Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Peter Winick and Bill Sherman

Hey there, and welcome to our first— this is a bit of a somewhere between a beta and a 1.0 Leveraging Thought Leadership Live on LinkedIn. So Bill Sherman's here with me as my guest today, and this is something new that we're going to be doing. So as most of you know, we've had a podcast that we've been doing for 3 and a half plus years, 350 episodes. And what we decided to do was sort of change it up a little bit. We're keeping the podcast, not doing anything different with that. But what we will do here is, uh, every 2 weeks have a new series. And the difference in this series is we're gonna have 2 thought leaders that are fantastic, uh, and 1 mediocre host, which will be me. And some of the themes that we have coming up starting next week, uh, we'll have guests Next Wednesday, I've got Shannon Huffman Paulson and Jen Rutherford, so 2 folks with some amazing military experiences. The week after that, we've got 2 folks from the publishing world, then we've got 2 rock star speakers, and we've got another week with some rock star speakers, some amazing consultants, and on and on and on. So it's going to be 2 interesting guests, 1 mediocre host, and hopefully 20, 30 minutes of cool conversation. So Welcome, Bill. Let's try to, let's try to have an interesting conversation while we're waiting.

Hey, Peter, how you doing?

Good. So October 1st is officially not a national holiday, but for most of us, we know it's the start of Q4.

And the countdown to 2022. So many people in the height of budget season right now.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. I mean, I think number one is Just where things are now, Q4, versus where they were Q1. So Q1, you know, everyone's optimistic, the vaxes are coming out, but nobody knows what's going on. Maybe, you know, the buzz then was Q4, we're gonna have so many events and whatever, whatever. What are you seeing and hearing now that Q4 is actually here for how this quarter and probably more importantly next year is gonna look?

So I think as you look at the organizational side, especially the organizational thought leadership side, there's still questions in terms of Are we doing in-person events? Are we doing hybrid events? Is it remote? You know, the things that you would have done for going to conferences, trade shows, speaking events, those are all still up in the air, right? And we don't know what that is. But organizations have actually had to put pencil to paper, marker to whiteboard, and say, okay, we can't put a pause on putting thought leadership out there, and we can't solely rely on a white paper to do that work. So how do we sustain conversations in a personal way that, you know, when we may not be traveling and meeting person to person? So I think the vibe is budgets are being reallocated and you have to be thoughtful on where are you putting your time and effort and who are you focusing on.

Yeah, and I think part of the, the vibe is also you have to have a plan B, C, and D, and we're living in a world where everything's in pencil, like Hey, you know, see you in Vegas in January or not, right?

Well, and it's a good example for— I know several people who have been planning to go to major events and conferences. They're just looking week to week and saying, is that still on? Do I need to book that flight? Am I taking a train? Those questions are real, not only on the presenter side, but on the participant side as well.

Yep. And then You know, if we talk about looking forward from an individual thought leader's perspective, I think by now most have sort of figured out what their lane is. Some have dropped out, right? Like, like anything else, anytime there's a big shakeout in the marketplace, others have gone elsewhere. But I think by now we've been doing the COVID thing, if you will, for long enough where people have done some really amazing, interesting, creative things. We are seeing a plethora of new books come out, like the quality and quantity unlike anything we've seen before. Because one thing that COVID did was give a bunch of smart people a bunch of time back. And, you know, they typically didn't fill it up, you know, binging on Netflix, or if they did, they also wrote some great books. So there's some, there's some great stuff coming out. And—

Well, and fall is typically the season for business book releases. Very few people will grab a business book and take it to the beach. You and I may be exceptions to that. Right. But for most folks, You know, from September through November is a huge launch for business books. And I think you're right. A lot of people, both in the individual side of thought leadership as well as the corporate and the academic side, had more time to sit down and say, okay, if I'm not going to be on planes, if I'm not traveling, let me codify some of the ideas that have been going through my head or let me respond to the events of the day.

And I think they fall into a couple of categories. There are things that are clearly topical, you know, working remotely, mental health, DE&I, culture, the great resignation, you know, the things that are clearly sort of headlines in the long form in a book. And then there are other things that are more evergreen, more traditional thought leadership that's always needed, but there's more high-quality stuff out there because there was more bandwidth by which people could use to produce it. So I think that's a— we're living in sort of a post-COVID thought leadership renaissance era.

Well, and I would add even a third category. You've had people who either on behalf of their organization have had to peer into the future and say, okay, what's the world going to look like and how do we chart a course there? As well as people who have asked that same question and said, let's chart the course in a new way coming out of this. And I think That ability to spend time and to think about these issues and say, what are we doing going ahead? What will the world be like and how do we position ourselves? That ability— and I hate to say pause, but reset— gives us a chance to think about some of the assumptions that we've blithely followed for years, if not decades, in business.

And I think one of the advantages that a lot of thought leaders have that they may not be taking advantage of is, is, you know, when, when you're talking to executives at a senior organization, their world tends to be— I don't mean this in the wrong way— a little bit myopic. Like, who else are they spending their days with? You know, if I work at Citibank, I spend my days with other people that work at Citibank or in finance or in New York or whatever the case may be. You have this perspective as a thought leader, and there's a lot of benefit in sort of being a bit of a hummingbird and saying to them without violating any confidentiality or NDAs or something. It seems to me as if, you know, like I saw this morning, PwC announced that I think 40,000 of its 53,000 employees never have to go back to a thing called an office if they don't want to. That's a pretty— that's a big deal, right? So I think as thought leaders, people want to know, what are you hearing? What are you seeing? Oh, well, we're seeing some people that have tried this and that doesn't seem to be working really well. Some people have tried that. It's yet to be determined. Here's some interesting and creative things. So even if it's outside of your specific domain area, just the fact that you're an observer and you talk to lots and lots of people in lots of different industries, that's valuable to share with clients and prospects.

So one of the things that I've been watching over the last year, year and a half, which I think is interesting, is how the velocity of thought leadership ideas has changed pre-COVID to wherever we are now. And I think because we are now in an age where we are more comfortable, maybe some Zoom fatigue, but we're more comfortable talking to each other. And in fact, you know, you and I are across the country, Las Vegas and New York.

We're—

some days, you know, it's as easy to talk to your neighbor or to go into the city. So this ability for conversations to happen.

Yeah.

without stepping on planes, without having to be in person, but to have that depth of conversation. I'm seeing the velocity of the ideas accelerating globally.

Yeah, and I think that that globally piece, more people are more global now than ever before, and I don't see that going away. And it's like, you know, if you look at— and I don't think we're all that special or different— your calendar or mine, it's Europe, it's here, it's, you know, Far East, whatever. In a single day. I mean, we're zooming across time zones in ways that you've never been able to.

We're following the sun.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which is really cool. And I think it also, you know, there's a market arbitrage play there where you can bring yourself to anywhere. Before, there was a bias to say, if we were talking to a client in Paris, like, oh, you know, they're in the States, it might be difficult time zone or really expensive if we fly them in. The work is the work is the work, right? And I think It's just really interesting how comfortable people have gotten. I also think I want to add sort of a different thought. It's also interesting to see sort of the dust settling and some new corporate norms forming. So I have seen from my vantage point different sort of cultures or signals popping up inside of organizations. So some organizations have a no-camera policy, right? Oh, you don't need to be on camera when we're doing a meeting.

Mm-hmm.

In most, it's, it's assumed, and I don't know if it's, if it's literally stated, you will be on a Zoom, you will be on camera. But I think that's really, really interesting. And my opinion, and I've seen things on both sides of the aisle here, is, you know, if it's a Zoom and everybody's on camera and you're not, you know, you should get in front of that and say, listen, sorry, I'm not on camera, I'm in the car, or, you know, I just couldn't be today, or I just came back from the gym or whatever. Because it's just weird. Are you— because then people are thinking, is he there? Is he really there? Is he doing email? Is he like, whatever? It's just all these new technologies lead to new norms and new questions.

Well, and if you think back to the age of, you know, the teleconference, right, we weren't— when we were all muted during a teleconference, we weren't as concerned with what is everyone doing on the phone. But now When there's the possibility of the camera, that sort of anxiety of engagement increases. Are people engaged? Are they paying attention? Did I lose my audience? Those are big questions.

Yeah, and I think the way you eliminate some of those questions is, is by being on as often as you can, right? Because to me, if you're using a Zoom, a tool like Zoom, you're, you know, you're using it to take advantage of audio and video. If it doesn't need to be a video, Let's just do it on the phone or say, you know what, let's get on that Zoom link, but we just need to talk. So keep the cameras off. You know, it's a 5-minute quick catch-up kind of thing. But I think having the language around that, setting the expectation, all those sort of things are really, really interesting.

So from different parts of thought leadership have different calendars and paces, right? So the speaking calendar for if you're a keynote speaker out in the world, We typically in a non-COVID year be going into busy conference and keynote speech season.

Oh, we'd be knee-deep in it post-Labor Day.

Exactly.

Now till Thanksgiving, we'd be, you know, 7, 8 gigs a month, 12 gigs a month for a lot of folks.

And a lot of those folks would be coming here to my town of Las Vegas, and they'd be staying at one of the properties here. But the question is, In terms of cadence, what do you see over the next, you know, 45 days, right? So not the full end of year, but between now and say mid-November, what should the individual thought leader be focusing on and working on in this last sprint towards end of year?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think, you know, compared to last year, it's far more normalized compared to where we might have thought we were or perceived to be in maybe May or June, maybe less. I would be getting out in front if I were an individual thought leader. I'd be getting out in front of it and having as many conversations with as many of my clients as I can, not from a pitching standpoint, but just, hey, what's going on there? You guys used to do the, the big— what are the things that you are doing? What are you not doing? And if you're a keynoter, as an example, they might only have you filed in the spice drawer under keynote. They might not realize that you've got you know, you spent the last 6 months building a video-based training and development system, or you developed an app or an assessment tool, whatever. So I think it's up to you because you have probably changed a lot, meaning maybe your message, but certainly your business models in the last 18 months. And does anybody but you know about it? Have you put the effort into broadcast to your clients and such and reintroduce the suite of tools and how— where they should think of you and how they should think Of when to use you, because if they're thinking 2022, no keynotes, don't need to talk to Bill anymore, that's bad.

Well, and what I would say on that is the responsibility for you getting that information out there so that people understand how you've changed is not on them to try and figure it out, right? It's to you to reach them. Some of that can be done through broadcast, but also, like you said, Getting on calls and having one-on-ones, understand how they've changed and explain how you've changed. Right. And I think there's going to be a lot of reintroduction that's going on. And, you know, it may be even a theme going into 2022 in terms of how are we changing.

Yeah. And I think you don't want to be sort of tossed off or, you know, out of sight, out of mind. You know, it's like when you go into the garage to Go find a screwdriver or something, and you're like, oh, here's a bunch of Cat5 cables. I don't, you know, I haven't used Cat5 in the house in 10 years. I guess I can throw these out. They no longer serve a purpose, right? But at one point they were, they were really important. So you don't want to be the Cat5 cable. You want to let them know, actually, you know, I'm whatever, I'm Wi-Fi now, or I'm a router, or I'm a mesh, you know, router system or whatever, and you're still relevant.

To extend that metaphor, there's a lifecycle of ideas and there's also a seasonality of ideas, but there's also an obsolescence of modality. So like you said, Wi-Fi versus Cat5, right? And so if the modality that they're no longer interested in is keynote speaking or in executive offsites, how are you going to adapt?

Yeah, no, no, I think that's, that's clearly right. And then the other thing I would be observing What they, you know, asking folks what's working for them. What are you doing? What are the kind of things you're doing? So you're not— again, we're using keynotes as sort of a placeholder here, but what are the things that are working at your company? How are they dealing with, you know, now that we've been remote for so long, managing culture, onboarding, you know, leading and managing remotely, having conversations around DE&I that are different conversations, having conversations around, you know, mental health, you know. 2 years ago, it was probably inappropriate for a leader to ask someone, hey, you seem a little depressed, Bill. Right? Like, that'd be like, whoa, what's up with that? Now there are ways— and I'm not an expert in this space— to say, hmm, when you sense this— and not crazy extreme things, but someone's a bit off. Someone's like—

Mm-hmm.

Where are those boundaries now? We're redefining boundaries, which is a scary place for many of us to be. So I think there's opportunity there as well. So any additional thoughts? Because I think This is— this was a good beta and a test build, but we could probably start wrapping pretty soon.

Yeah, I think if I'd close with any recommendation, what I would say is look back on the audience that you're trying to reach, make sure you understand how they've changed and how they're changing, and then be prepared to be deeply relevant to them. Figure out what they need, and you're not going to do that by just sort of sitting and staring at a wall. Go have conversations.

Yeah, well put. Well, thank you everybody, and we hope to see you on the 6th and every 2 weeks thereafter, where it'll be, uh, 2 amazing thought leaders, 1 mediocre host, and we'll see where we go from there. So thanks so much.