Simon says “Trust and cooperation are not standard in our organizations and yet we know they should be. There are two attributes that every single leader has the opportunity to possess that will help them create the types of organizations we would be proud to call our own.”
Includes an interesting perspective on millennials in the workplace starting at around 8 minutes but the whole talk is pure Sinek (meaning excellent).
What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important. Learn how to tell the difference and how to manage it here: How to be More Productive and Eliminate Time Wasting Activities by Using the “Eisenhower Box”
“Leadership is not a rank, it is a responsibility. Leadership is not about being in charge, it is about taking care of those in your charge. And when we take care of our people, our people will take care of us.”
More great thoughts from my hero, Brian Johnson…
More inspirational thinking from Brian Johnson of optimize.me…
I’m glad to hear that thoughtleaders like Dorie Clark still think that thought leadership is a valid term:
If you are pursuing thought leadership and would like to put some of Dorie’s thoughts into action, I have developed a practical, tactical thought leadership workflow that I outline here. Contact me below and ask how we can get started…
Thought leadership strategy is essential for getting found in Google but how to execute with the fewest moving parts is elegance! DaVinci said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” but what does that look like in a thought leadership workflow? Let’s start with some thoughts from Google Plus ‘meister’ Mark Traphagen:
Of Mark’s 5 points, items 1,3 & 5 are what Covey would call ‘private victories’ and items 2 & 4 are related to ‘public victories’. You can possess items 1, 3 & 5 in abundance but unless you using the wonderful tools we have at our fingertips to make your thoughts searchable, findable, knowable, shareable and memorable, you are missing the opportunity to become credible on a bigger scale. You will never be found in the ‘zero moment of truth‘ unless you treat Google as an ally, not an adversary to be tricked or gamed.
So then, if you’re with me so far, let me propose a workflow for thought leadership strategy with only 3 moving parts for you to consider:
I’ll talk you through it here:
Bonus Feedly video!
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, right? Here’s a minimalist workflow for content and thought leadership marketing that will help you get found when people are looking for you and what you do in the coming year…
The beautiful thing about this simple workflow is that you have to do the reading anyway in order to maintain your expert status — why not turn it into thought leadership marketing? Also every tool is free and completely cross platform and it could all be executed from a $199 Chromebook. I explain here:
How could I explain this more clearly or make this post better? Comment below or use the contact form above…
Friend, mentor and client Nilofer Merchant posted recently about the problem of fragmentation:
It’s a fragmented world. And it’s only becoming more so. It used to be that when people wrote, they wrote more deeply. In the early days of the web (pre-twitter), I remember hand picking the few voices I would listen to and then putting them into my RSS feeder and checking for their essays. Essays, not tweets, were the way we shared what we were thinking. But as “content” has become more important to maintain a standing online, more and more people are entering into the fray. More and more people who may not even have a point of view to advocate but just want to participate in the conversation.
As content becomes more fragmented, you could try and compete with that by doing more and more, by curating other people’s content, by then running your content through Twylah, by having that “twitter magazine” come out which puts all your tweets and links in one place so that people can catch it if they missed each particular one.
Or you could do the opposite. You could go deep. You could be that voice that everyone listens to because when it speaks, it is so deep and rich that it’s worth slowing down to listen to. Sort of a Morgan Freeman voice, in the times of Justin Bieber bop. Maybe it will allow the light of an idea to be seen more clearly.” There’s more at the source: In a fragmented world, go deep – Nilofer Merchant
If I were talking with Nilofer, I’d gently push back on this one. ‘Going deep’ does not preclude using Twylah; rather, I think, the answer to fragmentation and ‘going deep’ is focus…
When I first started blogging I was not confident in my own skillset and my focus was a mile wide and six inches deep. My tagline was “Marketing, Sales and Technology for small business, non-profits and academic institutions”. It makes me laugh now because there are no dozen websites that can cover THIS landscape effectively. I used to curate anything and everything related to those topics sometimes posting over 20 times a day! I got traffic but it wasn’t really relevant and it didn’t get me customers. Over time, Nilofer helped me go deep and realize my ‘onlyness’ was really helping thinkers to become thought leaders through the use of a minimal toolkit for content marketing. Now my tagline is “content marketing for thought leadership” and I help experts get found when people are looking for what they do. By going deeper, I may lose the opportunity to develop a small business website but I might gain the opportunity to work with a TED Fellow like Nina Tandon which is much more rewarding in the long run. Now, too, I’m more confident in my onlyness, I only post a couple of times per week…
Nilofer and I have had this discussion before and I think we both agree: If our thoughts are going to resonate with our target audience we need to understand the questions they are asking and align our answers with their queries. If we position ourselves as the obvious answer to the questions of the people we want to attract, we will get found when people are looking for ‘that one voice’. It’s not good enough however simply to think deep thoughts; we need to let people know that we are thinking them. Nilofer is a great thinker on strategy but I direct my energy toward ‘thoughts, tools and tactics’ for content marketing and ‘thought leadership’ marketing; I think the answer here is not either/or it’s both/and. I don’t think Nilofer’s saying that Twylah is a bad thing and I think she’d agree you need to go deep thoughtwise AND master ‘thought leadership’ marketing toolwise because the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate — it’s just that mindlessly tweeting and retweeting doesn’t do much to add value…
In closing, here are the 3 tools I recommend for ‘thought leadership’ marketing:
Ed. 2019: The current version of this list would be:
I posted about them here just last week. They are the tools that will help you get found when you decide to ‘go deep’ and become the one voice [because it doesn’t matter how deep you go if no one can find you]…
In order to be found in the ‘Zero Moment of Truth’, there are two main activities you need to master; FINDING and SHARING great content. Another way of putting it is…
Here’s how I do it [By the way, there is a Mac version at about 17:00 but you need to understand the principles in the Windows version. Sorry, Mac boys and girls!]:
Here is the mindmap of my screencast:
Here are the direct links to the tools I use in the screencast:
http://storify.com/e1evation/my-most-important-curation-tools
By the way, this post and this post might also give you some insight as to how I apply Getting Things Done [GTD] principles to this process. Comment below or connect with me so we can talk about how this applies to you and your situation…
Want to get found when people are looking for what you do? Consider this…
Want to know more? Connect with me…
In his epic book “Here Comes Everybody”, Clay Shirky writes:
We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race. More people can communicate more things to more people than has ever been possible in the past, and the size and speed of this increase, from under one million participants to over one billion in a generation, makes the change unprecedented, even considered against the background of previous revolutions in communications tools. The truly dramatic changes in such tools can be counted on the fingers of one hand: the printing press and movable type (considered as one long period of innovation); the telegraph and telephone; recorded content (music, then movies); and finally the harnessing of radio signals (for broadcasting radio and TV). None of these examples was a simple improvement, which is to say a better way of doing what a society already did. Instead, each was a real break with the continuity of the past, because any radical change in our ability to communicate with one another changes society.
Shirky, Clay (2009-02-24). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (p. 106). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
What good, though, is that expressive capability if people can’t find you when they need what you do? You need to be known!
The question is, though, for what should I be known? Everyone’s an expert! How do we know this? Seth Godin told us so long ago in his ebook ‘Everyone’s an Expert’ [About Something]…
So now you are an expert. I know it. You know it. It’s the rest of the world that may not know it. Yet. In my humble opinion however you did not get to this ripe old age of wherever you’re at without becoming an expert in something. The 10,000 hour rule is just that – Malcolm Gladwell hypothesized that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. Now think of all the things you are an expert at!
Here’s the problem, however: your area of expertise may be so narrow or specialized that no one in your town or county or even your state needs it. There are however almost 2,000,000,000 people on the Internet. Even if your expertise appeals to only one in 1 million people that still means there are 2,000 people who need you to guide them. The 10,000 hours you spent gaining your expertise probably means you’re pretty good thinker too. The challenge is you can be the sharpest knife in the drawer but if no one can find the drawer you’ll never get a chance to get out…
Chris Brogan says:
“As you now know, if you have no Google results, in a sense you don’t exist.
Brogan, Chris; Smith, Julien (2010-07-16). Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (p. 161). Wiley. Kindle Edition.”
My good friend Dana VanDen Heuvel, a thought leader in his own right, says “there are thinkers and there are thought leaders. They both have a point of view. The thinker has a point of view that is limited by word-of-mouth but the thought leader is only limited by world of mouth.” Using the good, fast and cheap tools available on the Internet a thinker can make his or her thought leadership position searchable, findable, knowable, usable, and shareable. Because of all those ‘ibles’, they may actually become credible. Publishing your thought leadership position will give you a share of voice which may lead to share of mind and ultimately to share of market…
The first step in ‘being known’ is actually accepting the face that you ARE an expert and discovering your ‘onlyness’ as author Nilofer Merchant puts it in her book “11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra“:
The foundational element starts with celebrating each human and, more specifically, something I’ve termed onlyness. Onlyness is that thing that only one particular person can bring to a situation. It includes the skills, passions, and purpose of each human. Onlyness is fundamentally about honoring each person, first as we view ourselves and second as we are valued. Each of us is standing in a spot that no one else occupies. That unique point of view is born of our accumulated experience, perspective, and vision. Some of those experiences are not as “perfect” as we might want, but even those experiences are a source of ideas and creativity. Without this tenet of celebrating onlyness, we allow ourselves to be simply cogs in a machine—dispensable and undervalued.
Merchant, Nilofer (2012-09-12). 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era (Kindle Locations 107-113). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.
So now we have established the foundation of being known; you have to define your area of expertise and embrace your ‘onlyness’; only then can you take the next step. More next Tuesday…
Pat Hopkins of Imaginasium in Green Bay [yes, we have very smart people here too!] wrote:
Steve Jobs had it. Bill Gates did, too. Their successors? Not so much.
Don’t get me wrong — Apple and Microsoft may still be successful. It’s just that they’ll never be the same companies that they set out to be.
These days, they’re operating based solely on sound business practices, rather than rallying around a unified, inspiring vision that made them the undisputed leaders in their field.
Same scenario in government: In 2008, Barack Obama had it in droves. This year? Both he and Mitt Romney have played it safe — relying on tried & true tactics rather than a bold vision to rally around. Thus, there’s been no clear leader in the race to date.
And remember good ol’ George H.W. Bush? After serving as Vice President to Reagan — an unequaled storyteller with a clear, compelling vision — he sought to continue the same successful policies for another eight years. Yet, he only served one term.
Bush 41 had an incredible resume — on paper, there was perhaps no one more qualified in recent history than he to serve as president. As he focused on the comfortable role of handling issues one-by-one and in the here-and-now, his advisors urged him to speak to broader themes. He referred to it as “that vision thing,” and didn’t see it as important as solving problems and letting his record speak for itself.
It cost him the election — voters instead rallied around a new candidate who urged them to “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” (And Clinton went on to serve two terms, with unparalleled popularity even today).
Vision is what every successful leader and company thrives on, yet one of the hardest things to truly communicate and achieve. In fact, it’s the most critical long-term success factor and challenge you’ll face.
You can get by for a while without it. But you won’t lead your industry. Or make as much profit as your competitor. Or retain the best talent.
And unless you also weave it into a compelling story and get good at telling it, you’re likely to face the same fate.” via About That Vision Thing….
Takeaway? Find yours — vision, that is — and pursue it while you still can…
I just concluded my ‘lunch and learn’ series on information and content management at The Docking Station in Green Bay, WI today. The first two classes were shot via video camera and unfortunately you can’t see the screen but you can hear the narrative. The last class was captured using a Google+ hangout and I’ll be using that from now on. Questions? Feedback?
This is [almost] everything I think I know about the topic with a couple of bonus videos thrown in at the beginning…
“Information, if viewed from the point of view of food, is never a production issue. … It’s a consumption issue, and we have to start thinking about how we create diets and exercise,” said JP Rangaswami in his TEDx presentation.
For a man who currently has 38,000 books in his collection and lives in Calcutta, India where they are known for their rich, savory and sweet Southern Indian cuisine, his is a theory that could very well make sense!
Since most of us consume food according to a certain diet, minimize our surrender to sinful indulgences, measure our nutrition intake to make sure we have enough of everything; it’s possible that we’ve been doing the exact same thing all along with our consumption of data – or perhaps we should. As Plato the philosopher once said, “Knowledge is the food of the soul”.
“When I saw Supersize Me, I started thinking, now what would happen if an individual had 31 days of nonstop Fox News?” joked JP Rangaswami.
What do you think? If you saw information the way you see food, what would you do to digest the knowledge differently – nibble, bite, scoff or binge?” via How To Eat Information | FinerMinds.
Long before I saw this TEDx talk on eating information, my thinking on the topic was galvanized by Clay Johnson’s book The Information Diet which I highly recommend if you are intrigued by JP Rangaswami’s thoughts and are looking for more on the topic…
Me? I ‘eat’ information via Gmail, Google Reader and Gist and then share the best of it here and at business.toddlohenry.com, Twitter, Twylah, etc. Johnson’s book and Rangaswami’s statement about “Information overload or ‘filter failure’?” address the heart of the matter — just because I can track almost anything or anyone in Google Reader or Gist doesn’t mean I should in the same way that I shouldn’t eat everything I find at the Piggly Wiggly and I certainly shouldn’t eat it all at the same time! As the Apostle Paul said “All things are possible but not all things are beneficial” — tools without forethought result in poor tactics. Johnson and Rangaswami’s thoughts can help us ‘eat’ information on purpose instead of by accident…
If you want to ‘eat’ better, I suggest you need better thoughts, tools and tactics. One way to do that might be to read my free ebook on ‘personal news aggregation’. Register at http://elevation.company/pna/…
Some people like to make things overly complicated. Me? Sometimes I like to grossly oversimplify things and take them back to the basics. Example? ‘Thought leadership’ marketing. To my mind, if you want to be a thought leader there are only two things you need to do well:
Everything else is just details…
When it comes to effective business development, or marketing and sales again, I think there are only two activities you need to master:
Again, everything else is just details…
Whether you are a freelancer or running a large enterprise I believe there are 7 databases you must manage effectively to succeed. They are:
That’s all there is to it! If you can effectively manage these 7 databases you can go from reacting to your market to dominating your market.
Questions? Feedback? I’d be happy to expand/expound on any of these topics…
I talk frequently about curation and what a valuable tool it is. I teach my students and clients that the time to curate content like this is when you find the paragraphs you WISH you’d written and you can add value to the curated content in the process. Jeff Goins is one of the most influential writers in social media and he recently shared this:
The privilege of leadership used to belong to a select few. The social elite. The especially charismatic. The unbelievably successful.
You used to have to be the head of your own organization. Or carry a prestigious title. Influence was earned slowly over time. And few had access to it.
But now, that’s all changed.
In the age of ideas when the exchange of information is as easy as a click of the button, anyone can be a leader. In the traditional sense, leadership is dead, and influence has replaced it.
So what do you — someone who wants to lead — do?
Become a thought leader
There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think… it’s all about the information!
—Cosmo, SneakersStart a blog. Launch a podcast. Begin recording videos of yourself and posting them on YouTube. Share your ideas with the world, and see which ones spread. This is what you need to do to see your influence grow.
In the age of the iPod, when we have instant access to gigabytes of teaching for free, the person with the best data (not the most) wins.
We don’t need more information. We need better information. We need compelling reasons to believe in a cause worth following. And those sharing them will be the leaders of tomorrow.
So where do you begin?
How about with collecting information? With becoming a learner (again)?
As they say, “leaders are readers.” But leaders are also conversationalists and event attendees.
They take people out to coffee and make friends at a party. Introvert or extrovert, they put themselves out there.
And if you want to lead, you will have to do the same.
An opportunity to lead (and learn)
Be honest. You don’t need more information. You need better discernment. I recently heard Alli Worthington share the following:
I hate it when people say they don’t know how to do something… Have you heard of Google?!
We all know this. Still, we struggle with knowing what information to believe or follow. So many choices, so little results. We just get paralyzed.
We need a process to curate. To figure out what works for us and what doesn’t. This is why I love organizations who demonstrate excellence of thought leadership not only through their example, but also through organized efforts to bring ideas and leaders together.
Source: How to Be a Leader in an Age of Information Overload | Goins, Writer
Me? I think Michael Moon of Gistics nailed it in his epic book Firebrands back in 1996. Moon hypothesized that we have now entered into a “5th Era” of man; the era of ‘trust networks’…
The potential that Jeff Goins describes is to use the “good, fast, and cheap” publishing tools available to us to become a ‘thought leader’ who heads up a trust network. If you’re intrigued by Jeff’s ideas but have no clue as to where to start comment below or use the ‘connect’ form; I offer the tools and the tactics – a ‘process for curation’ that can help you establish a thought leadership position through effective content management and content marketing…
The first commandment of social media is ‘share, share, share’. A blog should be designed in such a way as to facilitate that sharing, both for the author AND the reader. Here are some practical tips on how I use sharing from my blog to drive traffic and engagement…
I’m a huge fan of curation as a means of attracting attention to your thought leadership position. Here’s a great perspective from HubSpot on the value of curation done well…
Curated content, or content aggregated from various sources into one comprehensive resource (be it a blog post, an ebook, a presentation, etc.) can be a valuable part of any marketer’s content mix. That said, the process of actually curating it isn’t easy.
There’s a misconception among marketers that curated content is lazy and unoriginal, but we think it’s the complete opposite. It takes time and careful evaluation to create quality curated content, and the result is oftentimes a very valuable piece of content that helps people seeking information on a given topic to cut through the clutter on the web and save time. After all, what’s better than one awesome resource? How about 15 awesome resources? All accessible in one place! There’s a reason art galleries are so popular.
So how can you take advantage of the power of curated content? Here are our top 10 ideas for great curated content.
Go to the source if you want the 10 great ideas. Here are some of my greatest posts and screencasts on the topic of how to do it…
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Some of my ‘greatest hits’ on the topic of curation for content marketing…
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If you want to be a thought leader on the internet, there are only two things you need to do really well…
Assuming that you’re already an expert of some sort — and according to Seth Godin we are ALL experts at something — the two main things you need to do are:
Deepening and documenting your expertise may actually facilitate thought leadership by using a few “good, fast, and cheap” tools to get you a share of voice which may get you a share of mind which ultimately could get you a share of market…
I expound here:
Monday is the day I normally post on my most important topic; blogging and content marketing for ‘thought leadership‘ marketing. As I was posting this morning, I thought it might be a good idea to do a screencast on the ‘mechanics’ of curation. You can see that post here…
Doing the screencast, there were so many times I referred to other aspects of curation that I decided to round them all up in the following Storify story so here it is in one place; almost everything I think I know about the artful curation of content using Twitter and Windows Live Writer along with a host of other tools…
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Every screencast I’ve ever done on the mechanics of curation!
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Every screencast I’ve ever done on the mechanics of curation!
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Every screencast I’ve ever done on the mechanics of curation!
Every screencast I’ve ever done on the mechanics of curation!
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Bright, shiny objects! 
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