Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Bill Sherman

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the LinkedIn Live version of the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. So today, my guest, I don't need to introduce him to myself.

Muted.

Let's try that again. Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay. Technology is fun when it works. So Bill is the COO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and he leads our organizational thought leadership practice. He also co-hosts the podcast, and he's also been in thought leadership more than most people on the planet. So hey, Bill, and happy birthday, Bill.

Well, thank you. Good to be here.

Yeah. So let's sort of just maybe dive in and have this be a little bit of shop talk that you and I are usually doing every day, but doing it in front of a mic and hopefully with a couple million people listening, or at least a couple dozen maybe. What are you seeing? What are you seeing out there in the marketplace on the thought leadership side? And you focus a little bit more on the organizational side than I tend to. But yeah, what are you seeing?

So I think there's an appetite for several things. Thought leadership is very buzzy as a term within organizations. So I've been sort of monitoring the pulse of jobs and positions that organizations are hiring for people with thought leadership in the title. It used to be a few years ago that would be unheard of. Now it's hard for a day to go by without seeing a Fortune 500 Or a large organization globally saying, we're looking for someone with specific skills to slot into a thought leadership role.

So let me, let me pause you there, because it's not like if I was looking for a systems engineer or a, you know, SaaS software person, whatever, that's easy. I can go on Indeed and put that up there, whatever. I think what organizations are struggling is it's not like anyone's been doing it for 15 years. So they have to work backwards from Is it a consultant? Is it a journalist? Is it a researcher? Like, what are the people?

Exactly. And you can see sort of trends based on the job description, based on whoever's leading the thought leadership function and where it sits within the organization. So there are times where it has a journalistic lean, a content strategy or content marketing lean. There's some that come from a pure strategy play. And so, I think one of the things that you're seeing is if you were to aggregate all of those job descriptions, you'd see things rise to the top and then you'd see sort of themes, sort of, oh, this is a journalistic take on thought leadership.

Yeah. And I think that makes it difficult for folks because there is no just add water and mix. There's no instant oatmeal of thought leadership. Many functions and departments, it's fairly obvious how to stand up that function, even if it's a new You know, if we're a rapidly growing, well-funded startup and it's the first time we hire a CHRO, someone's done that many, many, many times.

We need to set up our recruiting function or accounts payable, right? You know what that looks like, what its roles and responsibilities are, where it sits within the organization, and then what are the measurements, metrics, and outcomes. And that's the other piece too, is if I were to look beyond the demand for people with these skills and capacities, There's an appetite for scalable process within the organization so that it's not just pockets of individuals doing thought leadership, but what is our enterprise-wide definition, if you will?

Well, I think that's a key point because I think thought leadership at an organizational level 10 years ago, maybe even 5, typically was, oh, our founder or our CEO or our practice lead at this consultancy We'll byline an article on HBO, write a book, say smart things somewhere, check the box, done. Yeah. Now it's about the institutionalization of the thought leadership and saying, what is Company X's perspective on? And it doesn't have to be owned by a person. I mean, people have to create it and deliver it, et cetera, but it's more this institutionalization of the thought leadership that the organization, that the entity is behind. So how do you sort of institutionalize that?

So you first need to have either a function or someone who owns that process, right, and is responsible for standing it up. Otherwise, if you think about it from an ad hoc basis, 2 things happen. You have people either come up with an idea and say we should launch a blog or a podcast or do this or that. and they start focusing on the asset rather than—

Yeah.

The outcome. And that leads to all sorts of troubles down the line because asset-based thought leadership doesn't work. You just worry about filling boxes rather than producing results. And if you want this to be successful on the organizational side, you've got to be able to answer at a business level, if we're investing this time, energy, resources, talent So what? How does this drive us closer to the business objectives that we care about? And how do we know we're moving closer to success?

Yeah. So let me throw this at you. So we did a bunch of research here at Thought Leadership Leverage that you're aware of a couple of years ago, not that many, when we launched our focus into organizational thought leadership or added that focus, I should say. And we interviewed I think it was almost 40 heads of thought leadership at all sorts of organizations globally, from nonprofits to financial services to technology, whatever. And there were 2 or 3 themes that were recurring. One is in order for it to be successful, you need to have cover from senior leadership.

Right.

You can't think about thought leadership as, let's try a campaign, write one article, count the clicks, and count the cash register. So you need Senior leadership. You need a time horizon that is logical, typically, you know, 18 to 36 months. It's, you're not going to measure success in the short term. And then you need creativity around standing up the function. So any thoughts on sort of that ownership piece and getting folks to think long-term? Because we all get rewarded quarterly or whatever, you know, investing in something that might not pay off for 18 or 24 months. It's a hard sell.

Yeah. So I would use an argument by analogy in a couple of ways. The first I would point to is we are all motivated, short-term impulsive. I know that the research has been questioned around it, but I think of the Stanford marshmallow test, right, where you put the kids in front of the marshmallow and you can have 2 later or 1 today. A lot of kids go, you know, a marshmallow in my mouth is better than 2 marshmallows at a date uncertain, right? And that sort of incentivization also takes time. So the way that I frame it and think about it is organizations are used to making long-term investments in things like research and development.

Right.

And they know that it has a time horizon to pay off. You don't launch an R&D initiative and say, how are we going to monetize that this quarter. And in some ways, it's as foolish to sort of launch thought leadership Q2 and hope by, you know, first day of Q3, you've got money in the till.

But doesn't that speak to ownership? Because not exclusively, but if we're thinking in terms of word cloud, who owns the function, right? Marketing is probably more than 60%, I would, if I had to guess, right? And marketing—

I think that's a fair assessment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And again, sometimes it's strategy or special ops, or we've seen compliance and regulatory, but marketing tends to be where you'd think it would sit. And marketers think in terms of campaigns, right? Who are you trying to influence? What's the call to action? What's the outreach? Marketers tend to also not be long-term sort of players. So you also have to adjust that this thought leadership is not content marketing. It's not saying something pithy, in a piece of X to get Y. So, so speak to that for a moment, if you would.

So some of that from a marketing perspective, you have to think about, okay, what is the intent of the message? Okay, as you said, if 60% of the thought leadership functions sit in marketing, great, but it's a different time horizon. You know, a lot of content marketing is designed for people who are in or near a buying decision. Thought leadership is not. It's often educational. It's expanding someone's horizon, getting them to see things differently or think about something which may not be a burning issue on their plate today, but in 12 to 18 months Will be. And so it's the difference between fire prevention and firefighting. If you can get someone to think about fire prevention today— I live out in the West, so hey, clearing the brush around your house is a good thing to do.

Yeah.

And is the thing you can do today that will prevent crisis or disaster 12, 18 months from now. You've got to be able to think with that time horizon. And be able to say these things may not pay off today, and that's okay. We're making investments. A marketer is used to thinking about investments in brand, for example, and recognizing that an investment in brand isn't tied to a purchasing decision. You can make that argument that way.

Yep. We've got a question. I don't know if it's up on the screen or not. I can see it here, but it says, you know, who owns the thought leadership clout? Here we go. Who owns the thought leadership clout when it's developed on behalf of the brand or organization if the talent moves on? So that's a fabulous question. And I think, let's call it old-school thought leadership, 10, 15 years ago, we made someone a rock star, right? And then we put everything behind that person and we had them speaking on behalf of the organization and we had their name on the book. And when people thought of the organization, that person's name came up. And sometimes they didn't even know the name of the organization. They remembered the methodology or the framework or the platform. I think the key piece here is if you make one person the owner or face of, there's very little way to neutralize the risk. People do stupid things. People leave. People get into trouble, whatever. I think it's that institutionalization of the thought leadership. So one person might be the front, but there are other people also talking about it. And you're using thought leadership in a way that intrinsically motivates folks in the organization, whether that's for awareness or recognition. And you reward things that you want done. We've seen organizations integrate thought leadership as a requirement, lowercase r, to be on the HIPO track. What have you published? What have you put out there? What have you done? And then I also think if the talent moves on, as long as it's institutionalized, That's a good thing for them as well, that you could, you know, all things being equal, if I'm hiring X and one person comes with a full body or even, even dabblings or inklings of thought leadership and one doesn't, I kind of get that for free, right, as an organization. And it also shows that they have a passion, that they have a voice, that they're committed to doing something. So it's a really good question. I don't think there's one best answer to that. I don't know.

And what I would add to that for you, Rude, is you think about it as a talent pipeline. So organizations want to attract people who are capable of thought leadership, whether or not they're producing it today, but they want to hire and retain smart people. One of the ways from an employer of choice perspective is to signal smart people work here who are working on interesting, challenging problems.

Yeah.

And your propensity to attract and retain those people is much higher when you're showcasing thought leadership rather than showcasing none. Now, if someone moves on, many of the professional services firms, I think, have cracked the code in a good way. They maintain relationships. If you leave a McKinsey or an Accenture, you're considered an alumni of that, right?

Right.

Exactly. That's not a bad thing. You can clear up the ownership of who owns the idea or who has license in perpetuity to the idea, that's employment contract. But if you're not showcasing thought leadership in a talent-driven workforce right now, especially when we're seeing low unemployment, people who are capable of thought leadership will go where there are challenges.

Yep. So I want to shift us to a different direction for, for a couple of moments in terms of other things that we're seeing in the marketplace. So obviously right now today, and this could change, as we know things change rapidly in the last couple years, it looks like live events are coming back, right? At least, you know, in the short term. And it's great to see people on the road, and it's great to see our keynote friends on the stage again, and participants. And we're hearing all these amazing stories about, oh my God, it's the first time we got together as an organization in 2 years, and all those sorts of things. So You know, my thoughts are, and I'd love to get yours as well, Bill, you know, is this a short-term spike because there's pent-up demand for human connectivity? And maybe what are the long-term implications and changes?

So there's a couple of things there. And in addition, not only for events, but I would expand it to way of working as well. And so Laszlo Bock, who was head of people operations at Google, has been making some comments over the last week or so and saying that, you know, this hybrid way of working is really only a stop to or a way station on the way back to everyone working back within the office if you want the visibility and the opportunities, etc. And so I think there's an inherent tension between what do people want and then what do organizations want and perceive value. And the way that I would connect that for the conference is Yeah, it's a lot of time and effort, both in terms of hard dollars and time of travel on the road. But I think there has to be an intentional thoughtfulness to when do you exercise convening authority in person. And you've got to be able to show the ROI from that. The annual, you know, get-together, jamboree, that sort of thing is good from the human connection side. But if you can't tie it to the metrics, you got to question it.

Well, and then so the other side of that from a content perspective on the event side is many keynoters were largely entertaining, you know, heavy on the entertainment and a little bit lighter on the capabilities development. Doesn't mean they're not good people, right? But why don't you bring in, you know, an athlete to speak or a, you know, Someone from the Olympics or whatever, or military hero or whatever. Well, there's an entertainment value to what they've got. I think what organizations are doing now are saying, listen, there's a time and place for entertainment. And by the way, you can get a lot of that pretty effectively digitally and remotely. If we're going to spend the time, and it's the hard and soft dollars, right? How do I get 500 people in a room?

Right.

Their emails are piling up. The work still needs to get done. What are the tangible, measurable capabilities that are going to be developed in that? And keynoters historically weren't held to that standard. And I think it's starting to change a little bit.

Yeah, I think there's a blending of roles as well. So keynoter and sort of consultant, or, you know, the person with external insights, there's a Higher level of expectation of if we're convened in person, don't just entertain, bring us something insightful, relevant, and actionable to who we are and what we do. So I think there's always a place for a little bit of rah-rah, but I think those who will thrive in the event space are the ones who can bring in perspectives and make it time well invested.

Yeah. I also think because we're all so much more comfortable and fluent in digital and remote and hybrid and all that, that we don't need to keep the relationship to, we brought in this outsider, they spoke for 47 minutes at our rah-rah festival in Vegas or Orlando, and you'll never see them again or go buy their book.

Well, and that's exactly true whether you're an internal thought leadership organization trying to drive messaging or you're trying to bring an idea into an organization. A one-touchpoint sort of event doesn't work, right? So if your idea is, you know, one convened in one big white paper, for example, yeah, good luck first of all getting people to read that white paper. But you got to break it down. You've got to repeat it. And so from an experiences side and from a growth and development side, If you're bringing an idea into the organization, the ability to create a journey rather than just sort of a rah-rah speech and offstage you're done. Yeah.

And I think that that journey is critical. So it could be onstage, you know, you're leading with, you know, the most interesting, the most intriguing. It would be entertaining. I'm not advocating that keynoters don't also have an element of being engaging and entertaining.

Right. That's table stakes.

Yeah, right. They don't have that, they don't belong on the stage. But then, okay, great. You're gonna be hearing more from Bill, our keynoter, in the next couple of weeks, be it in the form of short-form video, be it in the form of Q&As, interactive pull-down libraries. There are other derivatives and modalities that you can digest that are asynchronous, right? And I think that's what we're really starting to see some interesting things happen because they feel a connection. Because we saw, we had that experience, we had that human touch. And I'm really intrigued and I want to continue that journey. And organizationally, we're watching our people get better at a skill, and that ties to a business outcome that we're looking to do. So it's, I think the bar has been raised. I actually think that's a good thing. Right?

And I think if I were to distill this down, again, looking internal thought leadership being deployed externally and then externals deploying Internally, we're seeing an evolution of how ideas are communicated, how they're taken to scale, and how people are evaluating, is this sticky? Is it creating impact?

Yeah, no, I think that's, that's very true. So I think a lot of people have changed their business models, those that are in the business of, quote, selling their thought leadership, where it's the product. and those on the organizational side that are deploying it. I think you mentioned earlier sort of the white page, the white paper. There are maybe a dozen, if that many, sort of annual or biannual white papers that are really stop the presses. You really need to get your hands on it, right?

Mm-hmm.

And I think there is still a mentality or a culture of, well, that's what these folks do, so we'll do it. And it's like one at bat. It's really not wise. To do it that way. One of the things that we're seeing is people might still invest in that big white paper that consumes lots of man-hours and dollars, etc., but they're repurposing the heck out of it. So they're taking—

Oh, absolutely.

That 40-page document that, that, you know, cost a couple thousand, you know, I don't know, whatever, a couple dozen man-years, man and woman-years, be inclusive here, and slicing and dicing it into bite-sized nuggets. So it's, it, you know, it doesn't need to be—

Well, and A lot of people are attuned to social media where they're making evaluations on ideas and content within microseconds, right? And they're scrolling just through social on their phone. If you can't present a reason why it is relevant to them within a couple of seconds, which is a high bar for thought leadership, but is essential, they're gonna scroll past.

Yeah.

And never find your brilliance. That's why, you know, burying your framework or your big idea deep within the white paper— more and more I'm thinking slap it on the COVID lead with that as an image, put the aha front and center, and then if they're curious, they'll dig deeper and want to know more and say, how is this relevant to me?

Yeah, and I also think it's, it's about not so much the focus on being all things to all people. Oh, I've got to get my stuff out and let me look at the vanity metrics on social media. Ooh, look how many people read it or clicked it or how popular I am, et cetera.

Mm-hmm.

But being laser-focused on the who. So I don't believe, especially when it comes to deploying thought leadership, that it's a big numbers game. It's the right numbers game. Getting your stuff in the hands of the right 50 people, 100 people, 5,000 people, Is a game changer. Trying to go after these astronomical numbers, um, there's just a lot of waste and it's the wrong metric, right?

So most organizations do not have the budget or the means to deploy Super Bowl ad level spend on a regular basis. There's a reason that that's there, right? But that's sort of like the apex of broadcasting still. You can take a fraction of that and say, who are the 50, 100 people that we need to get this idea in front of? Because if they hear our idea, consider it, accept it, and embrace it, the world changes for us, right?

Yeah.

I'd rather take a fraction of that budget and apply to narrowcasting or point casting to individuals rather than to try to do thought leadership by broadcasting, because broadcasting is not the right way for thought leadership.

Exactly. So last thing I want to spend a moment or two on before, before we start to wrap is there's so many new modalities, formats, and ways that we can deliver thought leadership, right? So it used to be traditional, right? I can deliver a keynote to get my message out, whether that's for an individual thought leader or an organization.

Keynote, book, white paper, speaking at conferences, blog article, podcast, the usual suspects, right?

Yeah. And I think they're limited. I mean, and they're all good. But I think what we're starting to see now, which is really, really cool and interesting, that thought leadership is that little piece of paper that the CEO has in his or her pocket to use 3 or 4 or 5 bullet points as they're walking the halls of Davos or something. That is thought leadership, or integrating it into a news conference, or, you know, what, what are the other modalities and formats and the tools and, and, you know, research that you could use? So it's not just the traditional, but being almost as creative in the format and the modality to try to reach people where they are. I think that's where we're seeing a lot of interesting things happening in the marketplace today.

Well, and the piece that I would add on that, in, in addition to modality, Is that thought leadership can be deployed digitally, but it is still inherently a relationship-driven tool and technology. And so don't just think about putting it on social, but there's this whole undercurrent of dark social things that you can't see, the conversations that happen off of LinkedIn, whether through direct message or email and that sort of thing.

Yeah.

And so think about how do you leverage relationships to drive ideas?

Well, and that's a great example of another way that we're living in this hybrid world. So LinkedIn's phenomenal for lots and lots and lots of things, right? To show the world, however you define that, what you're thinking, what's going on, etc., to build relationships. But to deepen relationships, you still need to pick up the phone. You still need to get on a call. You still, right? Very, very, very, very few relationships from a business perspective exist solely on LinkedIn, right? It's a great place to stay connected and to connect with people all around the globe that have common interests. But if you keep it there, you're sort of missing a dimension to it, I think.

So I'm looking in the comments and Rude has a question on conversationalists will make connections and create value. How do you measure the value created over time? So let me flip that to you, Peter, and then I'll jump in.

Yeah. So there we go. So measuring the value created over time, I think it depends what is of value to you, right? So it could be, if you think of it as from brand awareness, wow, now somebody knows who I am. And when there's a point in time where I can be helpful to them, I'm a potential tool in the arsenal. That's one end of the continuum. The other end of the continuum is, holy cow, we need that right now. So I think the way you look at value over time is, what is your total investment in these activities, whatever they are— marketing, thought leadership, etc.? What are you investing in that? What's the opportunity cost? And what does it look like on the other side? And if you don't have those goals set out upfront, it could seem like a big time suck. But I think if you're clear about, the who and the desired outcomes and leave a little bit of room for serendipity and things that we don't plan for. That's great because there's some people I look at on LinkedIn, I'm like, wow, I wonder if they have a day job. Like, they're spending lots and lots of time on there and putting out lots and lots of stuff.

Or LinkedIn is their day job, right? And in some organizations, that's absolutely true.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think that value over time is— I would flip that question a little bit, Red, and say, We've had many a client come to us and say, hey, I am fill in the blank, a Forbes contributor and all these other things. We say, great. What's the value of that? So there's a prestige to contributing to some of these big brands, but then we push them and say, okay, so how many articles did you write over what period of time? And what's the average length of time it takes you to produce an article? And we get to a metric. We say, great. So that was 700 hours last year. What's an hour worth to you? What did you get that you can attribute to that activity? And a lot of times we get a little nasal gaping, right?

So then it's like, well, then to build on that in terms of value created over time, I think one of the things that I would emphasize is thought leadership is a game where doing less better really matters.

Yeah.

If you try to do 32 different things and achieve 32 different outcomes, you never get the depth, quality, quality and repetition needed to create influence through thought leadership. And so the art of saying no is as essential, and saying no, I'm not going to focus on this audience, or I'm not going to focus on this outcome for thought leadership, because otherwise you just spread the butter too thin over the bread and nothing happens.

And I would say that also applies to the modality, which is the next question we, we've got up there. Indirectly is I would say it is, the numbers are next to zero of how many people have constituents that they're trying to influence that are on fill in the blank, Instagram and TikTok and LinkedIn. And like, your people aren't on all 11. Now, you could argue that, well, in their off time, they're on Instagram. So what are they using the modalities for to look for? If they're looking for hobbies or they're looking for entertainment or whatever, you don't need to be everywhere. So Red had a question on Twitter's move to create closed communities. I don't know. See where it goes. I mean, I think there have been certain closed communities that don't work so well anymore, various groups and things like that. Sometimes they do work well. From my standpoint, Twitter used to be a little bit different, and I think LinkedIn has won the race in terms of where do most business people go most of the time to develop relationships and get information. And Twitter has become, again, this is one person's opinion, more of a newsfeed, right, for folks, for that instantaneous what's going on in the world. There's a different cadence and there's a different depth that you can get into in each of the formats. I know, what would you say, Bill?

I think that's, well, I think the ability to, there's a, lack on social, sort of maybe Facebook, for closed communities, for a group of professionals that want to talk shop. And so LinkedIn for a while used to do groups, and then they sort of deprecated, and they're not as common anymore. I think there's an inherent tension between putting thought leadership out, broadcasting And then talking to the people that you've developed deep relationships with already, I think there's an appetite for it that many of the platforms haven't cracked the code on. And they want us as creators to make things accessible to as many people as possible because they want us to chase the shiny object of the number of views and likes.

Yeah, exactly. Well, this has been fun. I just want to be conscious of the time here and start to wrap us up. So, uh, thank you for spending part of your birthday with us.

Thank you for the birthday wishes.

Yeah, there you go. Well, thank you. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for, thanks for listening in today.