Elevating Thought Leadership in Any Size Organization | Dr. Karthik Nagendra

How do you use thought leadership to spark a conversation that really needs to happen within a community? Thought leadership often involves putting a provocative idea into the spotlight and then coming equipped with data to back your position. Only then can silence transform into conversation. So today I want to talk about this question with Karthik Nagendra, who spent nearly 20 years in the field of thought leadership with technology startups as well as giants such as Wipro and Accenture. Karthik currently serves as fractional CMO for startup ventures with an emphasis on thought leadership. I'm Bill Sherman, and you're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready? Let's begin. Welcome to the show, Karthik.

Thanks, Bill. Really excited to be part of the show.

Absolutely. So you and I both share a passion for thought leadership and you've been working in this space in many ways for many years. My question for you is a simple one. How did you get hooked into the world of thought leadership?

Well, that's a long story and a story which I just don't get tired talking about because, you know, I would say thought leadership is my first love. If you, if you—

I agree, I agree.

Same here., and I think I got introduced to thought leadership marketing way back in 2007. So this, this happened to be in my first job. It was a startup, a category created, which was focusing primarily into skill assessment. So a company by name Meritrack, and back then skill assessment in India was an emerging area, uh, not many organizations were looking into it. They were trying to speak to the HR leaders and recruitment leaders to say why you need to be having a scientific approach to your entire recruitment process and how these assessments can help you filter those candidates, and then you are actually interviewing only the ones that really matter. And because it was a category that had to be created and there was a lot of science and data behind this the CEO back then said, you know, why don't we create a report which for the very first time was quantifying the employable engineering talent pool in India. So back then everybody says, yeah, you know, India has a rich pool of engineers and everybody is, you know, the great talent which is available back there. But this was the very first time that somebody said, let's quantify and say what percentage of that population is actually employable as per the benchmarks which are required. And that's where India's first engineering talent pool report was created by Meritrack. And I think it was in association with McKinsey and I think also NASSCOM, which is an IT representative body in India. And the amount of buzz it generated, my God, I still remember our marketing head back then, getting calls from some of the colleges and, you know, from a state down south saying, guys, you are not stepping into our city. Because for the very first time in that report, it said only 25% of the engineering talent pool in India is employable, just 25%. And it clearly benchmarked which were the states which were doing good and which were the states which were not doing good. And historically, the ones which were churning out the bulk of these engineering grads fared very low in that report. So it just created a flutter out there. Suddenly, a lot of the companies started talking to Meritrack saying, we've been visiting that state for a long time and hiring candidates. And according to your report, it says that that's not a good pool and I should be looking at an alternate state. So, you know, let's start talking. So that was the impact. Which this report created, both from a positive standpoint where the HR and recruitment leaders started talking to us, and similarly, the negative PR, it also picked up. So that's where I got introduced to thought leadership.

So there's a couple things that I love about this story. One, that it's in 2007 using thought leadership as early as it did, right?

Yes.

Two, the story relates to a startup. That winds up partnering with McKinsey, huge global consulting firm, huge association in Indian engineers, and decides to put out a piece of thought leadership which is provocative, which gets people to discuss, debate, and even pokes the bear just a little bit and is willing to stir the status quo. I think that's a wonderful representation of a great way into thought leadership. And even more than that, a great way of how an organization which is a startup can punch well above their weight.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think back then there were only a very handful of psychometric assessments which were available, and these were from global players out there. Nobody in India had ever created anything with respect to skill assessment or behavioral assessments. And these were the first movers. Obviously, they were bootstrapped. So for them, the only way they could catch attention was showcasing their expertise. And that's what they had because they had a scientific approach towards building these assessments. They were testing a bunch of engineering grads to get data to show that what they were claiming was actually right. So I think it was a very good value addition to the organizations as well to take a scientific approach to recruitments.

So with that, let's jump a little bit forward in your career because I want to go from the startup to a large organization. And we're going a little bit historical here and we're going to expand into this, but I really want to lay the foundation on how did you get passionate about thought leadership because you've got a great journey. So after working with the startups, you wound up looking at the large world of thought leadership for large enterprise. Let's talk about that.

Yes. So I think by the end of this podcast, people will know how old I am, but— You and me both.

You and me both.

Yeah. So yeah, so I think that's the merit track is where I got inducted into thought leadership marketing. And that's where the curiosity bit around how do we leverage this further. And from there on, when I moved into Wipro, which was obviously a large Indian multinational corporation back then. But very interestingly, when I got into Wipro as well, they were looking at setting up the thought leadership function. So I don't know whether it's destiny or, you know, because it was something that which I really wanted, it so happened that the role was again to build their thought leadership function. Back then, if I remember looking at all the other IT services companies which were there, the IBMs, the Accentures, all of them were investing heavily in building thought leadership. They had, like, I remember IBM having Institute of Business Value, Accenture had its research labs, even Infosys for that matter, which was a peer for Wipro back then, even they had a thought leadership thing called the SET Labs and it had a 100-member team. So that really opened up my eyes to say, my God, this is the kind of investment that people are making into thought leadership.. And at Wipro, we are just starting off on this journey. So how do we kind of, you know, because those guys were already a bit ahead in the game and we were just starting off there. Absolutely. Like a Harry Potter story that I would probably relate it to. So after a bit of, you know, researching the market, studying what these guys were focusing on, doing a bit of an internal research as well to see where do we stand? Do we really have unique perspectives that we can talk about? Are we investing in R&D which we can showcase? And who are the stakeholders that we could probably engage with? You know, I, I identified that the academic community was something where, you know, not many people had leveraged them that effectively. So we are talking about the Ivy League universities and, you know, collaborating with them to come up with thought leadership pieces because While Wipro as a brand was known, but when we did our brand audit, the rankings on thought leadership were very low. So customers didn't perceive Wipro as a thought leader. They just looked at them as somebody who's supplying engineers to get the job done. And we wanted to change that perception back then. So that's where I also figured out that the IBMs, Accentures, or any of the consulting firms that we take, they all have research wings which drives thought leadership, and we didn't have anything like that in Wipro. So that's where I, you know, in consultation with the CMO, Jesse Paul, back then created a Wipro Council for Industry Research. So essentially what we did was branded the entire thought leadership function as a research wing, identified some of the internal subject matter experts who were there. So these guys who were really passionate about their subjectives They've had 2, 3 decades of experience in that space, but they're not somebody who's probably gone out there and showcased that expertise.

So, and that's the latent talent that is within an organization.

Absolutely.

But nobody except the colleagues who work with them know that this person is a genius in this area.

Yes. Yes. So we put together a bunch of about 20 people from different domains, different industries. And created this council and on the other hand, identified universities and faculty who were focusing on some of these areas of research that we were investing in and kind of brought them together to create joint thought leadership pieces. So these were research reports that we did, these were joint white papers. We also got some of these faculty to write teaching case studies about some of the interesting delivery models that were created or innovation frameworks that we had created. And once we did that, and we took it to the market and shared it with the customers, suddenly all of them, you know, stood up and said, guys, we didn't know Wipro was doing so much of innovation. We didn't know Wipro was investing in so much of R&D. We didn't know you had such interesting delivery frameworks. And because it had an endorsement of these bigger Ivy League universities as well, it automatically increased the credibility of what we were trying to say there. So it was not just we going and claiming that, guys, we have done this. We also had these experts collaborating with us and saying, yeah, listen, Wipro is doing this.

And what I wanna pause here and interrupt for a moment was you didn't have to go out and hire top talent from anywhere else. You just had to showcase the talent that was already within the organization. And that changed the perspective of clients and customers.

Absolutely. And like I said, collaborating with the universities was not something which a lot of these other guys were leveraging to the extent that we went to, where later we even won a lot of awards for this entire thought leadership model that I created back there in Wipro. And then subsequently it started reflecting on the brand audit rankings and the kind of deals that we started. Participating in. So I think that's, that's where, you know, there was the other chapter of what thought leadership can do and, uh, you know, some of the learnings which I got from them.

But in some ways, there's a little bit of bootstrapping that happens even with an organization like Wipro, for example, right? And I know a number of people who are serving as head of thought leadership within their organization whether that's an SVP title or a senior manager title. And they're like, yeah, I'm a team of one or maybe a couple fractional people that I borrow.

Yeah. Yeah.

And rather than thinking from a perspective of scarcity, I love how you flip it on your head and say, okay, let's create an internal council. Let's pull some people from outside and showcase what we can do.. And so there's a scrappiness to it that I love.

Absolutely. In fact, I still remember my immediate boss back then, Rahul. He used to always say, thought leadership, we are a team of one and a half people. So Karthik is the one resource and I am just the half resource juggling between this and another function which he was leading back then. So that's absolutely right. And while people may think Wipro is a large organization, they have bigger budgets and all that. When I look at it from this function standpoint and the challenges that were there, it was pretty much, you know, bootstrapped and something which I had to build from scratch and scale it up while at a larger setup.

And I would argue that from a perspective of improving brand recognition, brand health, brand metrics, there are very few things that you can do with 1.5 dedicated resources plus a little bit of people here and there that will make as much of an impact on your brand scores, right?

That's absolutely right. Absolutely right.

And as then you cycle there, as that brand recognition, we didn't know that you had this approach.

Yeah.

We didn't know that leads to what really matters is, which is the invitations to opportunities. The discussion of how we can work together, problems we can solve together, which makes life easier for both marketing and sales.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it definitely showed on some of these conversations which came in. The quality of conversations also started changing. People started having— approaching us more as consultants and partners rather than just a software vendor that they were engaging with. So I think it did play a role in changing that perception.

But let me ask you this question. Do you approach thought leadership and see yourself as a marketer, as a sales engineer? How are you wired mentally when you're thinking around thought leadership?

That's a very interesting question, Nick. I think, you know, I would wear multiple hats. The way I would look at it, right? So one, from a marketing or a brand specialist on how I would package this entire thought leadership program itself to present as a business case, to, you know, wearing the sales hat where I need to pitch this to the CEO and say why they should be investing into this and, you know, the outcomes that it can get them to, you know, taking the role of a delivery or an operations head who's kind of stitching the program together and implementing it as well. So, you know, I would look at myself wearing multiple hats and, you know, changing it from time to time depending on who I'm talking to and what is the objective out there.

What sort of problems are you working on today and what is your current life in the world of thought leadership? We've done some history.

Yeah.

What, What's the recent engagement?

So the current one that I'm presently associated with, again, is a category creator where, you know, it's in the space of digital account management solution. It's a SaaS company that I'm working with. Interestingly, you know, all the projects that I've worked with so far predominantly have been category creators. So, so that's one common thread that I've seen. Two, you know, these are also organizations which believe that thought leadership is what can make an impact for them as a brand, especially when they start having the enterprise-level conversations. So, so the current project, again, the challenges, it's a new category. People have been using Excel sheets, PowerPoints to prepare their sales plans and for their large accounts. Most of the knowledge is siloed with 2 or 3 star salespeople who are there. It's not institutionalized within the organization itself. And there is also a lot more of data which is missing out, and hence they're not able to identify better opportunities. They're not able to leverage AI, which can give them more insights and nudges on how they can go about doing their job better. But again, it's a mindset issue which is there, but a lot of them say, you know, we've been doing this all these years in Excel and PowerPoint. I think we are good with that. They don't see why they should be moving towards a digital route, as that's going to be an imperative for them and the benefits that come associated with that. So again, thought leadership is something which is very important there, where we're talking about trends, where we are talking about best practices, where we are collaborating with influencers, where we are doing a lot more of research, a lot more of webinars, masterclasses, which kind of educate people on, on making this shift. So again, that's a challenge that I'm currently handling and where thought leadership is again the hero.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL. And share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So let's stay on category creation. And the example that you just gave, I think, really underscores something about category creation, which thought leadership is really well positioned for.

Yes.

People have habits and have solved the problem in a past way, and they're not looking towards the future because they're just looking and saying, well, I've always done it this way, right? They don't see the opportunity or the risk. And thought leadership is making that opportunity or risk visible to them. And you have to challenge them in some ways and go, that isn't working as well as you think it is.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, like I said, a lot of the people that we talk to in this space are sales leaders, and these are sales leaders with, you know, 3 decades, 4 decades of experience in sales, and they have done this using Excel sheets, PowerPoints, and they know it's worked for them. Right. So it's very difficult for them to say, okay, no, let's drop that and let's take this. So what we're doing in that space is there are also a few of these early movers who are there, who want to explore and experiment the newer things which are emerging out there. So we are collaborating with such people on the practitioner front. We are bringing in together, you know, some of the analysts like the Gartners and Forresters of the world and some of the coaches, sales coaches, sales consultants, and using these stakeholders to kind of co-create content that we are putting out there. As well as creating some of these educational material, using them to influence their peers. And that's something that we are seeing. It's starting to give us good traction. And if you look at it from a pipeline standpoint, also some of the larger enterprises are now talking to us. Till now it was predominantly the small and medium enterprises which were talking, but the pipeline of the larger enterprises talking to us has increased. And, you know, thought leadership, definitely has had a key role to play in that.

Well, and the example that you just gave really talks about the compounding effect of thought leadership, where you draw in some of the people who have already had success and you help them amplify their success and let them talk to their peers rather than, you know, sometimes people look at marketing and go, okay, you're really just trying to sell me. But if I've known that person for 5, 10, 15 years, maybe they work at a peer or competitor company, but they're saying it, I'm going to listen differently.

Absolutely. In fact, we've been doing a series of masterclasses where we've brought in some of the analysts and some of the customers to share their experiences. And incidentally, the product is just a means to what they've achieved, but it's more of saying why they should be thinking on those lines and what are stuff that they should be doing differently, what are some of the mistakes which they did and which some of the other guys were, the fence sitters were still trying to figure out whether should I be or should I not. They know that these are some of the mistakes that they should avoid and they need not reinvent the wheel. So those conversations are really helping them. And even the analysts, they bring together their research, their conversations with a lot of the practitioners out there and saying, hey, listen, 70% sales leaders are already moving towards this. These are a few of the priorities which are looking at. If you are planning to evaluate something like this, here's an assessment that you should probably be taking to see where you stand and, you know, accordingly plan out your roadmap. So I think a combination of bringing these influencers as well as the customers is really making an impact there.

And now this is tied to the audience that you're trying to reach. Other organizations or different solutions have to approach it differently. You're reaching a sales leader perspective.

Yes.

And sales leaders are used to very clear, concrete measurements. Did the deal close? Did it not close? Are deals moving faster? Are they not faster? Are we hitting target? Are we missing target? Those have concrete, measurable answers that allow you to link the underlying idea of the solution and the thought leadership to the outcome.

Yes, yes. No, that's absolutely true. So in fact, even in a lot of these masterclasses that we talk about as well, the client speakers were coming in there, they're clearly talking about the outcomes which they've achieved by taking this approach. So, you know, what's the percentage of white spaces they've been able to identify which they didn't know existed before? What were, you know, what's the increase in the upsell and cross-sell opportunities by which they've been able to leverage by moving a digital route vis-à-vis traditional route which they were following. And even from a sales productivity standpoint, how has it saved time on the salespeople's side to focus more on building and nurturing those relationships than doing administrative work on Excel sheets and PowerPoints?

Right, right.

These metrics are— I agree, without metrics, you know, they'll say, yeah, this is all nice to hear, but let's talk numbers.

Exactly, exactly. So let's elevate a little bit. You've talked about category creation in several different ways. You've talked about showcasing internal talent, academics, as well as colleagues. If you were a younger version of yourself, what advice would you give to do this better? Because there are many people out there who are exploring or stumbling into the world of thought leadership, based on what you know now, what advice would you give them?

So in fact, that's the whole reason why I wrote my book, The Thought Leader Way, so in which I've kind of put together my journey, my learnings, and a blueprint which people who are planning to get into thought leadership can look into. But in simple terms, if we were to look into this entire piece, I think it's very important that you get in the buy-in from the senior leadership first. You know, back then, you know, I was thinking, yeah, I can do all this and, you know, I can take it forward and implement it. But if your head of marketing or your CEO is not somebody who believes in the long run, in the long game, thought leadership will not work for them.

If they're looking for results in 6 to 8 weeks.

Yeah, short-term, listen, yeah, yeah, no. 3 months or I need X number of leads within 3 months and by then if this is not working, thought leadership is not working for me, let's stop it. So I think invest time in building a strong business case for the CEO and the senior leaders who are there. Have a bunch of advocates who can back you as well when you're making this business case. I think that's the other one. Don't try to fight a lone battle there because there again, if you do not have other people to back you, then again, it's very slim chances that it's going to work out for you. So I think identify and build those advocates who can support your cause and try and see how you can showcase some of your competitors' work as well in this space and create that FOMO moment for your leadership as well, saying if you're not you know, you're going to miss the bus. So I think these are 3 things, you know, if I were to go back, I would probably focus more on and build it to ensure that I'm able to— I don't have to keep fighting and reiterating, saying, no, why we should keep investing in this.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I like that sense of urgency on that last one of if we don't do this now, we're going to be behind. Right?

Yes.

So I want to close with a question. As I said, you and I have been in the world of thought leadership now nearly 20 years each, and I want to play a game of where do you see thought leadership going in another 10 to 20 years? How is this going to evolve? Let's look into the future of thought leadership.

That's very interesting. And I I think with the advent of generative AI coming to picture, I see, you know, a lot of things changing from that front as well. So back then, if I were to do this, build this program or do this research, the time it would have taken me vis-à-vis leveraging these AI assistants which are available out there to even ideate and come up with various permutations, combinations of what we could look at Explore areas which have not been explored before. So that can give me insights into things that I can focus on, scale up on. I think that's definitely going to play a huge role in how it's going to shape up thought leadership. I definitely see more and more brands focusing on thought leadership itself because I think that's where the key differentiator will lie for a lot of them because increasingly when all your solutions are getting productized, then how do you create that differentiation for your brand? And that differentiation for your brand will come only with thought leadership. So the earlier the brands realize that and start investing in it, the better it will be. And the guys who are going to stay invested in thought leadership in the long run are the ones who are going to succeed. So there will also, on the flip side, with the advent of this AI, you may also have a lot of people claiming to be thought leaders also. You know, interestingly, I, there's this data which I came across which said on LinkedIn, if you were to go and search thought leader, there are over 100,000 people with profiles which will show up as thought leaders. So it becomes all the more easier for them to generate content and start putting it out there. So, you know, that's another challenge. So where you need to really cut through the clutter to say how you are the real thought leader and not, you know, it reminds me of that scene from Spider-Man movie where you have 3 Spider-Men from multiverse and each one is saying, who's the real Spider-Man?

And they're pointing at each other. Yeah.

Yeah. So I would probably look at it as saying, who's the real thought leader? And then everybody is pointing at each other.

Well, and there's room for thought leadership. I mean, we're a planet of 8 billion people. So 100,000 thought leaders is not crazy. As a number, right? If you think about the whole range of human thought and the types of questions.

Yes.

But you have to be able to say what you're a thought leader in, right? And if you choose a very broad category and you say, I am a thought leader in all of marketing, for example, people are gonna roll their eyes and go, mm, no, there's only a handful of people that are that well established and that creative across a broad field.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So what I meant from that number was also that while if you were to actually go deeper and have those conversations with them, you will realize that almost 60-70% of them are not even talking to us. They just—

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm playing with you. I agree. I mean, the curse of generative AI is that you can create a white paper or an article in just a couple keystrokes, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And then you shift the burden onto your reader for you to determine, for them to determine if you know what you're talking about or if you've just given them stuff that's been said before.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I really love some of the tips that you shared through your videos and podcast. I think people who really listen to them closely will know who's the real thought leader. So, well, and you would like— Will the real thought leader please stand up?

There's, and I say this often, but there's the easy tell for me when I'm talking to someone about thought leadership and their area of expertise. If their eyes light up If you see the excitement and it's almost that they can't help but be excited to talk about the subject, guess what? They're probably practicing thought leadership more than most, right? Because they're willing to have the introductory conversations. It's the professor who has the Nobel Prize who is still willing to teach introductory physics, right? And who's teaching it.

Absolutely, absolutely. So like I said, when I started off as well, so that's a story of how I got inducted into thought leadership. And I don't know, I would have narrated this story hundreds, thousands of times, but even today, if somebody were to ask me, I'm still equally excited to talk about that first project that worked and how it had a telling impact in shaping my career into thought leadership marketing itself.

Well, and shaping your career shaping the fate of the organization, 'cause that was transformative, as well as shaping how others talked about the idea, or in that first case, about the quantitative study of the engineers, how people were talking about engineering education. And so if we can make the invisible visible, and even more, I think back to what my father, who was a librarian his entire career, He said, you don't have to always know the answer. You just have to know how to ask the right question. And in the world of generative AI, I think the piece that's going to fall on thought leadership more and more is we need to ask smarter questions to produce better thought leadership.

Yeah, so no, that's, that's very true. And because I'm also an ICF certified coach, so in coaching for us, asking the right questions is what is— it's like the Holy Grail that we would look at, because asking those right questions gets those insights from the client. So similarly, what kind of questions that you ask, what kind of prompts that you give to the generative AI engine, the output would depend on that. You give a garbage question, you're going to get a garbage response. You put up that garbage and you're thinking, I'm putting up content every day. I'm a thought reader. I'm sorry to burst the bubble.

You can pat yourself on the back if you want for posting every day, but you haven't advanced the conversation. You haven't engaged with others, and you aren't moving ideas forward. You're just saying new words or saying the same words again and again. True.

Absolutely.

So Karthik, I knew that this was going to be a fun conversation, and it did not disappoint. Thank you for taking time today.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I loved it. And like I said, this is a topic which is close to both our hearts. So I think we can keep going on and on with this conversation and not get bored of it at all. But thanks once again. Really loved having this conversation with you.

And I want to ask you one last question. If someone has listened to this podcast and they want to find you or follow you, how should they do so?

Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn, Dr. Karthik Nagendra. K-A-R-T-H-I-K-N-A-G-N-D-R-A. Or they can visit my website, which would be thought-starters.com. Or even on Amazon, if they search The Thought Leader Way, my book, that's another way where they can find more about it.

Fantastic. Thank you, Karthik.

Thank you, Bill. Have a good day.

If you're interested in organizational thought leadership, then I invite you to subscribe to the OrgTL newsletter. Each month we talk about the people who create, curate, and deploy thought leadership on behalf of their organizations. Go to the website orgtl.com and choose join our newsletter. I'll leave a link to the website as well as my LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to hearing what you thought of the show.