Leveraging Thought Leadership

"Office shock" is the term for an abrupt, unsettling change in where, when, how, and even why we work. Over the last few years, we have seen an abnormally large number of these events, So how are thought leaders working to be prepared for an uncertain future? To get a better understanding of how to thrive in unpredictable times, I've invited Joseph Press to join me. Joseph is the Co-Founder of Make Our Future, a global consulting cooperative dedicated to transitioning organizations to more sustainable and equitable practices. Joseph takes us inside the pages of his new book Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Working and Living, which focuses on leaders in organizations that have a need to contribute and change both their business practices and culture. The success of Office Shock hinges on it touching a nerve with those leaders, helping them to realize they have an opportunity to make the changes that are needed to build a better future for everyone. Once they do, Joseph's insights help leaders become ready for any changes the future has in store. Joseph shares why leaders need to think outside the box, going back to creating things and focusing on engaging others in collective action. Only by approaching this task humbly and with a sense of empathy and desire to connect with others who are different from you can we hope to create new connections, learn, and innovate. Three Key Takeaways: * Leaders need to be willing to remove themselves from present thinking and be more willing to think outside the now in order to be prepared for the future. * In order for your ideas to successfully reach their audience they have to strike a nerve in a way that moves them to action. * Leaders need to be self-aware and look inwards to understand their strengths and weaknesses before they can hope to have meaningful connections.

When you've spent decades behind the curtain, building brands and platforms for other thought leaders - what does it take to step into the spotlight and create your own? Our guest today is Scott Jeffrey Miller, Senior Advisor, Thought Leadership at FranklinCovey, as well as a best-selling author, and host of the hit podcast On Leadership with Scott Miller. Scott discusses the ups and downs of his journey into thought leadership, and what it's like to be on both sides of the fence. Scott has unique insight into what it takes to create a thought leadership platform - both for others, and for yourself! While you can hire talented people to help get your thought leadership off the ground, ultimately you are responsible for your own elevation, through social media, productization, research, and everything else - and that means you need a strong strategy to get your insights recognized. To be successful, you must have a deep understanding of your audience; what they need, what their problems are, and how you can help them. Scott explains how to look beyond simple demographics, and get to the real pain points your content can solve, so that you can connect with them in a meaningful and trustworthy way. We wrap up the conversation with Scott providing key advice for anyone seeking to become a thought leader. He shares where to start, what other successful thought leaders have in common, and what you'll need to do in order to reach that level of success. Three Key Takeaways: * Strategy is constantly changing. In order to keep up you have to be constantly taking in new data and pivoting in real time. * Have an abundance mindset! Put your ideas out into the world for free while building deeper content that can be paid for by those who need it. * If you want to start building thought leadership, here's your checklist: Read often; post often, and be prepared to play the long game.

Cyber risk and cyber security are very important, and the field is filled with experts. So how can thought leadership elevate your work in a way that connects with a larger audience? Today our guest is Jeffrey Wheatman, Cyber Risk Evangelist for Black Kite, a company that is disrupting traditional third party risk management practices worldwide by providing cyber security experts with greater visibility. While the topics that Jeffrey talks about are of the utmost importance, many people just don't have the technical knowledge to understand the details - and risks. Jeffrey explains that through thought leadership, he is able to convey complex ideas in a language that helps people connect the dots, and puts the material into a context they can clearly understand. Part of his thought leadership includes speaking at conferences and other events. Jeffrey shares why he speaks about topics such as executives who don't understand IT and understanding risk in 3rd party ecosystems, instead of focusing on the services Black Kite offers. By speaking to the issues in an authentic way, he is able to build a relationship and get potential clients thinking of what they need to solve the presented problems, which ultimately leads them back to his services. In addition to speaking, Jeffrey uses LinkedIn to spread his thought leadership message. He discusses his target of posting at least once a day and how he judges the success of each post. He also talks about why it is important to take part in the discussions others are having, offering support and why it's alright to be contrary to the original idea. Three Key Takeaways: * You need to find and embrace your own voice, with its quirks, because that authenticity will draw in an audience. * Thought leadership comes down to being able to say something short and pithy, that makes people lean in and say "I've never thought about that before." * Take what you know and compartmentalize it, so that you can share it in a way that it land with the largest audiences

If you had nearly 30 years of experience building brands like American Airlines and Pepsi, wouldn't you want to share all the great insights you'd developed? Our guest today is Michael Tuggle, the President of Tuggle Creative Inc, Chief Creative Officer of Something Else Strategies, and co-author of The Voice Of The Underdog: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction By Thinking Culture First. After having worked with Mike Sullivan (President and CEO of LOOMIS), bringing a strategic advantage to challenger brands for over 10 years, Michael knew that it was time to share his insights with others. Michael discusses what it was like working with his partner for more than 6 months of writing, and another 12 months of editing, in order to bring their book to life. We learn the process used to create the architecture of the book, how the chapters were decided and ordered, and their process: writing notes before letting the creative impulse take over. He also discusses the case studies and stories they included, to make the information more accessible. Spending 18 months putting a book together can come with a huge opportunity cost. Michael explains how self-publishing was only one part of their business model. While most will buy the book and use the information to the best of their ability, some will seek a deeper dive into the content, and will hire him to bring that content to their teams and organizations in scalable ways. Our conversation has great advice for both challenger's brands and would be authors. Three Key Takeaways: * Writing a business book is an efficient way to drive business and build credibility. * The time cost of writing a book can be large, but if you can pick up a handful of new clients it will be well worth the investment. * When writing a book don't edit yourself as you go. Allow the insights to come out then edit it later.

You're doing research for your thought leadership? Great! But how do you know that you're asking the right questions? Today, we sit down with Mike Ilecki, Vice President of Public Opinion Research and Thought Leadership at Ipsos, a multinational research and consulting firm that delivers reliable information and true understanding of society, markets, and people. People's perception is often their reality and how perception of the world is constantly changing. With that in mind Mike helps us understand how organizations need to invest in multi-year longitudinal research that tracks not only what the audience thinks and feels now but over time as it changes. Big businesses cannot hope to take the right stand on issues if they are only asking the important questions once. Just as perception changes so too does how people communicate. The method used to capture the data is as important as the questions asked. Mike takes us into the various methods of conducting research and why the method has to match the demographic you are seeking. Because of this it is best to start with the end in mind. Who is it you are trying to communicate with and what are you trying to communicate to them? We also discuss what thought leaders should be aware of when working with research partners. Mike brings his experience of the topic to the conversation explaining that thought leaders need to break out of the box of their organizations point of view and allow the research partner t consult on what the landscape actually is. By learning the right questions to ask and how to ask them you can construct a solid platform to take your message forward with a wide angle view of the topic. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought leadership can be used to better a business and more importantly better the world we live in. * Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. When you step out is when you experience new things, learn and grow. * In order to take the right stand on the issues that matter you have to understand how both your customers and the population in general feel about those issues.

Do you think that all you need to be successful is a great idea? Well, think again. The million-dollar idea is a myth. Even with a great insight in hand, you still have to take it to market and prove it has value. To discuss what it takes to become a success, we've invited Michael McFall, the co-Founder and co-CEO of BIGGBY Coffee. He is also the author of Grind: A No-Bullshit Approach to Take Your Business from Concept to Cash Flow and has a second book coming soon, entitled: Grow: Take Your Business from Chaos to Calm. Together, these books cover what you'll need to know to go from startup to steady cash flow. Michael talks about his start as a minimum wage barista working in his partner's coffee shop, and how that relationship grew to a partnership. That partnership launched a company that now has 340 locations with more than 100 more, coming in the next twelve months! Having spent the last 27 years helping others launch businesses, Michael felt it was time to take that accumulated knowledge and codify it in his first book. He explains how revenue is the guiding principle, and you have to have the right mentality to take a product to the marketplace. In addition, Michael shares how you have to understand your own, personal strengths and weaknesses. When you do, you can find ways to supplement your weaknesses, and leverage your strengths. This episode is packed with advice for entrepreneurs, new and established, to elevate and help them become stronger leaders. Three Key Takeaways: * A business book can be a method of self-selection. If people read it and agree with it then they might be a good fit to work with. If they don't, then it's best they move on. * Leadership means turning authority over to others, allowing them to grow into leaders, themselves. * Revenue generation is the guiding principle. You have to sell. If you are not comfortable with that you might not be suited to entrepreneurship.

If you are just closing your eyes and hoping your white paper will go to scale… You might be going about it the wrong way! Our guest today is Kasey Lobaugh, the Chief Futurist for the Consumer Industry and Principal at Deloitte Consulting, LLP. As a senior leader, Kasey is working to get people to embrace their ideas and shape the future of their company and industry as a whole. To gain a profound understanding of the future of their industry, Deloitte spent a year speaking with more than 800 people in the industry – including experts of all ages, Deloitte's customers, and even their competition. The culmination of this work is a white paper titled Buying Into Better. Kasey takes us deep into the process of the research, who they spoke to and why. While the information found in the white paper is profound, Kasey helps us understand that the paper is only a derivative of the platform they've created which will act as a long lived capability investment and objective that they are organized around. Kasey shares that scale is the biggest challenge most organizations face and how they are training people across the business to fully grasp the ideas and be able to take it into the world in actionable ways. Through a two day workshop people learn how various forces come together to create impact, examine the proud things they've learned and find empathy through role-play. Three Key Takeaways: * Value comes from scale, impact, conversation, and stories. * When doing research, one of the most profound questions you can ask is, "Who else should I talk to?" * In order to create change, you have to engage a lot of people in the process.

Statistics have shown that productivity and results go up when you work with friends. If you feel you don't have a friend at work, ask yourself the question, "Am I being a friend to others?" Today, I've invited Morag Barrett to discuss why we need friends at work and how her book, You, Me, We: Why We All Need a Friend at Work (and How to Show Up As One!) is helping people not only make friends but learn to be one as well. In addition, Morag is the Founder and CEO of SkyeTeam, an award-winning global leadership development firm. Writing a book by yourself is a hard task - but, does having co-authors make it any easier? Morag's newest book is co-authored by Eric Spencer and Ruby Vesely. Morag shares how working with them for eight years shaping the philosophy and thinking turned the book from a piece of work into a true craft - and they made writing together an easy choice and an enjoyable task. You, Me, We discusses the three points you need to be aware of in order to have friends at work. Look up, show up, step up – which all come down to intentionality. Morag shares how we all rely on others for our professional success. It doesn't matter if you are part of a small team, large group, or even working remotely. You have to be aware of those you rely on, how your feel in their presence and how they feel in yours and intentionally work to create a positive relationship one conversation at a time. You, Me, We is Morag's newest book but not her first. Having written books 8 and 5 years ago, she shares what has changed and what has stayed the same. We learn how the difficulties of writing, launching, and selling, remain just as hard, but technology such as podcasts and live streams have made marketing the book easier. These new technologies allow you to have conversations from the comfort of your home - while reaching large, new audiences. Today's conversation is packed full of advice for professionals seeking to have more positive work-place relationship, for authors about to launch a book, and for anyone that has a book seeking new ways to scale their content. Three Key Takeaways: * Instead of asking "Do I have a friend at work?" flip the script and ask yourself "Am I a friend to others at work?" Be intentional and take the first step towards building relationships. * A business book is a great way to augment the work you are already doing as a speaker, consultant or coach. * Keynote speaking can no longer rely only on entertainment. You need to be engaging and interactive for both the live and virtual audiences.

In an organization with a large C-suite, dozens of departments, and hundreds of experts, How could you possibly hope to create a unified direction? To better understand how to achieve this feat, I've invited Lynette Jackson, the Head of Communications at Siemens, to join me. Lynette has a background in journalism, communication, and branding making her the perfect person to help us explore the topic. Lynette explains how thought leadership can become an umbrella for the brands of your organization. It can give a safe space for the different disciplines across communication and marketing to come together and move forward in the same direction. Lynette describes how content creates credibility, but it doesn't have to be high level content only experts would understand. In fact, it is better to have a variety of content that draws in an audience that is new to the topic as well as having deeper pieces that allow experts to explore the bleeding edge of the idea. In addition, we discuss how to draw the experts in your organization out. Many can be concerned that talking about a future which may never come to pass might impact their credibility. Lynette shares where to find a balance between achievable and unreasonable, that will make experts keen to talk to you - and will get audiences excited and engaged. Three Key Takeaways: * When a sudden rainstorm comes, people will cluster underneath the same umbrella and find shelter together. Thought leadership is like that umbrella; where people with the same problem can be together in a defined space, and actually work together to solve their problem. * Thought leaders create valuable content that serves others, transmuting their experiences into insights. That's the science and the art of thought leadership. * Thought leadership encompasses everything from "snackable content;" to a series of white papers that go super deep; to medium-sized, bespoke pieces of content; to broad, multi-sensory content. The breadth of what's possible is amazing.

It's hard to create a successful strategy to take a book beyond the consumer market. What can you do to ensure the success of your work? Our guest today is Nick Gray, the Founder and Owner of Museum Hack and the author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings, which is the ultimate guide for hosting the perfect party to make friends and network. While The 2-Hour Cocktail Party is full of excellent insights and has hundreds of 5-star reviews, Nick still struggles to get his book into the hands of those for whom it would have the most impact. Using Nick's book as an example, Peter walks through the process of taking a book from shelf to scale. Nick has seen real-estate agents and financial advisors have great success using the content of his book, together he and Peter dive deeper into those clients to develop a clear avatar, where to find them, and how to take the content to scale by approaching associations and parent companies to license the content on a large scale. Another component to taking a book to scale is moving the contents to versatile offerings. Nick and Peter discuss how the book could become a series of videos, webinars, and training sessions that would allow great access to the material at a wide variety of price points. If you've ever wondered what it is we do at thought leadership leverage this episode is like a sneak peek at the range of consulting services we offer and how we could help you take your material to the next level. Three Key Takeaways: * A good strategy covers:1) Who do we best serve; 2) How are we going to serve them; and 3) What products, offerings, and solutions do they need? * Knowing the audience that will get the most impact (and value) from your material is critical to a book's success. * If you are thinking about sharing your story, be sure to include real stories, human moments, and a personal touch to your experience and insights. .