I spend a lot of time thinking about thought leadership, and the greater community of thought leaders. And lately, I find myself thinking about all the ways that organizations and leaders can invest in thought leadership to make their organizations better.
Organizations don’t create thought leadership. People do. And investing in people can really help your business grow!
Ask yourself, “How does thought leadership fit within our marketing strategy?” “How does it fit into our overall business strategy?” and “How does our thought leadership investment compare with our peers?”
Now is the perfect time to invest in organizational thought leadership.
Here are a few things leaders can do:
- Encourage people to practice thought leadership.
- Give them time within their work week to create, and share thought leadership insights.
- Reward excellent thought leadership work and set an example for your team.
Great leaders make thought leadership part of their GTM strategy. Be sure to assign someone to be responsible for curating and supporting thought leadership in your organization, and link thought leadership work to incentives and compensation.
Once you’ve built a foundation within the organization, you can work on these advanced steps:
- Build a thought leadership talent pipeline.
- Make thought leadership a core competency.
- Implement metrics that track thought leadership outcomes, not just vanity metrics.
This is a great time for each of us to take a moment and look inward. To strengthen our organizations and our connections. To seek out thought leadership and make it part of our business strategy.
When we move forward, we’ll be the stronger for it.