{Essay 3} The emergence of thought leadership 3.0

This is part three in an ongoing essay series on why thought leadership matters if you want to help create a better world. The first two essays are:

• Why thought leadership matters if you want to help create a better world
• What is thought leadership?

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In a recent podcast , I heard two thought leadership professionals lament the dearth of thought leadership these days.?

They reminisced about the heyday of thought leadership in the 1990s when new concepts changed how everyone thought about doing business. Nowadays, they observed, too many companies are simply chasing short-term profits rather than investing in thinking that will redefine the future.

I found myself wondering along with them, Are the best days of thought leadership over? Has social media ruined our ability to produce thinking that changes the world for the better? ?

After some grappling, my answer is a decided NO.?

Yes, the rise of the influencer and those who hack the system to gain visibility have made us skeptical of self-proclaimed thought leaders. Most of them are only in it for their own gain. And audiences distrust the “solutions” proposed by large organizations, too—they’re often only in it to increase their power over us.?

Yet I still believe the solutions to the problems we’re facing in the world today will come from thought leadership. It’s just a different kind of thought leadership than what most people think of when they hear the term. And it’s not necessarily found in the places and from the sources we’ve come to expect it.

But this thought leadership is already producing the solutions (plural!) that our world so desperately needs—even if those solutions do not easily lend themselves to making Big Bucks in the short-term.

To understand the rise of this new kind of thought leadership, we need to understand what brought us here.?

In this essay, I explore the two waves of thought leadership we’ve experienced so far, what's causing the current rise of a third wave of thought leadership—what I call thought leadership 3.0—and how this third wave differs from the previous ones.

Thought leadership 1.0 (c.1980s and 1990s): thought leadership as business strategy

The oldest generation of our current working population started their careers in the 1980s. When these folks hark back to the “good ol’ days” of thought leadership, they’re likely thinking of thought leadership 1.0.

At this time, before the widespread adoption of the internet, developing ideas and getting them to the public required extensive funding and connections. You needed access to a network of peers and clients against which to test your ideas. When it was time to make your ideas known, you had to get published in a well-known publication like the Harvard Business Review or by an established book publisher.?

That’s why most of the big ideas at this time came from folks at well-known business schools and large companies and consulting firms. My two favorite thought leaders from this era, Clayton Christensen and Jim Collins, were at Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business respectively.

Another well-known example of thought leadership 1.0 is the concept of business process reengineering by Machael Hammer in the 90s. Bob Buday , who were part of the team at the Index Group that brought the concept to market, tells about it in his book, Competing on Thought Leadership .?

Even though the practice of thought leadership predated the 90s, thought leadership emerged as it’s own discipline at this time. Joel Kurtzman—economist, business thinker, and Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Business Review—is attributed [1] as having coined the term thought leader in the first issue of Strategy + Business (which he founded) in 1994.

Thought leadership 1.0 is still with us today. Like back in the day, it’s mostly practiced by folks at large organizations with lots of resources. These organizations invest in and back certain ideas and problems—typically, things that can produce a return on their investment, give the practitioner and their organization a competitive edge, and doesn’t subvert the systems that give them their power.?

The mark of thought leadership 1.0 is that it practiced as business strategy.

Thought leadership 2.0 (c. 2000s and 2010s): thought leadership as marketing

The second wave in thought leadership was ushered in by the widespread adoption of the internet: what we like to think of as the Great Equalizer. The internet gave us access to information unlike ever before. It also made it much cheaper and faster to publish our insights.

The first two decades of the new millennium saw the rise of blogging, content marketing, social media, and TED talks. Everyone was sharing their ideas. Thought leadership abounded, and we were loving it and eagerly gulping it all up.?

Compared to thought leadership 1.0, this second wave put thought leadership within reach of more people. But some ideas still bubbled to the top while others did not. Why?

While the differentiators for thought leadership 1.0 are access to resources (time, money, and connections), the differentiators for thought leadership 2.0 are communication skills and resonance.?

Think of people like Brene Brown and Simon Sinek. Their TEDX talks went viral, which in turn led to their book deals and their careers as we now know it. Or think of Seth Godin, whose blogs and books made us think completely differently about marketing.

These folks aren’t only known for their ideas. They’re known for what they stand for. We don’t just learn from them—we follow them. Thought leadership 2.0 gave rise to the influencer, also called the creator, with followers.?

By the late 2010s, thought leadership as part of content marketing abounded. Companies and individuals alike increasingly shared their opinions and insights because they realized that it’s a great marketing strategy.

I first encountered the term thought leadership [2] during the Covid pandemic, what I believe was the peak of thought leadership 2.0. At this time, marketing and business development moved almost exclusively online. Even those who still happily practiced thought leadership 1.0 until that time were forced to adopt some of thought leadership 2.0’s tactics. This was, not surprisingly, also when LinkedIn’s boom as a content platform (rather than an online resume and networking platform) started.

I was introduced to thought leadership as a type of content that forms part of marketing. I learned that it involved experts who reflect upon their work and share their insights with their audiences for free. It’s marketing, because it builds your and your organization’s reputation. You’re not paid for the act itself—and yet it pays because it leads to sales.

Most people these days view thought leadership as part of marketing, I’d argue.?

It’s why Bob Buday argues so passionately (and beautifully, in my opinion) in Competing on Thought Leadership (published 2021/2022) for a return to thought leadership as business strategy instead of marketing—his view, which is aligned with thought leadership 1.0, isn’t the predominant norm anymore.?

His and others’ critique of thought leadership 2.0—thought leadership as marketing—is valid. Because thought leadership has been practiced purely as marketing, it’s quality has been getting thinner. Rather than focusing on deep and revolutionary ideas, organizations and individuals started chasing harder after the views, likes, and follows that algorithms grant them because it gives them visibility.?

Fluff, volume, and hype have become the norm. The 2021 Edelman LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study found that 71% of decisions makers say that less than half of the thought leadership they consume give them valuable insights. In 2022, the same study found that only 29% of C-Suite executives in organizations that produce thought leadership thought the content their organization produce is very good or excellent.

Thought leadership recipients are fatigued. They’re tired of wading through an onslaught of content to find substance. In the 2021 Edelman LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study, roughly four out of ten decision makers said there’s more thought leadership content than they can manage. Anecdotally, I hear almost weekly from someone who says they “can’t keep up” with all the books, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, and social conversations in their industry, even though they try hard to.

Thought leadership practitioners are feeling it too. Marketers are suffering from burnout. (I especially appreciate Chris Gillespie and Donnique Williams ’s take on the problem; both are from Fenwick Media.). Most tragically to me, I hear from too many younger folks who are hesitant to step up to thought leadership because of the damage they’ve seen the content treadmill do to others’ mental health.

And as promising as we may think AI can be to solve many problems of our times, it stands posed to simply accelerate the destructive trends of content overwhelm to breaking point.

We need a new type of thought leadership.?

Thought leadership 3.0 (c. 2020s): thought leadership as...???

Let me be clear: there’s nothing wrong with thought leadership 1.0 or thought leadership 2.0. They reflect the realities of the times that produced them, and they produced (and still do) valuable insights. Without them, we wouldn’t be here.?

But neither of these approaches can solve the issues of our time.

First, trust in institutions and those in power is low. I can cite an Edelman research statistic here, but you probably already know it. And you feel it.

Secondly, we’re desperate for sustainable solutions. And by that, I don’t only refer to our environment, though it’s part of it. In all walks of life, we need to return to practices that sustain us as humans and that we can sustainably keep up.

The way we organize ourselves at all levels of society is not working well for the average person, as I argued in the first part of this series . And ongoing technological changes like AI as well as large demographic shifts in the next few decades suggest we might be facing radical disruption across all spheres of society.

In response to this reality, I am seeing the rise of thought leadership 3.0.

I’m noticing people who are stepping up, not because they want to profit from it, think or want to be the “best” or the “smartest”, or aspire to be a “thought leader”. They’re stepping up because they feel compelled to. It’s like a calling that they can’t ignore.

Where most of us feel overwhelm and fear, they choose to become curious. They know they don’t know it all, so they’re more interested in asking good questions to explore and understand the issue than in finding the answer to proclaim. This process involves empathy, curiosity, listening, and gleaning from their own experience and those who’ve come before.

On this foundation, they explore solutions in collaboration with others, whether it’s co-practitioners or those they serve. This exploration phase can involve research and data like is common in thought leadership 1.0, but it also involves intuition, emergence, community, conversation, conviction, and morality.

Through this process, they start a movement of change, transformation—of revolution, if you will.

It’s not a race. They don’t compete with anyone. It’s about sustainability and depth for all participants [3].

When these people uncover solutions, they present it humbly, open to scrutiny, and always willing to improve and iterate. Where they work with clients, they come alongside their clients to support them in finding the right answer for their situation. They follow a coaching rather than an advisory approach.

They know there isn’t one right answer. There are answers. There are puzzle pieces—or Lego pieces , if you will. Each of us hold only a few. We must come together, collaborate, integrate, and collapse divisions to solve the complex challenges facing our world.

This work is deeply personal. It requires that we bring our whole selves. It can even be described as spiritual work that requires you to elevate your consciousness and therefore that of those you touch.

That’s not to say that this work isn’t rigorous. It is. It hearkens back to the rigor of thought leadership 1.0 but applies it to both larger societal issues and more granular issues than what thought leadership 1.0 is focused on.

It’s also often interdisciplinary rather than industry-specific. These folks aren’t aiming to become the next industry thought leader. Rather, they’re inspired to bring all of their (of seemingly incongruent) life experiences and expertise to bear on a compelling problem. They most often practice what I call micro thought leadership that functions in the intersection of two or more things, which results in depth and relevance rather than reach.

One of commonalities I've noticed in those drawn to this emergent type of thought leadership is that they care, act, and think.

Even if their natural tendencies skew towards one or two of those things, they know they need to correct themselves toward a more even balance to make an impact.

Stepping into thought leadership 3.0

It isn’t enough to hearken back to the good old days of thought leadership—or to the good old days of the internet and social media either, for that matter. We can’t erase history and go back to the practices that emerged and worked at a certain point in time. They won’t work the way they did back then. The context has changed.?

But we should also not turn our back on the practice of thought leadership. I’ve spoken to many people who care about bringing about positive change in the world of work who are skeptical of thought leadership or don’t see themselves in it. Or, they practice it reluctantly and with a bad taste in their mouth. This breaks my heart.

There is a third way. We can learn what we can from the past, even as we recognize what’s not working anymore. We can use it to inspire new thought leadership practices that better serve our work and our times.?

This is where thought leadership 3.0 is currently at, I believe. Its practitioners are operating in the love-hate liminal space of trying to figure out what’s worth holding onto and what should be let go of, without yet knowing which is which most of the time. We’re busy with an emerging, unfolding practice, and that’s never easy.

As difficult as it is, practicing thought leadership this way is absolutely apt. The complex, dynamic global systems our thought leadership is aimed at influencing for the better is always emerging and evolving. It requires those who are comfortable navigating the betwixt and between of the liminal to find their way forward and bring others along.?

Like the two previous waves, thought leadership 3.0 reflects the times that birthed it.?

So if business strategy and marketing were the hallmarks of the previous waves of thought leadership, what marks thought leadership 3.0? Well, to be honest, I’m not sure yet.?

Some of the phrases I've considered are:

• Thought leadership as systemic change
• Thought leadership as service (echoing my definition of thought leadership )
• Thought leadership as practice (inspired by Lee Price )
• Thought leadership as conversation
• Thought leadership as thought partnership

Thought leadership 3.0 is all of these things, so I’ve not been able to pin it down to just one thing.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

It’s in conversation with so many of you that my thoughts so far have been shaped, so let’s continue it!

If you resonated with what I described in this essay, I would love to chat to you for 30 minutes. You might have figured out parts of this puzzle—or are thinking about things that is worth exploring—that could help others too.

Please DM me if you’re willing.

And if you know or admire anyone you believe is a thought leadership 3.0 practitioner, why not share this essay with them? Or please tell me about them so I can start following and learning from their work.

Who knows, maybe you’re the one to coin the name for this wave of thought leadership!

Next essay

In the meantime, I’m working on the next essay in this series where I unpack the emerging and unfolding practices of thought leadership 3.0 in more detail.

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Acknowledgements

The thoughts I share in this essay are the result of many other people's work.

The following folks' thought leadership on thought leadership influenced me greatly:

Bob Buday, Christopher Fox, Erica Holthausen, Jessica Meyringh, Lee Price, Sean Murphy

And then there are the people, all at various parts of their journey, who are practicing (and/or grappling with) thought leadership 3.0:

Adam Treitler, Alyssa Greenfield, Andrew Neiderman, Baziel Barends, Bob Kelner, Chris Gillespie, Collin Rickman, Erik Burger, David Edwards, Dawn Sotherby, Dawna Jones, Eleanor Mayrhofer, Esther Goh, Faith Pienaar, Flavia Barbat, Florian Hendricks, Frank van den Brink, Frank van den Driest, Garry Turner, Gina Balarin, Hal Walling, Helen Behm, Jacques Grove, James de Roche, Jen Harkleroad, Jennay Horn, Jennifer Schnitzius, Joost Minnaar, Josh Knackert, Joshua Marks, Ken Mossman, Lan Lee, Lexy Martin, Ludmila Praslova, Luk Smeyrs, Marc de Swaan Arons, Matti Kleikamp, Meg Moore, Noah Lekas, Paul McCarthy, Perry Knoppert, Pim de Morree, Ramiro Oosting, Rean du Plessis, Richard Rosenow, Ryan Peden, Sanja Licina, Sarah Greesonbach, Stela Lupushor, Stephen Fitter, Swasti Gupta-Mukherjee, Tim Reitsma, Victoria Perez de Agreda, Vincent Pugliese

The way each of you approach your work gives me hope for the future.

Sarah Greesonbach, you deserve special mention as my number one thought partner on thought leadership 3.0 and what it means for the world.

Notes

[1] Though many sources credit Joel Kurtzman as coining the term though leader, I could not find the exact quote that's usually cited in the first issue of Strategy + Business that's available online. I’d be very grateful if you can point me to it.

[2] I encountered thought leadership (and fell in love with it) long before I had a name for it. I'm a compulsive reader, and I started reading my dad's business books in the 90s and 2000s. I loved it even then.

[3] I try to avoid terminology that slips into the binary of "producers" and "consumers"—“creator” vs “follower” or “thought leader” vs… I don’t even know what the opposite would be here. Audience, I guess? Firstly, the best practitioner have a gut reaction against being called a thought leader. And the words "followers" and "audience" do not do justice to the active role thought leadership recipients play in actioning thought leadership in their organizations. One of the marks of thought leadership 3.0 is that it collapses these boundaries to make us all participants, even if we fulfil different roles at different times.