Leveraging Thought Leadership

As we move into the New Year, we like to stop and look back at a few of the wonderful guests we've had the pleasure of talking with during the year. We hope you'll take a moment to really internalize their great advice! Art Kleiner is the Editor in Chief and Principal at Kleiner Powell International (KPI). In addition, he's an author and editorial consultant for influential thought leadership. Art starts our New Year's podcast off right by discussing difficulties one faces in building an audience. While technology has increased our reach, it also causes us to gather an audience that's fragmented across various platforms. Art shares the keys to building a sustainable audience: showing up consistently, finding ways to connect, and meeting your audience on their turf. Dan Pontefract is the Founder of the Pontefract Group, leadership strategist, author and keynote speaker. Dan discussed navigating being a public thought leader while working for an organization. This can often be a tricky position to be in and Dan explains how he managed to grow his brand as a thought leader while keeping the best interest of his organization in mind. Last but certainly not least we have Stephen M. R. Covey. He is the co-founder of Covey Link and Franklin Covey, a bestselling author and a global authority on trust, leadership and culture. Stephen shares his experience growing from an analog to digital space and the forward thinking ideas needed to drive change and stay at the top of your game in a digital world. Three Key Takeaways: * Growing a loyal audience means producing consistent content and finding ways to connect in meaningful ways. * When producing thought leadership while working for another organization you have to balance the needs of the company with your own wants. * Finding success in the digital marketplace means transitioning your intellectual property into things like certifications and workshops.

Thought leadership creates real results - but measuring them can be difficult, especially in the short-term. But smart thought leaders know: it's the long-term results that really change the game! Dorie Clark has been twice named one of the Top 50 Business Thinkers in the World by Thinkers50, and the #1 Communication Coach in the World by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. She's a consultant, keynote speaker, and author of multiple books including her newest: The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World. She knows that lasting success takes persistence, effort, and day-by-day advancement, completing a thousand small goals along the way. Our conversation begins on the topic of personal branding. How do you differentiate branding from thought leadership? Dorie explains how thought leadership can create trust and even put you ahead of the competition, by giving potential clients a sneak peek into who you are and where you specialize. Still, it takes long-term work to create lasting success.Dorie shares her insights into the pains a lot of thought leaders suffer when they first start creating content, and how to hang on for the first few years before your big results manifest. By combining consistent content and using multiple modalities to reach your audience, thought leadership efforts can have a huge impact on your business. Lastly, Dorie discusses her newest book, and how publishing can add to your thought leadership movement. Peter and Dorie discuss books as revenue drivers (they aren't), and how a book can introduce your audience to your content, share your most valuable insights, and generate interest in your work. Combined with a strategic business model, a book release can be an important part of building a viable business for speaking, consulting, online courses and more. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought leadership can create a level of trust and familiarity with a potential client. This can be the difference maker that sets you apart. * While there can be overlap between thought leadership and content marketing, thought leadership should be more substantive and less transactional. * Thought leadership needs many touch-points for its audience to engage. Consider writing articles, guesting on or hosting a podcast, doing keynotes, and writing a book. The more modalities you utilize, the better chance you have of reaching your audience.

For decades, businesses have used a "command and control" method of leadership, a top-down authoritative approach that gives privilege and power only to senior management. Today, finding and retaining talent is harder than ever. So why do so many businesses continue to use this outdated style? To examine the changing landscape of leadership I've invited one of the foremost experts on trust and leadership to join me. Stephen M. R. Covey is the CEO of CoveyLink, Global Practice Leader at Franklin Covey and a New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Trust and Inspire. Stephen's newest book Trust and Inspire, offers a new way to lead that is based on today's workers and workplace. He shares with us why updating our style of leadership is so critical right now and what can be accomplished by having a high trust culture. Trust can be complicated to manage and manifest. Stephen explains how to build trust at scale (both in person and remotely); what to do when trust has been broken, and the role that the themes of Trust & Inspire can play in Thought Leadership. If you feel your leadership style is no longer meeting the needs of your organization, you'll learn a lot from this episode. Three Key Takeaways: * Having a culture of trust will help you attract and retain talent. * Building trust at scale means being the model for that behavior both in private and publicly. Once others see it you become an example others can replicate. * Do not attempt to separate the principle of your message from the practice of it. Doing so can cause your message to come off as fake or disingenuous.

Our world is filled with a massive amount of content that demands attention. How do you package your thought leadership in a way that is worthy of your audience's time? In order to explore ways to create sustainable thought leadership I've invited Christopher Fox to join me. Chris is the founder and managing partner of Syncresis, which focuses on thought leadership for financial innovators: banks, financial service providers, and fintechs. A lot of brilliant ideas die on the shelf because no one heard them. Chris helps us understand what it takes to get your ideas heard and have the audience embrace them. His method of creating a Content Hive involves using all the mediums available to reach the several audiences and deliver various facets of your thought leadership to them in meaningful ways that actually change perceptions. While some might think this means blasting your thought leadership out to as many people as possible Chris explains why drilling down to the specific person and position that can have the largest influence on your business can be more effective. Thought leadership created with those people in mind can always be expanded on later for a larger audience relatively inexpensively. As individuals we have a limited amount of attention we can give to the glut of content and information that is thrown at us each day. Chris shares why thought leaders have an ethical responsibility to deliver content that creates a higher value for their audience. He also warns that if you put out content that wastes their time it poisons the soil and makes planting the next idea that much harder. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought Leadership is not about mass scale; it's about getting insights into the hands of decision-makers who are receptive to it. * When creating thought leadership, don't think of your audience in broad terms. Try to identify the people it can influence most, who have the most influence on moving your ideas forward. * Working with a thought leadership partner allows them to ask the hard questions, and force your content to become sharper and more focused on the right audience.

Many professionals end up in a career that might not represent their passion or the bigger purpose they might want out of life. So what do you do then? To explore how to discover your purpose and find the ambition to go from idea to reality, I've invited Sam Seidel and Olatunde Sobomehin to share their thoughts with us. Sam Seidel is the Director of Strategy and Research at the Stanford d.school and author of Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education, which introduces an iteration of hip-hop education that goes far beyond studying music as classroom content. Olatunde Sobomehin is the CEO and Co-Founder of StreetCode Academy, a nonprofit that helps bridge the digital divide, empowering communities of color to achieve their full potential by teaching the mindset, skills, and strategies they need to embrace tech and innovation. Earlier this year, Sam and Olatunde co-authored Creative Hustle: Blaze Your Own Path and Make Work That Matters. We begin our conversation discussing their book, which began as a course taught by Sam and Olatunde at the d.school. In the course, they taught about ways to identify and navigate your creative path, and how to make a living doing things that matter. It wasn't until co-workers approached them and presented the idea of turning the course into a book that they realized the direction had greater potential. Sam and Olatunde explain how the words "Creative Hustle" are perfect for their endeavor; a combination of imagination and ambition. They want to share insights about finding new creative paths that inspire, building diverse viewpoints, and creating ventures that benefit yourself and your community, while bringing enough entrepreneurial energy to move those ideas forward. In addition, we discuss the journey of co-authoring the book, which is often a tumultuous road. Sam shares how the experience of having a co-author is preferred to writing solo and how the experience bought him so much closer to Olatunde. Three Key Takeaways: * When authoring a book, you should also be considering the business models that can be used once it is published to avoid chasing the hype. * Working with a co-author allows you to push each other to be better and make sure your ideas are concrete. * During the process of writing a book, take some time to enjoy the process.

Are your marketing and sales teams aligned to the overall business goals of your company, or is each team focused on their own success? In this episode, we sit down with Winston Henderson, Founder of ICAD Marketing and ICAD Equip. Winston has worked in both sales and marketing in the past, and now focuses on revenue alignment, and using thought leadership to bring sales and marketing together as a single, unified force. Our conversation starts with Winston's definition of "revenue alignment," and what it looks like when done successfully. Winston shapes our understanding of the power that content marketing and sales have when working together, and how they can define the customer journey - driving revenue for the entire organization. When this happens, neither department is focused on their own metrics or wins. Instead, they unify their efforts, understanding when to take the lead role and when to hand it off, and building a partnership that has exponentially more strength together than either might achieve on their own. With so many organizations struggling to find this kind of alignment, Winston shares a few of the most common reasons why teams can't unify - and three things you can start doing right now to bring yours into sync. In addition, we discuss the role that empathy plays in finding alignment throughout an organization. Winston explains that teams need to be able to step out of their bubble in order to better understand how the other functions in your company operate, and their value to your work and to the whole. Once teams have that understanding, they can better see the system as a whole, and take steps to bridge any gaps that might exist between team functions. That kind of alignment is powerful, and can change the game. Three Key Takeaways: * Don't confuse thought leadership with content marketing. Smart leaders understand the difference, and how to best use each function. * You can achieve better alignment by spending time with those outside of your role. Learn to understand other functions and perspectives, and your organization will do better as a whole. * Understand why your current customers are choosing to do business with you. This can help you better fulfill their needs, and build a strategy to increase customer satisfaction, org reputation, and revenue.

Creativity. Invention. Collaboration. Three skills that are at the heart of design, and the center of great thought leadership. Many people narrowly define "designing," whittling it down to simple artistic talent; drawing, painting, or other traditional crafts. But design is a huge world of possibility, covering thousands of mediums and a fantastic variety of skills that drive creativity, spark invention, create authentic connection, and encourage collaboration. Charlotte Burgess-Auburn is a self-described artist, educator, and extroverted introvert. She's also the Director of Community at the Stanford d.school, where she teaches the role of self-awareness in creativity and design. Her book, You Need a Manifesto: How to Craft Your Convictions and Put Them to Work, is an essential "how-to" for crafting a guiding document that establishes your intentions, increases your creativity, and helps you maintain focus and conviction as you push toward your goals. Charlotte's role as Director of Community started in the very early days of the school's establishment, and she's always been a creative force, helping the d.school's growth. Unlike the typical slower pace of research, the d.school specializes in swift cycles, rapid iteration of design, and innovative thinking. Charlotte discusses that cycle, and shares how her role has evolved from connecting with students, running info sessions, and encouraging the school's growth, to overseeing a larger group of people who collectively help students learn "thought design skills" that will help them excel when they enter the larger world outside of Stanford. One of the ways Charlotte explains her role is as "a champion for self-awareness," helping designers and tech producers understand each other's function, needs, and dependencies, and work better together. Too many people think of design as a soft, easy-to-master skill - and they'd be wrong! Design thinking shapes goals, builds connection with the audience, and sparks creativity and curiosity. Charlotte shares how she prepares students to deal with difficult critiques, giving them the resources to work with feedback so that both designers and tech creators understand why both sides of the coin are necessary to create a valuable whole. There's no substitute for true creativity and invention, and design thinking elevates any craft, moving it from "what gets it done" to "how can we solve problems, drive innovation, and foster collaboration?" That's the heart of thought leadership, and that's where Charlotte's insights shine. Three Key Takeaways: * Design skills such as creativity, collaboration, and rapid iteration, are essential to leadership roles. These "soft skills" elevate the game. * Being comfortable with change and learning how to think on your feet builds the capacity to handle even the toughest challenges. * Connections and relationships are important - even when they're outside your field. Learning from those with different skills and interests broadens your understanding, and makes you a better leader.

It's certain that thought leadership brings great value to an organization, but how do you calculate the actual ROI of your thought leadership investment? To demystify the ROI of thought leadership, I've invited Cindy Anderson and Anthony Marshall to join me for a discussion. Cindy Anderson is the Global Lead for Thought Leadership Engagement and Eminence, and Anthony Marshall is the Senior Research Director for Thought Leadership, both from the IBM Institute for Business Value. In this episode, we talk about the IBM Institute for Business Value's 20 year history delivering thought-provoking insights to business leaders about emerging trends, opportunities, and challenges. Their thought leadership reports offer prescriptive recommendations to address the most pressing challenges and opportunities, and to help determine future organizational success. Since 2004, they have conducted groundbreaking surveys, growing from 300 CEO respondents to more than 3000. Due to the long history of the survey, they have a long horizon of data to track global changes in the CEO role, responsibilities, and best practices. Recently, Cindy and Anthony lead a double blind survey of CEOs, seeking to discover the ROI of thought leadership. The survey included questions on thought leadership consumption, purchasing decisions, and more, all designed to shape insight on the effects of thought leadership, and guide CEO spending. The result was shocking! The data showed that the ROI was 156%, more than 16 times a typical marketing campaign's effectiveness. We wrap up the conversation discussing how Cindy and Anthony intend to tell the story of their research. They are writing a book which will be published in 2023, including survey data, information captured in follow-ups, the calculations used, and even a tool that companies can use to calculate their own thought leadership ROI! If you've ever tried to measure the impact of your org's thought leadership investment, this is a critical episode. Don't miss it! Three Key Takeaways: * Long-term surveys provide essential longitudinal data, showing change over time and tracking trends that underline permanent global shifts. * In order for thought leadership to flourish in an organization there needs to be an immense level of support from the CEOs - the TL team can't do it alone! * CEOs spend an average of 2 hours a week consuming thought leadership. To keep them engaged, you need to produce content that is rigorous, robust, and relevant.

One host is good but two are better! On this episode, Leveraging Thought Leadership's hosts, Peter Winick and Bill Sherman, get together to share their insights about organizational thought leadership, institutionalizing it across an organization, and how it can create authentic relationships and increase audience loyalty. There's no straightforward way to stand up a thought leadership function or position within an organization. Our hosts share their thoughts on that, and on organizations hiring for thought leadership positions (something unheard of only a few years ago!). The people filling these roles are coming from varied backgrounds – and that helps them bring unique perspectives forward, keeping an audience\s focus on the message rather than the medium. In the past, the face of organizational thought leadership might be treated like a rock star, going out on speaking gigs and taking the spotlight. While part of that image is still true, organizations today want many disparate voices sharing their thought leadership. A chorus of voices shows that your organization is full of smart people, and that helps attract and retain others. We round out the conversation by discussing how thought leaders can leverage relationships in order to drive ideas. Narrowcasting (or point casting) your thought leadership to a niche group that can have the most impact can be a game changer, but those relationships can't survive if they only exist on social media. Those relationships need to be fostered over the phone, in person, and in meaningful ways. Three Key Takeaways: * Research shows that three things are needed for successful thought leadership: Buy in from senior leadership, time, and creativity. * Seeing results from thought leadership requires a long time horizon. Much like research and development, you can't expect quick results. * Keynote speakers need to deliver more than entertainment. They need to bring something relevant, insightful, and actionable.

In a world filled with so many voices, how do you distinguish yourself, and show your value? By sharing your ideas freely, and bringing the audience to you! In today's episode, I've invited Malcolm Hawker to join me for a discussion around the value of sharing thought leadership insights outside of the traditional advisory paywall. Malcolm is the Head of Data Strategy for Profisee Software, where they help enterprises solve complex data quality issues that hold them back from so many initiatives. At a previous company, Malcolm's insights were placed behind a paywall; in order to gain access to his ideas you had to "buy in." Malcolm shares why he moved to a smaller tech firm, ditched the paywall, and immediately saw results. While the larger firm had brand equity and recognition, the freedom of medium and message he's achieved at his new position has allowed him to reach a far broader audience while maintaining alignment with the needs of his company. That's the best of both worlds! Malcolm discusses how he learned to listen to potential clients, and ask probing questions that get right to the root of their issues. This process often takes them into "negative space" – breaking open new topics and challenges that are critical to their future. This is where thought leadership has its most impact for your audience - and they'll reward you with loyalty, knowing that your ideas are sound. In addition to paywalls, scaling, and crafting a narrative, we discuss authenticity and entertainment. Malcolm shares how video can be a powerful tool to reach an audience, but warns that a balance between insight and entertainment must be found in order to bring value to your work. While your audience is unlikely to watch a bland talking head, they're looking for new ideas, insights, and awareness of their challenges that really makes them lean in and say, "This thought leader gets it!" This episode is great for explaining why there's value in sharing your ideas - take a listen, and see if you agree. Three Key Takeaways: * Leaving the paywall behind can have long term benefits that offset the revenue made from being behind the paywall. * As a thought leader for a vendor you need to have separation. If you want to be recognized as a trusted expert in your field you can't simultaneously be peddling your company's product. * Everyone has value to add. Share your ideas and insights and the value will come back to you in time.