I know I can be guilty of this at times. Could you find an extra 30 minutes a day to dedicate to Thought Leadership? If you are struggling to find the time, set your alarm clock half-an-hour earlier in the morning and check yourself when you consider hitting the snooze button.2 Fear: Like many others, you may be worried that your opinion isn’t valid or your customers and competitors will find holes in your arguments. All Thought Leaders have these moments of self-doubt from time to time. Don’t let this unfounded fear put you off. Instead, you should concentrate on the one thing that validates your position – your experience. Remember, it is highly unlikely that anyone of any importance or influence will single you out for attack or question your opinion. The worst case scenario is that you’ll be ignored. In this case, it’s time to look at your Thought Leadership strategy, re-evaluate what you think is important and reconsider what you believe your target audience is looking for.
3 No ideas/lack of imagination: This is quite frankly a lazy excuse. Think about it for a minute – where do other Thought Leaders in your industry look for inspiration? The answer is staring you right in the face. Their customers. You speak to these people every single day. You know what makes their lives difficult and how your business can help solve their problems. If you find yourself short of ideas, try speaking to the people who pay your wages.
4 Lack of presentation skills: Thought Leadership need not be a solo effort. Ideally it will focus on one or two individuals within your organisation but that doesn’t mean you cannot enrol other people to help you out. Perhaps someone in your company has a flair for writing and can help you to polish your copy. Perhaps another individual is more comfortable in front of a camera or speaking to an audience. There is no reason why they cannot present your findings on your behalf (we’ll cover this more in Chapter 5, where we discuss empowering your colleagues). If you are a one-man band it might be worth engaging with a freelancer to help you improve your position (there are also ideas on where to seek such help later in the book).
But sometimes it’s not the lack of skill or talent that prevents an organisation from developing and delivering a great Thought Leadership programme. Sometimes it is easier to sit back and invent roadblocks than raise your head above the parapet and shout “I have an opinion!”
Let’s have a look at a couple of examples I have encountered where businesses imposed roadblocks upon themselves.
Self-imposed roadblocks
Roadblock 1: Trust and too much attention to detail
Organisation 1 was completely sold on developing a Thought Leadership Marketing programme. They worked in an extremely tight niche which didn’t justify mass marketing techniques, but still wanted to communicate best practices – as well as present upsell opportunities – to their target audience. They had the resources to deliver detailed Thought Leadership across multiple channels, held a strong belief in the validity of their argument (and their argument was good) and they certainly didn’t lack imagination or presentation skills. But when it came to delivery they just couldn’t get the stuff out.
Their problem was two-fold. Trust was a major issue, with all content requiring sign-off from a senior manager who was rarely available. Secondly, they questioned everything in minute detail, tweaking, re-developing and ultimately delaying (or scrapping) every project.
As they were delaying their Thought Leadership campaigns, their competitors were competently pushing out fairly reasonable content. While this Thought Leadership from competitors would never set the world on fire, it would certainly have a bigger impact on their potential clients than the wall of silence published from the overly reticent firm. And while they kept their lips tightly shut, fiercely loyal customers would sign long-term contracts with their competitors for services which could have been provided by the mute organisation – if only they had been more vocal in their approach.
Roadblock 2: Cynicism
Organisation 2 had access to a great product, could beat anybody on price and still maintain a decent margin and, perhaps most importantly, they possessed a complete understanding of the industry in which they worked. As a family business, their reputation had been formed over several generations and while the current business owners had modernised significantly (adopting internet technologies not normally associated with such a traditional business) they had retained much of the charm and character afforded to them by their long history.
This organisation had two streams of revenue. The first was from a client base who they had been serving for years (although this market was in decline). The second was via mail order customers who were attracted to the business due to its geographic location, which had a great reputation for delivering high quality products (a real opportunity for growth).
Due to the local interest connection, the local media (which included a range of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV) could have been particularly important to developing this organisation’s brand. You should never underestimate the importance of the local media, particularly now that local stories can have a global audience thanks to the internet.
The local media were in fact very keen to showcase the products and services of this local business. They wanted to position them as local ambassadors and, as such, catapult their reputation to new heights. But every approach by local journalists and feature writers was rebuffed.
The reason for this was, in my mind, quite ridiculous. The owner didn’t want his ‘mates’ (many of who also worked in the same industry) reading about him in the local paper, claiming, “They would never let me hear the end of it if my photo was splashed all over the Telegraph.” As a traditional industry, the adoption of modern technology was treated with a degree of cynicism and mistrust by many of his industry peers and for foolish reasons he feared their reaction to his high-tech endeavours more than the loss of significant steams of new business.
Instead of building his business on his reputation, the owner seemed happier to pay for advertising and promotion that failed to ride on the local connection and had little impact other than adding significantly to the costs of running the business. This meant he was just one of many businesses struggling alongside competitors who didn’t deserve to be in the same class. I check in with the proprietor every now and again and business is so-so, but it seems they are losing significant trade to newer firms in the area who are building their reputations through their more aggressive approach to Thought Leadership.
These case studies are instructive because they show that you should avoid putting up barriers like these in your business. The moral of both these stories is don’t waste your time inventing roadblocks – just get on with your Thought Leadership.
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