficulty of switching off. The editorial question was what connected those findings and whether that connection could sustain useful work beyond the initial report.

The idea I developed was the work around the work: client chasing, compliance preparation, expectation management, administrative rework, disconnected systems and the reassurance people provide when clients are anxious. These activities consume time and attention, but their cost is often harder to see than the task that appears on an invoice.

That interpretation changed the questions I wanted to explore. A story about busy accountants can describe pressure without explaining much. A story about how the boundaries of accounting work are changing creates room to investigate pricing, service design, technology and the relationship between a practice and its clients.

It also creates a more demanding test for product relevance. If the problem is fragmented work or unclear responsibility, a claim about faster processing addresses only part of it. The useful question becomes where a product or process actually removes friction, and what responsibility remains with the practitioner.

The groundwork was an editorial structure

In the June strategy deck, I set out a progression from research findings to an explanation of hidden work, then to continuous responsibility and possible operational redesign. The distinction mattered: understanding a problem and helping somebody act on it require different kinds of content.

I organised the subject into five areas: client management, compliance administration, workflow fragmentation, operational firefighting and always-on responsibility. These gave the research a structure for further investigation. They also helped distinguish related stories that could otherwise have repeated the same statistics with different introductions.

The deck identified specific opportunities, including HMRC modernisation and late payments, practitioner video stories, Accountex coverage and a possible diagnostic. It proposed a continuing destination for the thinking, rather than assuming every asset would have to establish the subject from scratch.

The video programme is organised around four core territories: how practitioners spend their time, work that is rarely charged, the personal reality of the profession and where it goes next. These overlap with the questions in my broader editorial framework, while the programme’s planning and delivery involved the wider team.

The five areas in the broader editorial framework and the four video territories serve different purposes. One describes sources of hidden work. The other gives a conversation series an organising structure. The connection between them is the underlying interpretation of the research.

This was the pre-work: deciding which findings belonged together, which tensions deserved exploration and how the subject could support different formats. It made later briefs possible, while leaving plenty for practitioners and colleagues to add.

The writing was already testing the argument

Some of the groundwork became visible through articles before the wider video programme reached its current stage. The Accountex coverage provided an early reporting foundation, exploring how accounting work was changing and how firms’ operating models were responding. That May article predates the June deck; it belongs in the development of the thinking, rather than being retrospectively presented as an output of it.

The later HMRC article examined a question explicitly identified in the strategy: would modernisation reduce hidden work, or change where it appeared? It connected digital transformation with the work of preparing clients, maintaining records, interpreting changes and coordinating more frequent interactions.

The late-payments article developed another part of the framework. Payment delays create a financial problem, but they also generate chasing, checking and difficult conversations. For accountants supporting those businesses, that pressure can become further advisory work.

These pieces gave the broader idea specific settings. They helped me examine whether the same interpretation remained useful when applied to a different operational problem. Their relationship is more meaningful than sharing a campaign label: each asks where responsibility lands and whose time absorbs it.

There is a risk in having a strong organising idea, however. Once you recognise a pattern, you can start finding it everywhere. Editorial judgement includes deciding where the connection is genuinely illuminating, where another explanation is stronger and where the research does not support the claim you want to make.

A developed idea still needs production resources

The wider activation did not arrive fully resourced at the moment I developed the editorial framework. I had to wait for the business to put resources behind the programme in the form it has now.

I do not mean that as a criticism. In a large organisation, an editorial opportunity sits alongside other priorities, budgets, schedules and commitments. A developed idea can be useful before there is capacity to produce every format it might support. Colleagues also need time to assess it, shape it and connect it with the work they own.

My responsibility was to make the thinking useful enough to carry forward. That meant giving it a clear structure, producing written work where there was an opportunity and retaining the context so the next stage did not begin with a blank page.

The business’s contribution was consequential in a different way. Filmed conversations need participants and production expertise. A programme needs coordination, approvals and distribution. Those decisions turn editorial possibility into something an audience can experience.

It would misrepresent the work to claim that the early framework delivered the whole programme. It would also miss a substantial contribution to describe my role only through the articles carrying my byline. The groundwork and the later delivery are connected, with different people responsible for different parts.

Practitioner conversations add something the framework cannot

An editorial structure can tell you what to investigate. It cannot supply the lived detail that makes an answer convincing.

Research can establish that work outside an agreed scope is widespread. A practitioner can explain the moment a client request became difficult to refuse, the consequence of absorbing it and what happened when they changed the arrangement. That experience can complicate the neat advice to “set better boundaries”.

This is why the video and conversation elements matter to the editorial work. They bring people into the argument who can recognise, challenge or refine it. The value is in what they know, including the parts that do not fit the original framing.

My later GEO thinking developed that connection further. Audience questions can reveal where an existing answer is generic or poorly evidenced. Reviewing a conversation or transcript can then show whether we already have a more specific answer, or whether a future interview needs a better follow-up question.

The sequence needs care. A useful practitioner answer should retain its context and attribution as it moves into an article, a short clip or a FAQ. Cutting something into a concise format does not make it independently meaningful. Somebody still has to judge what the audience needs to understand it.

Where the work stands now

There is now a visible body of written coverage, a video programme shaped around the research territories, and a newly live Hidden Hours programme landing page. The landing page provides a central destination for the programme, distinct from the supporting articles. My contribution spans the earlier interpretation and structure, the connected writing and the later work of identifying useful practitioner evidence and possible reuse.

That is meaningful progress, but it is a progress report rather than a finished success story. The June deck contained possibilities that should not be confused with delivered outcomes. A maturity model, diagnostic or more tailored guidance needs its own evidence and implementation decisions.

Publication also answers a different question from impact. A live programme landing page establishes that the work has reached an audience-facing destination. It does not establish that a practice changed its pricing, that an AI answer represented Sage more accurately or that the content influenced a buying decision.

Those outcomes need appropriate evidence. In the meantime, we can assess nearer questions: whether the written material gives a more specific answer, whether practitioner testimony adds something the research could not, and whether approved evidence can be reused without losing its meaning.

What this shows about editorial intelligence

This is one practical example of what I mean by editorial intelligence: interpreting what an organisation knows, identifying what it still needs to learn and developing useful work from that understanding.

In this case, the research belonged to a wider Sage programme. My work was to interpret it editorially, develop an organising structure and carry the questions through reporting and written coverage. Colleagues supplied the production, campaign and distribution work that allowed the programme to grow.

The time between those stages matters. Early thinking needs enough clarity to survive a change of format or a gap in production. Later delivery needs room to improve that thinking, rather than treating an old deck as an instruction that cannot change.

AI can help retrieve that context, compare a transcript with earlier questions and identify possible connections. The important judgement remains whether the connection is useful, whether the evidence supports it and whether the next piece of work deserves the resources it will require.

Looking at Hidden Hours now, I can trace a substantial part of my contribution to decisions made before the programme landing page and wider video activation were ready. The published work makes those decisions easier to see. The work itself began much earlier.

The Hidden Hours narrative brings together the framework, published work and current evidence.