Who creates thought leadership in your org?
If you said “Our C-Suite” or “Research” you’re at risk.
Here’s a story about yeast(!) from several years back.
I was working on a project with a CPG company–
Hundreds of thousands of employees–
and no one had ever looked globally
to see where they had thought leadership.
Thought leadership was an unmanaged function.
Left to serendipity at the zone and country level.
When we mapped out their areas of thought leadership —
two areas were easy to predict:
production logistics and distribution.
A third area was a bit of a surprise.
🦠Yeast.
Yeast is core to their business and product.
They had built world-class expertise in yeast.
But it was many levels down in the org.
If you took away this thought leadership,
the whole business would suffer.
Many of the top thought leaders in yeast were
close to their retirement.
How do you promote this thought leadership in yeast?
So that the next generation of top talent wants to
come work for you?
How do you prepare the next generation
to serve as thought leaders in the field?
Organizations don’t create thought leadership,
but they can create the systems and culture
to help their people flourish
as thought leadership practitioners.
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I write about
#thoughtleadership #OrgTL and #brand