Breaking Down Thought Leadership

When discussing thought leadership, there are smaller pieces that need to be defined or identified so that we can talk about them.

The Experience

Thought leadership is based around some experience, either acute or aggregate:

• Acute experience is a specific moment, scenario, or project that resulted in some insight

• Aggregate experience in a career-long collection of acute experiences and the collected wisdom that comes from it

I’m prepared to make this a universal point: thought leadership always communicates some experience, whether that be a specific problem that was solved, or an opinion or perspective derived from the wisdom of a body of work.

The Artifact

Thought leadership manifests in an “artifact” of some kind. This is a concrete piece of media or or a specific experience:

I talk a bit more about the specific types here: The Formats and Artifacts of Thought Leadership

Obviously, this is content.

Thought leadership simply has to manifest, usually in some persistent, unattended form. It has to focus into some media that can be communicated. There are of people doing a lot of amazing things that never come to a focus like this.

I don’t think thought leadership can be targeted. Meaning, if I do a workshop or a technical brief for a specific customer, that’s not the same thing. That’s just work product.

Thought leadership doesn’t know who will consume it. It’s a thing we put out in the world, usually for public consumption, without knowing exactly who will perceive it or how.

The Attribution

Thought leadership has to “source” from someone or some organization. In practical terms, there always some byline associated with it.

Remember, this is a demonstration of value – it’s a claim that what’s in this particular artifact is representative of acute or aggregate experience, and that experience “belongs” to some source. Usually, it’s an individual person, but some gets published from a “team” or organization as a group.

If there’s no byline, then there’s no… target of that value demonstration. It becomes “just” content (quoted because content is still great, it just doesn’t have the larger purpose of thought leadership).

The Process

At its largest and most systemic level, thought leadership can become a process or a program. To be sure, a lot of great content is spontaneous and unmanaged – some person gives a single, great conference talk, or just starts blogging somewhere.

It’s rarer that a person or an organization embarks on thought leadership with “intention aforethought” and a systemic plan for maximizing the production of it and benefits to be obtained from it.

The Channel

This is the transmission mechanism – how does the artifact get in front of the consumer?

In more practical terms, where is the artifact posted or published? On a website? In social media? At a conference?

How is it promoted, both from a campaign perspective and point-to-point? How is it framed? How do your sellers and customer success people communicate it to their prospects and customers?