One of my new LinkedIn contacts from the Banff Centre (fantastic place, if you ever get the chance to go, don’t hesitate) recently posted a interesting blog by Glenn Llopis of Forbes.com who asks “Is Leadership Irrelevant?” (20 September 2011). I’ve done Llopis the disservice of boiling his comments down to four essential phrases:
- “We have all learned that leadership has lost the edge it once had because leaders have been required to be good managers, not great leaders.”
- “Clients want thought leadership partners, not order takers…that are not afraid to push the envelope of creativity.”
- “Leaders today must approach their business like a think-tank, where every member of the supply chain is an asset…and thus accountable to contribute in ways that support continuous innovation.”
- “Organizations must invest in changing the mindset of leadership from general fighting the last war to creative enabler of opportunity, innovation and possibility.”
Couldn’t agree more – leadership is essential, and thought leadership buttresses claims to leadership – so why the hesitation? For one, many organizations don’t know where the knowledge of their organization resides. In 2001, Hewlett-Packard CEO Lew Platt said “HP doesn’t know what HP knows; ten years later, Colliers International CIO, Veresh Sita, said “Colliers doesn’t know what Colliers knows. They’re not alone. The inability to know what you know impedes organizations wanting to fight-off the tendency to hoard knowledge and encourage collaboration.
The bigger problem, however, is that once organizations find out what they know, most don’t know what to do with those insights. The roadblock, oddly, is the process of “managing” knowledge – dumping it into repositories but otherwise doing nothing with it. What about marketing? Why doesn’t “what you know” become the core of your branding process?
If organizations don’t understand the benefits of thought leadership it’s because they don’t think creatively about branding. They’re afraid of outreach, of advocating, of saying something substantive that might commit them to a position. In other words, this whole debate about knowledge reveals that organizations have a dysfunctional relationship with the branding process.
Organizations spend buckets of cash on conventional branding approaches because they’ve been promised a stronger, more confident – better – organization will emerge. Are they expecting too much? It’s hard for everyday tactics to live up to hyperbole. Their superficial “claims and image-based approach” is rooted in the belief that all it takes is a little chutzpah for your brand to succeed. To be different you need something different.
You won’t be heard if you aren’t saying anything worth listening to. Give them something to talk about. Persuading audiences about your organization’s value begins with providing tangible proof of unique ideas and leadership. Communicating what you know better than any other organization is the starting point for success. With a content-first communications strategy you stake a unique territory, stand for something clear and definable in the minds of audiences, have the evidence to back up your claims, and can get people talking about your work – then you’ve got a believable, well-differentiated brand.
So, by all means, figure out what you know – just don’t stop there: start building thought leadership into your brand.
“Relevant reading from the Contrabrand archive: Changing of the Guard (2005) http://wp.me/pqoXT-B“
