Thought Leadership is Bull$hit
You remember that scene in Good Will Hunting where Will is in the bar and he floors the Harvard student who was trying to be clever? I think business feels like that a lot of the time. Especially when you bump into a “thought leader”. Far too much of the time probably.
I’m supposed to be a thought leader. Whatever that means. I’ve been doing my job for a few years now and it only occured to me this morning that I should probably Google it. You know, just to check that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Turns out there’s a bunch of websites, some groups, a thought leadership lab, and a group of guys who meet in secret bars every Thursday night and you can only get in if you’re wearing a special fishing fly badge on your collar. Because what says “thought leadership” more than a salmon fishing fly?
Thought leaders are the informed opinion leaders and the go-to people in their field of expertise. They are trusted sources who move and inspire people with innovative ideas; turn ideas into reality, and know and show how to replicate their success.
Thought leaders are supposed to be more experienced and respected than others, which is why they are asked to sit on pedestals (or conference panels at the very least) to impart their wisdom. The thing is, much like Will calling out the Harvard douche, thought leaders are usually just slightly more well read than everyone else. They are a bit more informed. And perhaps they watch less TV and read more books, but they are pretty much no different than anyone else, they have just chosen to wear the title of “thought leader” to try and garner some kind of increased professional validation. And this is no bad thing.
Business used to be all about the biggest brands with the deepest pockets, but the social media came along, disrupted everything, and now you have some guy in a bedroom building apps or writing content that gets threatens to hijack the very audience that big brand X spent millions of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to reach.
Thought leadership is no different. We used to look to industry leaders, CEOs, business celebrities, TED speakers, Nobel prize winners and famous authors for thought leadership. But now it could be Keith, who stands at the end of the bar in his local pub, The Duck & Crown every night with his pint of ale, who has just chosen to read more stuff and has found a platform to share it on. A bunch of people like what he said and he’s now building an audience of followers based upon his brand of thought leadership.
Traditionalists obviously argue about quality v quantity (an argument frequently used to describe blogging on Medium v Wordpress or citizen journalism v qualified press hacks), but this is no bad thing. Of course their is more noise. Of course there are now many more bad written posts (this could indeed be one of them), but just like brandX is no longer in control of the message, their are traditional thought leaders. Anybody can be a thought leader. Just like Keith who I stumbled into a few weeks ago. In between munching on his bag of pork scratchings, he was explaining to me the finer points of Friedrich Nietzsche’s teachings.
And this brings me to my point.
Thought leaders are just more informed than anyone else, because they have chosen to care about a subject deeply enough to understand it so that they can share it. A famous blogger once told me that he writes for himself, not for others. He writes so that he can make sense of his own thoughts, and didn’t really care if other people read his ramblings or not. A view I very much subscribe to.
Management guru and “thought leader” Tom Peters told me once,
“There are only 3 things you need to do in order to be a successful thought leader:
• Hustle — work harder at your day job than those around you
• Be more informed than anyone else.
• Always have a useful piece of research up your sleeve”.
This is all great advice, none of which requires an expensive education, an MBA or a posh job title on Linkedin.
It’s fair to say that there is not much new and original content in the world so we have to arrive at a couple of conclusions:
a) Magpies: Thought leaders have just stolen all their content and re-packaged it as their own, doing well to hide their sources.
b) DJ’s: Happy to share their sources, thought leaders are proud of their learnings and share them freely, safe in the knowledge that by re-mixing something that already existed, they might make that content attracted to an audience who wouldn’t have be exposed to it previously.
c) Academics: Genuinely clever people who invent new things, think original thoughts and share their opinions in the most compelling way.
We would of course like our thought leaders to be the latter, but the truth is that they are usually magpies and DJ’s. “Good artists copy, great artists….”.
Some thought leaders concentrate on creating good content and sharing it (Brian Solis). Other thought leaders don’t create as much content but they are obsessed about connecting people and building networks (Ted Rubin). And others, like Seth Godin, create beautifully original and inspirational content most days, but have little interest in engaging with their audience.
The point is this. You can be a thought leader if you want to. And you don’t need anyone else’s permission to become one, neither do you need a college education, a professional qualification or a position of seniority at an impressive company. Just hustle. Read more stuff. And learn more important things that will help whatever audience you chose to address.
“You can have everything you want in life, if you just help enough other people get what they want”. Zig Ziglar
Thought leadership has been around forever, and will never go away. I have heard traditional thought leaders tell me that “It’s lonely being a leader”, and I would reply that, “If you’re lonely it’s possible that you’re not a leader”. If you are supposed to be a leader and nobody is following you, you’re just another person taking a walk on your own. More important in my opinion is to find a small group of people who like how you think, and share valuable content with them as often as you can. Because there’s nothing more rewarding than speaking to someone like Keith, and realising that even though he has no qualifications whatsoever, he taught a high school class last week and now has a class full of 14-year olds desperate to go and change the world.
** On my to do list is to write a book called, “Follow me, I’m right behind you” with the subtitle “Leading from the middle of the pack”. If you’re lonely as a leader because “it’s tough at the top”, perhaps you might want to come down from your lofty leadership position and hang out with your [employees/audience/congregation]? **
That kind of thought leadership is not bull$hit.
“Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday”. Jobs.
