Thought Leadership e book – 12 Experts on the Thought Leadership Challenges of 2012

Two free ebooks on thought leadership

Hi, I’ve got two great, free thought leadership e books for you.  I don’t even want your name - just go ahead and download them.  All I ask is that if you like them or feel they can add value to others please tweet about them or send your contacts a link to this page.  Thanks, I really appreciate it.

1.  The first is an ebook with answers to four critical thought leadership questions for 2012 from 12 experts in this field.  The experts include:  Bob Buday, Erica Klein, David Meerman Scott, Jeff Ernst, Rob Leavitt, Britton Manasco, Dana van den Heuvel, Matt Church, Fiona Czerniawska, Dale Bryce, Elizabeth Sosnow, Marte Semb Aasmundsen and me.  Click on this title to get your pdf copy  Challenges facing thought leadership in 2012 – the views from 12 experts
2. The second is a seven step methodology for arriving at a thought leadership positon.  It is taken from two chapters of my book: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership” which you can order by clicking on the Brand Stand book icon at the  top right of this page.  In the meantime, to download a pdf of the seven steps, click on this title  Seven steps to thought leadership – START IP eBook_

Happy reading - I’d be delighted if you have any comments/thoughts for you to share them with me on twitter @thoughtstrategy, on this blog, via a mail cbadings@cannings.net.au or via Linked In.

Yours in thought leadership.

Craig Badings

9 great ways to avoid being a thought leader

Nine ways you can avoid being a thought leader

If the word thought leader gives you cold chills, you don’t want the limelight, you don’t want anyone to know about your expertise and you are dead set on hiding your light under a bushel, here are nine ways to go about it…

1. Don’t say anything new and if you do have new thoughts about your business sector or your niche area of expertise, please do everyone and yourself a favour – keep them to yourself.
2. Immediately cull any inquisitiveness you have around your clients’ or customers’ issues and challenges.  If you do find out anything valuable, keep it to yourself and don’t do anything about it.
3. Don’t share any of that latent intellectual property – you cannot afford to have anyone know that you have unique insights to share.
4. Put away any thoughts of research that could shed some light on topics of interest to your client.  You may stumble across something that vaguely positions you as someone with insight and you can’t afford for that to happen.
5. Don’t ever scan your competitors to ascertain where the gaps are that you could fill with your expertise and insights.  This is a long, slippery slope to being recognized as something in a thought leadership position.
6. Never deep dive on an issue or topic of concern to your clients and if you do, make sure no-one knows.  Be extra careful for once you’re labeled as a thought leader it’s very difficult to shake that perception.
7. Steer clear of packaging your content in any way that vaguely says to the market you have anything new or insightful to share.  Heck, they may turn to you for advice and then what will you do?
8. Keep a very low social media profile.  If you do have one keep it personal and don’t let on that you’re an expert in anything.
   Remember there’s no digital eraser and you don’t want rumours spreading online that you could have any insights to share.
9. Finally, it was Andy Warhol who said we will all have our 15 minutes of fame. You face a conundrum.  Make sure your 15 minutes aren’t about your expertise at work – you may need to seek your 15 minutes elsewhere.  It may be that you are the world’s best Mom or Dad but even then be cautioned you can’t write about or speak about it…after all you may find yourself on the speaking circuit or being interviewed on Breakfast TV as the modern day guru on parenting. And we can’t have that now can we?

If you have any other tips on how to avoid beinga thought leader let me know.  Please download my free e book top right of this page. Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

Thought Jacking your way to thought leadership

If you can Newsjack you can thoughtjack for your thought leadership

I’m thought jacking David Meerman Scott’s latest e book – Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage (Wiley).

The premise of David’s new book is how to piggyback and take advantage of the momentum of a breaking news story for you or your company by injecting a fresh perspective in real time.  I must admit having been in the PR industry for 22 years, newsjacking isn’t really new but David has put a new slant on it and articulated it very well.

How thought leaders can thoughtjack

Thought leaders should take a lesson out of David’s book because if you can Newsjack you can thoughtjack and here are four ways how to do it:

1. Scan the media - for ideas that play to your thought leadership platform and react if you believe there is a significant wave of sentiment or media focus
2. Track trends - in social media, mainstream and trade press for early identification of any new, developing trends and integrate these into your thought leadership campaign
3. Do they care- research the trends with your target audiences to find out whether they care about them and how they will influence their business
4. Get to market – use all relevant channels at your disposal to get your new thought leadership insights to market.

David Meerman Scott on thought leadership

But before you do take our thought leadership to market, in fact before you even start, take heed of what David had to say when I interviewed him about thought leadership and content for this blog:

“The problem is that most organizations create content about their stupid products. What people need to realize is that nobody cares about your products (except you).  What people do care about are themselves and ways to solve their problems.

“People also like to be entertained and to share in something remarkable. In order to have people talk about you and your ideas, you must resist the urge to hype your products and services. And you must resist the urge to “control the message. Create something interesting that will be talked about online.”  David Meerman Scott.

There are two critical points in what David has to say above.  The first is that people care about themselves and ways to solve their problems.  The second is that you should create something interesting that will be talked about.

If you have followed the four thoughtjacking points above you should be able to tick both boxes.

Feel free to download my e book at the top right of this page.  I’d welcome you to follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and
join me on LinkedIn.

BOOZ TAKES OUT TOP THOUGHT LEADERSHIP RANKING

Every year White Space ranks professional services firms in terms of their thought leadership presence.  Fiona Czerniawska, who I interviewed for this blog earlier this year, is one of the global authorities on thought leadership, particularly in the management consultancy space. 

White Space is a subscriber-based web service for anyone interested in thought leadership.  They offer qualitative and quantitative evaluation of more than 18,000 pieces of thought leadership from about 25 leading consulting firms. 

They rate consulting firms’ thought leadership twice a year, in July and in January/February. 

Thought leadership ranking criteria

What I find interesting and what is a valuable lesson for any firm interested in thought leadership, are the criteria Fiona uses to rank thought leadership at these firms.

A single ranking criteria is way too narrow and limiting and as Fiona says:  “It tends to mask the fact that firms tend to be good at different things.”  So instead she has come up with four different quality criteria:   

• Differentiation – the originality or distinctiveness of thought leadership conclusions 
• Resilience – the depth of thinking and/or extent of evident research    
• Appeal – the extent to which clients will perceive the material to be relevant to their specific circumstances
• Appropriate commercialisation – the likelihood the material will encourage the audience to take action.

Good thought leadership campaigns should…

When one dissects these criteria they reflect exactly what a good thought leadership campaign should comprise i.e.

• It should differentiate you from the competition
• It should show deep, empirical research to back up your experience, interpretation and opinion
• It should absolutely be client centric – in fact you should have first researched the client’s issues and challenges now and into the future
• It should singularly aim to achieve something with your clients or prospects e.g. to get in front of the boards of the top 100 listed companies.

The thought leadership rankings

Fiona’s rankings show that the group of firms at the top end has not changed dramatically.  Booz&company is just ahead of what Fiona has labelled “ a resurgent Boston Consulting Group” whose position went from 6 to 2.

The reason for their resurgence?  White Space says that it is not only because of some of their excellent material but also because they managed to weed out or avoid poorer-quality material.

Another firm that moved up the rankings was Accenture which moved from eight to six. 

Besides the names already mentioned, other names that cropped up across the four criteria included:  McKinsey, IBM, Roland Berger, PwC, Right Management, Hay Group, E&Y and KPMG

White Space is a subscriber-based web service for anyone interested in thought leadership.  They offer qualitative and quantitative evaluation of more than 18,000 pieces of thought leadership from about 25 leading consulting firms. 

Please download my free e book top right of this page.  Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

What role does content curation play in thought leadership?

I’ve always said no because to be a thought leader necessitates generating original, new content or insights that address a certain markets issues or challenges.  By doing this you display your depth of expertise on a topic or a business sector.

After some good banter on one to two websites about this I have developed two observations on content curation and thought leadership.

Curated content plays a support role to thought leadership

The first is that curated content can play a very important role in supporting and informing a thought leadership content program.  For example, curated content feeds are a great way to keep in touch with trends which can inform your thought leadership topics and in that sense help with the content calendar.

New ideas as a result of curated content  could be thought leadership

The second is that if the person curating the content is able to, through that content, arrive at new ideas or insights which they then deliver to their audience this could be construed as thought leadership.

Regurgitating content doesn’t cut it

Simply regurgitating someone else’s content is not going to cut it.  Repurposing content is not going to cut it and neither will re-packaging it.  Content curation cannot be called thought leadership.  Only when it leads the curator into a totally new hypothesis or insight can it start approaching thought leadership status and at that point it is no longer curated content but rather the curator’s interpretation off the back of the curated content.    

I don’t want to take anything away from content curation.  It is fantastic for a content/editorial calendar and it can be a great support to a thought leadership campaign.  Content curation allows you to monitor trends in your space and help inform better what you are planning in real time.

Some great sites on content curation

If you are interested in reading more on content and content marketing/curation there are some great sites such as www.contentmarketinginstitute.com  www.junta42.com  http://optimalaccess.com/ and www.getcurata.com

Please download my free e book top right of this page.  Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

CLAIMING CONTENT CURATION IS THOUGHT LEADERSHIP IS LIKE PLAGIARISM

Content curation does not equate to thought leadership

Find me a thought leader through curation alone

Thought leadership = original, creative or innovative content

Thought leadership model missing one critical piece

One critical piece missing from this thought leadership model

I really like Shane Gibson’s thought leadership model pictured above. 

It’s simple yet has some good depth to its structure.  In particular I like the inner circle elements of creator, contributor and networker.  However, like any model there are always gaps.  The glaring one for me in this model (no offence Shane – if you had to add everything it would lose the point) is the lack of reference or focus on the client/target audience.

Why? Because thought leadership without a focus on your end audience is not going to deliver the  business outcomes you want.

Thought leadership has to be a business tool

Every thought leadership campaign should have a customer/client focus and should have specific outcomes and therefore measurements that can be applied.

Creating great content is not good enough.

Curating awesome content is not good enough.

Making your content look great is a waste of effort time and money.

In fact don’t bother wasting your time unless there is a very specific client focus around your thought leadership content and it has at its centre the need to address the issues and challenges your audience face now and into the future.

Thought leadership requires research

Before you start your thought leadership campaign you can save yourself and lot of time and effort by first researching your audience, their issues, their current and future challenges.

It is this sort of research that will uncover your thought leadership opportunity and the ability, as Shane’s one segment so aptly describes, to have ‘relevant, engaging conversations.’

We should not forget that rule no1 of any thought leadership campaign is that it should first and foremost be a business driver with measurable outcomes.

I would love to hear your thoughts.  Please download my free e book top right of this page.  Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

Thought leadership insights from global expert

Fiona Czerniawska shares her insights on thought leadership

For this interview on thought leadership, I had the privilege of interviewing Fiona Czerniawska, one of the foremost global authorities on thought leadership, particularly in the management consultancy space.  There are few people who understand as much about thought leadership as Fiona.  She is the co-founder of Source, a company specialising in researching the consulting industry www.sourceforconsulting.com .  She has authored numerous management reports, books and articles.

I would urge you to visit her site and join up to her thought leadership newsletter White Space http://www.sourceforconsulting.com/whitespace/ . White Space is a subscriber-based web service which provides detailed analysis of the thought leadership of around 30 leading global consulting firms.She is also the Director of the Management Consultancies Association’s Think Tank, she is a Programme Director for the Centre of Management Development at London Business School, and also lectures at Kingston Business School in London and Haarlem School of Advanced Management Studies in Holland.

 Trends in thought leadership

1.      Fiona your firm White Space does an exhaustive annual analysis of the thought leadership material of around 30 leading global consulting firms.  What trends have you seen emerging in this field from the leaders in the thought leadership space?

The overall quality of thought leadership in 2010 slipped a bit – at least in our opinion. We think there were two main reasons for this.  The first is that many firms cut their thought leadership and research budgets during the recession and the cracks this opened up really began to show in the latter half of the year.  Thankfully that particular trend seems to being reversed.  The second reason is to do with the way in which people are publishing their material: we’ll all have noticed a plethora of new formats, including Twitter, videos, podcasts and design-your-own graphs.  But these share a common challenge which is that you have less space to say things and I think consulting firms are struggling with the transition from back-breaking flagship reports to a pithier, more opinionated style.  A five-minute video shouldn’t be a balding man in a grey suit reading the executive summary, but someone saying something memorable and thought-provoking, as well as fast.  This type of thought leadership should be like the tip of an iceberg, with the underlying research below the waterline, but it often becomes an excuse for not doing the research in the first place – and that shows.

Content and thought leadership

 2.      There’s a lot written these days about marketing content but what’s your view that content alone doesn’t make you a thought leader?   

I’d agree, but with some caveats.  I honestly don’t think you can beat good content: that’s easy to forget because so much of the content we do see isn’t that good.  If you look back at the block-buster management ideas of the past, they were all based on serious research, not a sudden brainwave or luck.  I don’t believe in eureka moments except those that emerge from deeper-than-deep content.  That being said, I do think that innovation in thought leadership will come from the way this content is assembled and disseminated.  I’m watching McKinsey’s What Matters micro-site with interest and I know that other firms are looking at this issue too. 

Thought leadership quantity vs quality

3.      You talk about four factors likely to attract a client’s attention as appeal, differentiation, practical application and quality of thinking but do you think the volume of thought leadership these firms produce these days means they are having to be more creative with the way it is packaged?

These four factors relate to the quality of a firm’s output and that’s independent of quality (although, almost inevitably, a firm that decides to increase the quantity of its material takes a hit on quality).  It’s tempting to say that quantity should never matter but it does: if you produce one piece of thought leadership on, say, strategy in the banking sector, but your competitor produces 20, then there’s a fair chance that you’ll get shouted down, however great your piece is.  Quantity also sends a not-so-subliminal message to clients about how much a firm specialises in a particular area.  However, I think firms could indeed be more creative about the way they package their content.  In particular, I’d like to seem more “bundling” (putting related articles, in a mix of different formats, together in the same place); better recommendations (suggesting articles I might find of interest); and, please, please, please, better search engines.  It’s incredibly frustrating to put a keyword in but not be able to sort the results by date or filter them.

Thought leadership as a term

4.      The term thought leadership is bandied about quite loosely do you think the term itself is dated and if so are there better terms to encapsulate thought leadership?

Like all jargon (the first book I wrote was on business language… ), “thought leadership” has its uses.  People – at least consultants – know what it refers to means and broadly understand what’s involved even if they might quibble about its exact meaning.  The trouble is that it’s an inherently arrogant term that set itself up for a fall: it’s an old joke that most thought leadership is really thought “followship.”  And of course the even bigger problem is that no one, certainly not us, has a better term.

Thought leadership – a growing discipline

5.      Are you seeing signs that thought leadership is becoming a discipline in its own right?  Are there any examples of it being split in terms of resourcing and manpower from the traditional marketing and corporate communication roles?

We’re certainly seeing this more – and I think that’s the right thing to do.  If you ask clients what influences their choice of consulting firm, they almost always cite personal recommendations, case studies and thought leadership, but these components have an impact in different ways and at different times.  A personal recommendation is very much about which firm to use for a specific piece of work, but case studies and thought leadership are important at an earlier stage in the thinking process.  Long before they reach the point when they decide to hire a consulting firm, clients need evidence that it makes sense to invest time and effort in an idea or problem they’ve been mulling over – and case studies and thought leadership can provide this.  In other words, done well the latter help stimulate demand for consulting in general even if they don’t convert into a sale for a specific firm.  That’s why it makes sense to view these functions separately – but of course you can go too far in the opposite direction and it’s important for marketing, corporate comms and thought leadership to plan and act in unison.

The client’s view on thought leadership

6.      What are clients of the firms you analyse saying about the thought leadership material they receive?   

They have mixed reactions, depending on the subject-matter and their position.  Overall, clients dismiss most thought leadership simply because it’s not relevant to them.  There’s a lesson in this about ensuring all material is focused on as tight a group of clients as possible, otherwise – a bit like infections treated with antibiotics – they become resistant!  Where it is relevant, views are much more positive: indeed, it’s quite clear that producing good thought leadership is, in many senior managers’ eye, a fundamental characteristic of a certain type of established, high-class consulting.

Thought leadership case study

7.      What’s the best thought leadership campaign you’ve seen and why?

The BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects.  Not exactly a conventional programme, but it gives us a clear sense and standard about what can be achieved when you mix great content with an intelligent use of new media.  It should be required listening for all marketing departments.

The future of thought leadership

8.      What is your view on where thought leadership is heading over the next five years?

I like to think that it will become a serious battleground for really good ideas.  I may be laughed at for this on the quite reasonable grounds that (a) clients value small-scale insights more than grandiose conceptual models and (b) the extent to which thought leadership is – or can be – a crucible for innovation is questionable.  But I do get frustrated by the lack of ambitious in much thought leadership.  There are some big and interesting questions about business that never seem to get debated – and it would be good to think that some of these will start to be discussed.  The prerequisites to this, and I suspect to upping the overall quality of thought leadership, are investment and collaboration.  I can’t believe we won’t see more money going into thought leadership in the future, as it’s clear that it is one of the few marketing activities which can differentiate a firm.  And I also think consulting firms will realise that they have to work with people (clients and other consultants) outside the boundaries of their firms for inspiration.

If you have any comments on Fiona’s points of view I’d love to hear from you – also don’t forget to sign up for Fiona’s newsletter here http://www.sourceforconsulting.com/whitespace/

The Economist on thought leadership – hypocritical or valid point?

The article on thought leadership which appeared in the Economist fascinates me – read it here http://tinyurl.com/2acq8gk  I first heard about it as a result of a reader’s comments on this blog – thanks Tom.

The journalist who penned the article questions why consulting firms provide what they ‘annoyingly call thought leadership’ and also whether it is worth it. 

Nothing wrong with questioning its worth but what the author neglected to do is ask even one client what they think of the thought leadership material provided to them by their consulting firm.

The first irony in the article is that the author inadvertently stumbles upon the very essence of thought leadership albeit in a negative sense: “Their reports (and increasingly their webinars and podcast) are an excuse to contact potential clients and a way of boasting about the brainpower they can apply to problems.”

While it is stated in kind of a negative way that is precisely it – absolutely your thought leadership material should be getting you in front of your clients and prospects.  Importantly it also enables you and your team to hold discussions with your prospect on issues of importance to them while sharing your insights about their sector or industry.  If this boasts your brainpower fantastic – through these insights, you want your prospects to realise that you have a deep understanding of their challenges and are therefore in a position to help solve them.

If these are the sorts of opportunities and conversations thought leadership delivers isn’t this far less ‘annoying’ than trying to ‘sell’ a product or your service? 

The second irony is that The Economist has a number of its own thought leadership platforms i.e. The Economist Intelligence Unit. The Economist Debates and The Economist Conferences and there may be more but I’m not aware of them. 

Maybe they don’t overtly call any of these thought leadership and maybe the author has a point because the loose use of the word thought leadership is annoying because a lot of it doesn’t come close. But where I do take the author to task is on measurement.

A true thought leadership campaign should have very firm business metrics in place.  Among others these could include:

·         The number of prospect meetings

·         The number of returning clients

·         The number of appointments and incoming, qualified leads and the conversion rate

·         The number of attendees at thought leadership seminars and the resultant follow up and conversion

·         Delivery of key messages through identified and targeted media

·         Effective leverage of content across all client and prospective client touch points

·         Research, preferably benchmarked annually of your brand against others in the market place  

·         Research internally of what the thought leadership material delivers to your sales and marketing team as well as the consultants, engineers, accountants, etc in the business

A fellow writer on marketing and thought leadership, Dana van den Heuvel has also taken issue with The Economist article.  You can read his blog on the topic here http://tinyurl.com/25nykgr

I’d be interested in your views. Please share them.

Thought leadership interview on RainToday.com

This appeared on the RainToday.com site and is an interview with me on my favourite topic – thought leadership.  You can click here to listen  and this is what they had to say as an intro:

Effective thought leadership—the kind that attracts prospects that eventually become clients—requires a strong platform that your entire company adopts, not “random acts of content,” says Craig Badings, author of Brand Stand: Seven Steps to Thought Leadership.

It’s about delivering new ideas and content to your target audience based on insight into the issues and challenges they face, he says. It’s also about differentiating you from competitors, establishing you as the go-to expert, and positioning you as a trusted advisor. And to make that happen, firms must have an organized and concerted effort that involves everyone in the organization.

“To truly take hold, [thought leadership] has to become part of the culture of the organization. In fact, I’d be as bold as to say that companies that have a sales culture should really be trying very hard to replace it with a thought leadership culture because in my view the sales pitches we know are really dead. It’s no longer good enough for companies to flog their products or services,” Badings says. “If thought leadership is not a part of corporate culture, then that thought leadership campaign is going to limp along and will never really achieve any great height.”

Listen as Badings, who also blogs at Thought Leadership, discusses:

• The four things that make a successful thought leadership campaign
• Firms that are excelling with their thought leadership campaigns
• How sales teams can incorporate a firm’s thought leadership platform to win more deals
• His methodology—START IP—for developing and implementing a thought leadership platform