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.

Great example of thought leadership through thought jacking

Thought jacking really does work - ask Malcolm Gladwell

In my previous post I talked about thought jacking your way to thought leadership.

An article on MarketingProfs by Tim Riesterer, the chief marketing officer and senior vice president of strategic consulting firm Corporate Visions, has provided two of the best examples of thought jacking I have seen.

Thought jacking at ‘the tipping point’

Apparently Malcolm Gladwell sold millions of copies of his book The Tipping Point off the back of a little known political science professor, Morton Grodzins’ ideas.  Riesterer points out that it was Grodzins who first conceived of “the tipping point” 40 years before Gladwell released his book. Yet Gladwell is the one who has made millions from the concept.

Thought jacking is a ‘deliberate practice’

Gladwell, it seems, is a master at this.  His book Outliers is based on the principle of “deliberate practice.”  But once again Gladwell didn’t invent it.  The original theory was developed by Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericcson.

The tricks to thought jacking success

So what was Gladwell’s reason for his success?

I think it is threefold:

1. He took a concept and made it timely and relevant to his stakeholders
2. He packaged it
3. He popularized it by employing some key thought leadership strategies thus ensuring its commercial success.

So thought jacking really works – ask Malcolm Gladwell he no doubt swears by it.

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.

Smoke and mirrors as democracy goes up in smoke

For those who read my thought leadership views regularly and for those who stumble across this on my blog this post is highly unusual – it has nothing to do with thought leadership and is a very personal view on the Australian government’s announcement today about cigarettes appearing in no name brand packs. 

Yes you heard right.  It could have gone down well as a good April Fool’s joke but sadly it isn’t.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a smoker, to the contrary, I’m anti smoking.  But this has nothing to do with smoking, rather it has everything to do with the rights of individuals to choose, the rights of brands to be brands and the rights of businesses to responsibly produce and market their brands.

If the government can get away with this the question has to be where does it stop?  Are we going to be drinking no name beer and wine in the future and how about no name fast food?

What right does a government have to single handedly turn a perfectly legal industry into an amorphous, plain vanilla mass?  Have they really thought this through?  What happens when businesses close shop in Australia as some inevitably will and potentially thousands of jobs are lost? 

I am well aware of the reasons about reducing health risks to individuals and the burden on the health system, etc.  But for it to come to this is a gross admission of failure on the part of the government to address the issue.  Alternatively it smacks of the influence of an inordinately powerful, small health lobby group with their own grant-driven agendas.

This is heavy handed governance as its worse – it is nothing short of draconian and a government that resorts to draconian measures is a desperate one.  It is a government that has either lost touch or one that is putting up a smokescreen to hide other shortcomings.

When did Prime Minister Rudd and Minister Roxon ask the Australian public about this and what were their views?   As a non-smoker violently opposed to smoking I am appalled by this action and I would hazard that there are many more people out there who, like me, see this an assault on our civil liberties.

I truly hope that the industry takes the government to court on this one and wins.

Will the Australian public roll over on this and let Big Brother take further hold over what we can and can’t do in our every-day lives?  Time will tell.   

What are your thoughts on this?

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