US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said that he could not define obscenity, but he knew it when he saw it. For good or ill, thought leadership – for all the attention it gets in the marketing industry – seems to fall into the same “know it when you see it category.”

What is thought leadership? Is it a blog? Well, certainly not all of them. Is it a keynote speech on a big stage like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)? Maybe, but if it’s a transparent sales pitch you could have gotten the same info at the booth. Is it just a fancy term for churning out social media? This is one of the harshest criticisms of the term. Is it a big idea that provides the hook for a marcom campaign? Closer. Yes, definitely closer. But, show me the campaign before I commit; I need to see it first.

This “know it when you see it” ambiguity doesn’t seem to slow down the blogging and tweeting of content marketing. But, it’s a problem if you hope to rise above the din. It’s a problem if you want your audience to pay attention to the second installment of your account based marketing program. And it’s certainly a problem if you want to rally support doing things differently in a market, industry or even in society writ large. If you prioritize volume over quality in content marketing or executive communications you could be reducing your own brand to clickbait. If everything (any blog, tweet or post) is thought leadership, then nothing is thought leadership.

Yet, we all have experiences of seeing something that is compelling, that stands out from the noise of thousands of companies trying to get your attention and move you through their marketing funnel. In other words, we knew it when we saw it. But, it’s hard to build a program on that basis.

As 2019 unfolds, I’m going to seek some clarity around thought leadership as a concept, practice and program. Let’s start with the very words “thought leadership.” Words do the heavy lifting to convey the concept when you advocate for marketing programs and executive time for content development. Here, we’ll focus on “thought” and my next post will focus on “leadership.”

It’s the thought that counts…sort of

This piece from MIT Engineering offers a quick, relatively easy primer on the firing of neurons in the brain when we think. I’m a strategic communicator, not a neuroscientist. Yet, it’s clear that thinking at the physical level of the brain is dependent on a large number of complex interactions among various structures. What is a “thought?” Well, whatever it is, it is bound up with the process of thinking. Thoughts are stand-ins for more complex arguments or problem-solving heuristics, and they are also part of the inputs into those processes.

So, what makes a thought stand out in that “know it when you see it” way? Our experience is that it’s one where you also share the underlying interactions (data, logic etc.) that produced the thought, and you connect it to your audience’s situation well enough that it can trigger their own thought processes. For instance, Andy Grove’s concept of the Strategic Inflection Point, the moment when management strategies and practices stop working, is a useful concept. But, it rests atop an analysis of radical shifts in internal and external forces that change the conditions a firm faces. It is an enduring strategic concept because it’s presented with those underlying analytic processes. If you’re a senior manager who wakes up one morning and things just aren’t working well anymore, the Strategic Inflection Point construct can drive action in your own organization by applying the underlying analysis.

So, don’t fear complexity in contemplating thought leadership programs. Embrace it.

It’s the thought…and the thinking

We use this notion of parsing thoughts and thought processes when we work with new clients. Often, we’re warned by a marketing VP or director that a senior exec has too many ideas and needs help sorting them out. Sometimes a very thoughtful leader (not ready to deal with the term “leadership” yet) will have a stream of consciousness thought process where one idea really is connected to the next, which is connected to the next and so on. Nothing wrong with that. The challenge is establishing some boundaries to isolate the umbrella “thought” from the underlying thought processes.

One tool we use is what we call an “issue tree.” It’s a white board exercise we usually do after the initial conversation with the brilliant exec. Essentially, we trace out Big Ideas and Little Ideas that support them. Sometimes there is already a Big Idea with a name and we need to break down what it’s composed of.  Sometimes, we have to isolate a pattern of thinking and build it up to a Big Idea. The entire process provides the framework for a thought leadership campaign.

Thoughts are the grist for thought leadership. But not all thoughts rise to the level of leadership. We will tackle that idea in the next post.