How can you use data and research to overcome creative blocks in thought leadership?

It all comes down to having a good LinkedIn leadership strategy. 1. Provide credibility with a Thought Leadership Brand in LinkedIN: Data and research should be used to add credibility to your thought leadership content. By citing credible sources and providing evidence to support your claims, you can show your audience that you are an expert in your field. 2. Understand your audience: Data and research can be used to better understand your target audience including their demographics, interests, and key points. Once you have a good understanding of your audience, you can tailor your thought leadership content to their specific needs. 3. Identify trends and patterns to generate new ideas and insights for thought leadership content.

Data is a thought leader's best friend. Whether it's a clip you happened to catch while listening to the news or a LinkedIn article that caught your attention, sharing interesting data and statistics with your audience can set you apart. In my experience, finding relevant data can spark new ideas and give me content to respond to with my point of view. While you can use data to prove a point and track your own progress, it can also inspire. Be on the lookout for relevant data all the time, not just when you need to create content. Then, share your ideas about the data that your audience may have seen, but overlooked, or may not have the expertise to put into action.

Agree, choosing the right data for your content creation ideas is a crucial task. The data you select should come from trustworthy and reliable sources. Personally, when I seek inspired solutions for ideas in economics and technology, I always turn to Deloitte, MIT, McKinsey, and WEF. I have written and published several articles on LinkedIn, the majority of which are supported by resources and references from these sources.

Data is the New Oil, but for it to be value it has to be processed, positioned & refined for the impact it is expected to give. This is Thought Leadership! It is a journey with no shortcuts. As a thought leader you are expected to identify trends / patterns, for which you should have access to data sources, to service live multi-functional streams & secondary data, in order to to make it work The difficult part is to use it without a bias and challenge your belief and or intuition. Allow yourself to dwell into a different perspective to have this informed view using historical sense, expert feedback, surveys, success stories etc. to make it catchy, pushy & interesting. Use Qualitative Data to leverage creativity

Look outside your industry too. A lot of people only research what is immediately relevant. Often we can get insights from unrelated or neighboring industries, topics, publications etc.

Obviously it needs to start with assumptions. You wouldn’t start with an explorative discovery of your data and therefore you should ideally apply different ways to analyze the data. Often you won’t be able to access raw data and do your own analysis with visualizations but in the cases you do, you should ensure it’s with “self-service” in mind as you’d probably would need to look at the data from different angles.

Storytelling is only needed if it’s intended for others than yourself as in dashboards, but when it comes to telling a story this should be embedded into the story itself and data visualizations should serve as a verification throughout the story.

I use data storytelling to communicate complex ideas in an engaging way. I present data in context, making it relatable and easy to understand without using technical jargon or complex charts/figures. I use visual aids like simple comparative charts to illustrate my points and make data more digestible. To connect with my audience on a deeper level, I incorporate elements that evoke emotion when applicable. Lastly, my goal with data storytelling is not just to inform, but to drive my audience to take action, using my narrative as the motivating factor.

Data feedback is typically direct feedback almost on the data source itself. It’s important this is controlled as else the story renders untrustworthy. It can also be a validation of the relevance of your story; no feedback means no relevance. Views means somewhat something, likes means it resonates and shares are ultimately a confirmation of your point-of-view. This is the social media funnel. When it comes to more in depth content you should initially aim for peer reviewing and maybe validation through surveys and polls - but these are probably more as part of the data - but also testimonials and interviews serve as a validation.

At this point, data optimizations shouldn’t happen. It’s content optimizations based on insights derived from data. You also need to acknowledge that data is relatively to the recipient and while things might make sense for you and your best friend interpretation is relatively to the receiver and continuous validation is there for important.

Interesting to see this pulled out as 'data innovation', but I would say it's getting closer to what thought leadership should really represent - exploring new angles and perspectives, or connecting ideas to take them in a new direction that adds value for the organization or leader in question.

This is an interesting area. Looking at existing data sets and trends to identify new trends. There are a lot of examples where this data innovation will be relevant. For example, - every productivity-boosting app or social media app may have a seeming uptick in connections and interactions or an increase in efficiency; these in the future may have long-term problems with other social aspects.

Being a thought leader is like a cosmic voyage - inspiring, but occasionally you drift in the cosmic sea of ideas. How do you find your way back when creative constellations seem dim? Change perspective: Shift your view of the cosmos by exploring new topics or angles. Collaborate: Engage with fellow thought leaders for a fresh cosmic breeze. Stellar research: Dive into cosmic knowledge; sometimes, facts are the sparks that ignite creativity. Meditation: Find a cosmic quiet space for your mind to roam freely, reconnecting with your cosmic insights. Embrace patience: Just as the universe evolves over eons, allow your thoughts to gestate.

Whatever data and position you build around the data needs to hold credibility both internally and externally. Even if the final audience is external, it's always worth taking the time to make sure that it will have the backing of people across the organisation, rather than taking the risk of seeing colleagues question or criticize when it's too late to backpedal.

Data is important evidence that helps surface trends and validates your point of view, but truly innovative ideas often don't yet have data. You can use data to surface the problem your idea solves but don't forget to tell stories. You need to stir emotions to create action.

1 Focus on the absolute essence of it all. 2 Is this wicked or tame? Tame is obvious, wicked has no-win just acceptance. 3 Thought leadership is all insight and serendipity. 4 Our intuitions are numerically very accurate, data just hides things. 5 Start with the ‘empathy styles’ of the people you must work with; design your ‘elicitations’ accordingly. Avoid egos, plus method always completes but intuition excels! 6 Play scenarios, play games, brainstorm, use similes, invent stories, mind map, use Soft System Methodology, rapporteur/recorder, time limit everything. 7 Do once cold sober in the pressure of the day, then revisit after a relaxed team evening. 8 Once you have shaped the outcome, then use data to disprove its validity.