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Firms large and small want to be thought leaders. Thought leadership extends from strategic differentiation, a proof point, a demonstration of differentiation. Amid the cacophony of corporate voices, those found to be additive to the dialogue, rather than distracting, can be considered thought leaders. Given our complex world, there are many things that need to be considered, so providing true thought leadership can be as valuable to a brand as the products or services it sells.
Successful thought leadership does not arrive with a published idea linked to a hope that someone will recognize brilliance and sweep your firm from obscurity into industry prominence. Establishing a firm or an individual as a thought leader requires consistent, diligent effort. Thought leadership is cumulative. Although thought leadership can and should have tactical elements that reveal the evolution of an idea from concept toward implementation, all thought leadership should be strategic at the onset. Thought leadership should be about a big idea that changes how people perceive the world.
If an organization invests in the communication or "creation" of thought leadership, it should know what it wants from those who will consume that thought leadership. Most of the time the answer should be respect and recognition, though marketing may well have greater revenue-related ambitions. Thought leadership should also be an entry point to a relationship. Thought leadership should intrigue, challenge, and inspire even people already familiar with a company. It should help start a relationship where none exists, and it should enhance existing relationships.
After many years of developing thought leadership for companies large and small, I have discovered these 10 golden rules that can elevate thought leadership, from an organization talking to a small audience about small things, to an organization using whatever platform the market affords them to shape people’s perception of their company, their products, even their shared futures.
1. Don’t sell anything except ideas. Selling during a thought leadership presentation, discussion, or post is the number one sin, and therefore, "not selling" is the number-one rule. The target audience for thought leadership represents the most sophisticated of information consumers. The consumer of thought leadership knows that the company delivering them the insight is a commercial firm, and that they are in the business of making money. Don’t tell them that during the course of an article about the future of health care that you have the best answer to the problem, and then rattle off a bunch of product names or put up a bevy of logos to convince them of your leadership position. If your ideas are valuable and meaningful, buyers will come to you. They will ask how you uniquely deal with the problems you illuminate. When that happens, the thought leadership conversation becomes a pre-sales conversation and then you can shift into a more traditional sales relationship. But remember, thought leadership delivered the relationship, it brought the person to you, so don’t abandon it once they knock on the door (see rule 9).
2. Always give it away. Thought leadership is not a revenue stream unless you work for a thought leadership company (like an analyst firm). For most companies, from banks to retail, from health care to energy, thought leadership should be freely available. I even cringe at using it for lead generation because that context broadcasts a future sales call. Create your thought leadership with an eye toward accrual of brand value, not revenue. The dividends may be intangible, but when thought leadership flips from push to pull (writers are seeking out your opinion, conferences are inviting you to present), then you will know that you have a thought leadership hit.
3. Have a unique perspective. Two rules in and we finally get to a content-oriented rule. A unique perspective means taking a position on something meaningful and interpreting it for others. That’s pretty vague, and it needs to be, because you don’t want to place narrow constraints on thought leadership. Apple doesn’t produce a lot of white papers on design, yet they are seen as a thought leader in hardware design. The result reflects their thought leadership.
4. Focus on one thing at a time. Individuals as thought leaders may be disjointed and avant-garde; companies, especially public ones, need to be focused. Companies need to focus on creating a new context or lens through which investors or consumers perceive the company, its brand, its products or its services. Microsoft, for instance, hosts the "Microsoft Home" on its campus, where it gives tours of a home where engineers demonstrate how software might change tomorrow’s living experience. The "Microsoft Home" doesn’t include how to use the next version of Excel to create grocery lists, but rather how interactive surfaces and software can integrate recipes directly into the cooking experience. The "Home" focuses on consumer innovation.
And this leads to one caveat for these rules when applied to conglomerates and holding companies: individual businesses or brands can and should demonstrate thought leadership within their domains, separate from whatever corporate thought leadership exists. Down the hall from the "Microsoft Home," for instance, lies the "Center for Information Work," which demonstrates future office scenarios.
Like Microsoft, GE clearly needs to convey different thought leadership across various units like medical devices, aircraft engines and energy generation. GE’s corporate thought leadership takes place at the imagination level. They want to be seen as innovative. On their website, innovation, which leads to stories and research, precedes their product menu. Again, those who want to buy wind turbines will go to the Energy page. But those who want to understand a potential supplier of wind turbines before committing will likely go to the innovation pages first—perhaps more importantly, people who only know GE as a light bulb company can start a very different relationship with the company through its innovation pages.
5. Address a specific audience. Thought leadership only matters if people read it. It is, therefore, created for people—and most people live a life, work in a job, and have very little bandwidth to take in new ideas unless those ideas improve their life or work. Thought leadership, therefore, needs to help people with their life or work. I often advise those developing thought leadership to "go vertical or go home." There is very little generic thought leadership that is useful. The best thought leadership helps people in an industry, or more likely, in a role within an industry, do something better or gain insight that helps them better understand their market, or their job. Talking to banking people about manufacturing usually raises a big yawn. Good thought leaders know how to craft their messages for their audience. Like rule 4, you may want to concentrate on one, or just a few audiences, rather than get spread thin trying to find a way to attach to all markets, unless of course, you have the budget and the will to go big.
6. Get involved. If an organization cares passionately about something, then it should get involved in its passion. This does not imply just social issues. Project management companies need to be at project management societies. Workforce planning companies need to participate in workforce planning conferences. Electronics firms need to sponsor academic programs. You get the idea? And participate does not mean sponsor, not exclusively. It means run workshops, give presentations, host parties, run panels, lead societies, join standards bodies. But that is the easy stuff. Getting involved may also mean starting a not-for-profit that redefines an idea and creates a platform where other like-minded firms can invest. The bottom line for get involved: don’t just say, do.
7. Admit what you don't know. Another way to say this: be humble. I’ve lost track of the number of times audiences award kudos to presenters who admit they don’t know something. I don’t mean uninformed defensive posturing—I mean the legitimate, sincere expression of uncertainty. A software company that admits it doesn’t know what the future of communications will look like, that actively and thoughtfully explores a number of possible evolutions does a much bigger service to the industry than one who places a shaky stake in the ground to align its vision with its product roadmap. Thought leadership isn’t about making the bet early and hoping you’re not wrong; it’s about actively pursuing possibilities and sharing that enthusiasm for exploration with customers and partners. Thought leadership should excite, and noting excites more than going on a journey into the unknown, be it to a cavern where a dragon named Smaug purportedly lives, or trying to figure out how people should work in the next decade.
8. Make your audience feel smarter. Thought leadership can be at its most effective when it is not only free, but has a perceived personal value. Think about a manager who attends a thought leadership session on social media in marketing and then comes back with some great ideas for his or her team. The person sharing his or her learning expresses a certain level of trust in the source, which they may well return to should any of the ideas stick, thus transforming a learning experience into a purchase. Those "transactions" can’t be counted upon, but if the recipients of the thought leadership don’t believe it somehow enhances what they know, then they are either the wrong audience, or the content isn’t valuable. And if the individual recipient of thought leadership doesn’t perceive value, they won’t pursue a relationship.
9. Market thought leadership like a product. This rule may appear at first to be counterintuitive because it seems so crassly self-serving. The fact is, thought leaders can’t be thought leaders if they aren’t heard. A single speech at a conference, unless it goes viral (and chances are it won't), is much like placing a single advertisement on the television in one time slot and hoping that people catch it. Thought leadership needs to be turned into a campaign: tweeted, Facebooked, webinared, even advertised. Thought leadership shows up in the op-ed pages of the New York Times. Thought leadership shows up in the pages of Fast Company in executive interviews. If you have a thought leadership team that thinks the ideas themselves will produce uptake, they will probably be disappointed. Most thought leadership isn’t viral, it is marketing, and because it probably isn’t directly related to a product, it needs to be treated like a product, and marketed in its own right, internally and externally.
10. Hire thought leaders. Some, like Shel Israel ("What Makes a Thought Leader?"), believe that thought leaders are people, not companies. I disagree.
Companies create a context and they permit thought leaders to thrive, but few thought leaders end up running the company and leading industry disruption. The people who understand CEOs at IBM may be big names in their circles, but their thought leadership accrues to the brand. IBM, through investments in CEO Global Study, the Center for the Business Government, or the Center for Social Business, employ thought leaders, and the output of those thought leaders shapes the dialogue. Those individual thought leaders may bring their own disruptive forces inside a company, but part of thought leadership involves the risk of allowing new ideas to flourish, and being brave enough to have smart people challenge assumptions and chew away at the status quo.
OK, 10 isn’t enough...this one desires its own call-out anyway:
Thought leaders should be thoughtful leaders. Being a thought leader, is quite frankly, a term that one has bestowed on them. They may aspire to be a thought leader, but the consumers of their speeches, rhetoric and writing ultimately determine if they are one or not. Organizations, be they public sector or private, retail or Rotarian, need to be thoughtful leaders. Because of their position, those creating perspectives and content have a leadership role, what they choose to do with their platform defines how they are viewed by consumers.
Being a thoughtful leader also means being a patient leader. Thought leadership does not immediately increase retail transactions, software license sales, or fill the consulting pipeline. Over time, thought leaders build trust, and build a following, but how long that takes depends on industry, investment, and perhaps most importantly, the value of the ideas and their commercial success. Thought leadership also requires perseverance and dedication, as well as a willingness to honestly examine why something you think should work isn’t working, and then, to refashion the idea into something more consumable, or abandon it for a new, better position.
If you want your organization to be a thought leader, you need to make sure that what you create comes infused with the DNA of the organization, and that it finds its way back into that DNA. To extend the metaphor, thought leadership can be considered a way of introducing positive mutations into an organization. Individual thought leaders can, and often are, independent standouts against the status quo. Successful organizations that exude thought leadership attract and retain customers, drive revenue, and get invited to all the best parties (like Davos) because they not only express thoughtful ideas and act as a thoughtful leader, but because their organizations reflect the thought leadership in how they behave, what they create, and how they treat their customers.
One of the eternal questions for leaders is: what makes a High-Performance Organization? Lots of companies claim to be High-Performance Organizations. The real thing is rare, however, and instantly recognizable. Pfizer plc, Apple, Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines and Johnson & Johnson are members of an elite circle where exceptional performance is an everyday event. These groups operate on a different plane. We can name them - but can we explain them? When does High-Performance happen? What does it feel like? Can it be replicated?
High-Performance Organizations are the role models of the organizational world. They represent real-world versions of a modern managerial ideal: the organization that is so excellent in so many areas that it consistently outperforms most of its competitors for extended periods of time.
Managers want to know more about High-Performance Organizations so they can apply the lessons learned to their own companies. Of course, the goal is to ensure that their own organizations excel in the marketplace. Recent research provides new insights about high-performance organisations and how these can be applied.
Generally speaking, high-performance organizations are superior to their low-performance counterparts in the following seven areas:
Area1. Their strategies are more consistent, more clear, and are well thought out. They are more likely than other companies to say that their philosophies are consistent with their strategies.
Area2. They are more likely to go above and beyond for their customers. They strive to be world-class in providing customer value, think hard about customers’ future and long-term needs, and exceed customer expectations. And they are more likely to see customer information as the most important factor for developing new products and services.
Area3.They are more likely to adhere to high ethical standards throughout the organization.
Area4. Their leaders are relatively clear, fair, and talent-oriented. They are more likely to promote the best people for a job, make sure performance expectations are clear, and convince employees that their behaviors affect the success of the organization.
Area5. They are superior in terms of clarifying performance measures, training people to do their jobs, and enabling employees to work well together. They also make customer needs a priority.
Area6. Their employees are more likely to think the organization is a good place to work. They also emphasize a readiness to meet new challenges and are committed to innovation.
Area7. Their employees use their skills, knowledge, and experience to create unique solutions for customers.
The study also indicates that even High-Performance Organizations could improve in various areas. It found, for example, that high performers are much more likely than low performers to report that their organization-wide performance measures match their organizations’ strategies. This was, in fact, the single largest difference between the two groups.
There is likely a lesson to be learned here: like great athletes, even High-Performance Organizations must continuously strive to improve and “work on their game.” Without the passion for improvement, they are unlikely to remain high performers for long. After all, there’s no shortage of business leaders who are working hard to ensure that their own companies reach the top echelons of organizational excellence.
According to another study which reviewed academic and management publications and gathered data from2, organisations in countries, High-Performance Organisations share characteristics which always appear in five groups: Management Quality, Continuous Improvement and Renewal, Long Term Orientation, Openness and Action Orientation and Employee Quality.
They found a clear correlation between how well an organization scores on these high-performance factors and its financial performance. Revenue growth was increased by an average of%, profitability increased by%, and Total Shareholder Return by% in High-Performance Organizations compared with non- High-Performance Organizations. Other non-financial performance was also better in the High-Performance Organizations including higher customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, employee loyalty, and quality of products and services than their less able counterparts. These positive correlations were found in every industry, sector and country in the world. In short, it pays to be a High-Performance Organization.
The first and foremost factor which determines whether an organization becomes and stays a High-Performance Organization was identified as the quality of leadership and management of the organization. In a High-Performance Organization leadership maintains trust relationships with people on all organizational levels by valuing employees’ loyalty, showing people respect, creating and maintaining individual relationships with employees, encouraging belief and trust in others, and treating people fairly.
Managers of a High-Performance Organization live with integrity and are a role model by being honest and sincere, showing commitment, enthusiasm and respect, having a strong set of ethics and standards, being credible and consistent, maintaining a sense of vulnerability and by not being self-complacent. They apply decisive, action-focused decision-making by avoiding over-analysis but instead coming up with decisions and effective actions, while at the same time fostering action-taking by others.
High-Performance Organization leadership coaches and facilitates employees to achieve better results by being supportive, helping them, protecting them from outside interference, and by being available. Management holds people responsible for results and is decisive about non-performers by always focusing on the achievement of results, maintaining clear accountability for performance, and making tough decisions. Managers of a High-Performance Organization develop an effective, confident and strong management style by communicating the values and by making sure the strategy is known and embraced by all organizational members.
The second factor concerns characteristics that not only create an open culture in the organisation but also focus on using the openness to take dedicated action to achieve results. Management values the opinion of employees by frequently engaging in a dialogue with them and by involving them in all important business and organisational processes. High-Performance Organisation leadership allows experiments and mistakes by permitting employees to take risks, being willing to take risks themselves, and seeing mistakes as an opportunity to learn. In this respect, management welcomes and stimulates change by continuously striving for renewal, developing dynamic managerial capabilities to enhance flexibility, and being personally involved in change activities. People in a High-Performance Organisation spend much time on communication, knowledge exchange and learning in order to obtain new ideas to do their work better and make the complete organisation performance-driven.
The third factor indicates that long-term commitment is far more important than short-term gain. And this long-term commitment is extended to all stakeholders of the organization, that is shareholders but also employees, suppliers, clients and the society at large. A High-Performance Organization continuously strives to enhance customer value creation by learning what customers want, understanding their values, building excellent relationships with them, having direct contact with them, engaging them, being responsive to them, and focusing on continuously enhancing customer value. A High-Performance Organization maintains good and long-term relationships with all stakeholders by networking broadly, being generous to society, and creating mutual, beneficial opportunities and win-win relationships. A High-Performance Organization also grows through partnerships with suppliers and customers, thereby turning the organization into an international network corporation.
Leadership of a High-Performance Organization is committed to the organization for the long haul by balancing common purpose with self-interest, and teaching organizational members to put the needs of the enterprise as a whole first. They grow management from their own ranks by encouraging people to become leaders, filling positions with internal talent, and promoting from within. A High-Performance Organisation creates a safe and secure workplace by giving people a sense of physical and mental safety and job security and by not immediately laying off people until it cannot be avoided, as a last resort.
The fourth factor is very much in line with a trend which has been keeping organizations busy for the past two decades: continuous improvement and innovation. This starts with a High-Performance Organization adopting a strategy that will set the company apart by developing many new options and alternatives to compensate for dying strategies. After that, the organization will do everything in its power to fulfil this unique strategy. It continuously simplifies, improves and aligns all its processes to improve its ability to respond to events efficiently and effectively and to eliminate unnecessary procedures, work, and information overload. The company also measures and reports everything that matters so it rigorously measures progress, consequently monitors goal fulfilment and confronts the brutal facts. It reports these facts not only to management but to everyone in the organization so that all organizational members have the financial and non-financial information needed to drive improvement at their disposal. People in a High-Performance Organization feel a moral obligation to continuously strive for the best results.
The organization continuously innovates products, processes and services, thus constantly creating new sources of competitive advantage by rapidly developing new products and services to respond to market changes. It also masters its core competencies and is an innovator in them by deciding and sticking to what the company does best, keeping core competencies inside the firm and outsourcing non-core competencies.
The fifth factor addresses workforce quality. A High-Performance Organization makes sure it assembles a diverse and complementary management team and workforce and recruits a workforce with maximum flexibility, to help detect the complexities in operations and to enable creativity in solving them. A High-Performance Organization continuously works on the development of its workforce by training them to be both resilient and flexible, letting them learn from others by going into partnerships with suppliers and customers, inspiring them to work on their skills so they can accomplish extraordinary results, and holding them responsible for their performance so they will be creative in looking for new productive ways to achieve the desired results.
Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It is not intangible or fluffy, it is not a vibe or the office décor. It is one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to drive long-term, sustainable success and performance. It is not good enough just to have an amazing product and a healthy bank balance. Long-term success is dependent on a culture that is nurtured and alive. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand thrives or dies a slow death. Think about it like a nurturing habitat for success. Culture cannot be manufactured. It has to be genuinely nurtured by everyone from the CEO down. Ignoring the health of your culture is like letting aquarium water get dirty. That is why it is so important to focus and work on culture. But it is an area that is often neglected or poorly managed.
Bain & Company research found that the best companies succeed on two dimensions simultaneously. First, every high-performing company has a unique identity - distinctive characteristics that set it apart from other organizations. Second, winning cultures usually embody six high-performance behaviors. These include:
1. High aspirations and a desire to win: For employees in high-performance cultures, good is never good enough. They are always pushing to go farther, better, faster. It’s not just about short term financial performance. It’s about building something truly special and lasting.
2. External focus: Companies with high-performance cultures focus their energies externally on delighting customers, beating competitors and caring for communities. They don’t get caught up in internal politics or navel gazing.
3. A “think like owners” attitude: A hallmark of a high-performance culture is that employees take personal responsibility for overall business performance. They strive to do the right thing for the business, putting aside issues of personality or territory.
4. Bias to action: High-performance cultures are impatient to get things done. They are doers, not talkers, keeping an eye on where the value is to ensure their actions will enhance the business.
5. Individuals who team: Winning cultures encourage people to be themselves and help individuals develop to their full potential. They also recognize the importance of teamwork, being open to other people’s ideas and debating issues collaboratively.
6. Passion and energy: Everyone in a high-performance culture gives%, striving to go beyond adequate to exceptional in the areas that really matter and bringing an infectious enthusiasm to everything they do.
Conclusion
It should come as no surprise that an organization that genuinely places their customers and their people at the heart of the business, whose people understand where the company is headed and the role they play in delivering the future, and continually improves the way it works is one that will outperform its peers. The key to an organization’s success, as ever, lies in the commitment of its leaders and their willingness to implement. The good news is that regardless of your current reality, you can always elevate your leadership game. High-performance is within the reach of any organization.
There is nothing special important because it is new concept for corporate growth and the contents are old not new, it is another method of brainstorming technique. Here when brainstorming technique was generally used by all Managers, then there is a special launch for corporate conglomerate for them specially called “thought Leadership” there are/ is nothing new for growth.
While the specific details of their recommendations may vary, one message is becoming clear—investing in creating thought leadership makes good business sense. If you want to improve sales effectiveness, differentiate your brand and give customers the engagement and insights they are seeking, invest in a thought leadership program
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Thinking (as a process mindset), one of the tools used to achieve creativity.Thinking is the main stage (axis) to the process of creativity especially if we realize that creativity as a Where the creative process of the show through the thinking capacities of individuals, enabling them to create relationships between things that have never been including combinations or relationships while creative work shows through thoughts or behaviors or material things. process integrated with several stages, including the stage of thinking.
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