It’s okay. What you’re doing is fine – when you publish on LinkedIn, or in magazines, or upload your side-shares, or brief your writer.
It’s all good stuff. It’s just not thought leadership.
In fact, most likely what you’re doing is thought-orthodoxy. I’m not saying that what you write about isn’t news to some people, but in reality many of the ‘insights’ put out by the C-suite are an exercise in passing ideas down the food chain; ideas that you in turn accessed from higher up.
A litmus test for real thought leadership is that it’s often jarring to the people who read it. Irritating and upsetting even; yet always valuable (because the truth is valuable). Whereas if you write or commission a piece of ‘thought leadership’ and find yourself carefully tailoring your message for your audience, or setting yourself up in relation to an established idea, then sorry. You aren’t a thought leader.
(And no, even if you’re writing about how you disagree with a particular trendy idea – whether that’s capital gains taxes or the latest people and culture concept – it still doesn’t count).
Other ways to know you’re not creating thought leadership:
You write thought leadership and cite a study by Nielsen
Or Bloomberg, or Business Insider Intelligence, etc. These reports are like the little gold stickers that go on winning bottles of wine. They lend a stamp of orthodox approval to ideas, adding legitimacy and authority to content when the author doesn’t have the confidence or authority to have their material taken at face value. That’s a really good thing when you are compiling ideas that are already out there – but it’s certainly not a marker of value if you are trying to be a thought leader. Seriously, stop and think for a moment about what message you’re sending when you write “According to a Nielsen survey of 200 Fortune 500 CEOs…”
You write thought leadership and think of your audience as ‘time poor’
C-suite executives are time poor, right? They’re super busy, so require succinct content pared of any flourishes or metaphors and instead packed with reliable statistics?
Sorry. But in my opinion that characterisation is just another unchallenged piece of orthodoxy – part of an agreed-upon style that signifies membership of a particular club. Rather, C-suite execs simply think of themselves as time poor.
And look, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t adopt the conventions and language of your audience in order to best connect with them. So long as you don’t avoid creating something nuanced and long-form because you genuinely believe what they believe about themselves.
Still not convinced? Consider, then, who has more time in their daily schedule: a McDonalds burger-maker, or a McDonald’s corporate exec. I’d even suggest to you that it’s part of an executive’s job to create enough time in their schedule for analysing and understanding complex issues; and if they are truly too time-poor to digest long-form thought leadership content, then they are probably bad at their job.
Ouch…
Bad at their job. Hopefully that description stung a little – or at least got you irritated. Originally I wrote ‘they’re probably not good at their job’, but switched to ‘bad’ for the added niggle.
Emotions, after all, play a far bigger role in decision-making and memory than facts (I’ll break my earlier rule and include a source for that, if you like). Which in my view means that, if you are to engage with and remember this article at all, then it’s crucial that you feel something as you read.
That’s hardly an original approach. One of the greatest thought leaders, Socrates, liked to call himself a gadfly – an irritating pest constantly stinging the rump of the nation with his ideas. And while we have virtually zero chance of our insights being remembered longer than his (he has a 2,400 year head-start for one thing), we’d do well to remember the point: a thought leader isn’t afraid to be confrontational or unpopular – to go against the tide.
So perhaps the next time you pen a piece of content as part of your branding or marketing drive you should give yourself permission to break the mould. Tell your audience what you really believe. Give them an experience. And shock-horror, you might find that – having first helped them feel something – your audience then stops to think. You’ll certainly be more memorable for it.
