Knowledge Sharing and Return on Outcome

We’ve heard much about the great resignation, which has morphed into the great realignment. Recently, I caught up with Publisher and Book Adviser, Jaqui Lane who offered up another perspective, which she calls ‘the great reconnection’. We discussed this and how it relates to knowledge sharing and ultimately, return on outcome (ROO). Here’s her view:

Many business owners and executives have had more time to reconnect with their passion - what has been driving them to achieve their goals. They realised that they have knowledge and insights to share and want to do something about it. For me, that meant I received more calls and emails from business leaders about how they could write and publish their knowledge and insights in a book.??

The 2020s is the decade of intellectual capital not financial capital. Real meaning and power belong to those who share knowledge. The more knowledge is shared, the more it grows and works to advance society.

Real leadership is not a matter of having the most knowledge it’s about knowing how to share it.?

The first question I ask any potential business book client is ‘What’s the purpose of your book?’ The overwhelming majority respond that they want to help make a positive impact on their readers by sharing their knowledge and insights, and they want to do this at scale.?

They are not driven by return on investment (ROI), quite the opposite in fact. They’re focused on the return on outcome (ROO). This is not to say they are uninterested in the time and dollar investment they’ll need to make, it’s more that they assess success by the outcomes they want to achieve less by the financial return.

The motivation for most businesspeople in writing their book is primarily to share their knowledge and insights with more people. If that’s millions, that’d be fantastic. If its 1,000, 2,000 or more that’s pretty amazing. I’ve had several clients say to me ‘if I can help one person with my book, I’d be really happy with that.’ One person, one book!

So what are the outcomes business people are looking to achieve with their own business book? There are many, but here’s the top six.

1. Share my knowledge and insights

2. Build credibility and authority in my area

3. Position myself as the ‘go-to’ person in the media on my industry/subject

4. Increased brand awareness for me and for my business

5. Generate more clients/retain more clients

6. Secure more speaking engagements

Note that the focus is on outcomes not a straight ROI. Many of the outcomes would be hard to put a simple dollar figure on and many are mutually supportive and, indeed, reinforcing. Let’s take one example, securing coverage in your specific industry media or more general media (whatever platforms you’re focusing on). The more visibility you have to a wider audience on a consistent basis the more visible you are, the more potential and current clients contact or re-engage you. Can you say that X media coverage resulted in Y business? In some cases, you can, in most, probably not.

And here’s another example. You’re a senior executive/partner in a law firm/consulting firm who wants to build a level of personal credibility and authority to stand out from the crowd and gain wider visibility in your industry or outside it in preparation for the next stage of your career.

Investing the time and money in writing and publishing a business book is mostly about building your profile NOT about ROI.

ROO is the objective.

If your driver is ROO, it is, therefore, important that you are very clear about what those outcomes are for you. You might just have one key outcome and two-three secondary ones or you might want to achieve all that I’ve listed – many of my clients do. It’s important though to prioritise your ROO goals as achieving them will take time and consistent execution to achieve.

In the business book writing and publishing arena there are two main investments, time, and money. For most businesspeople/executives time is money whether you are trading time for money as a consultant or running a multi-million-dollar company. Interestingly, this is where the great reconnection has had a major impact.

Many businesspeople have had more time – more time to think, reflect, reassess, and recalibrate. Certainly, some of my clients were quite clear that they wanted to use lockdown time to achieve their long-held desire to write and publish their book. One of my clients shared that they were going to allocate their previous commuting time to writing their book.

Looking at the straight return on financial investment, I share with my clients that cost recovery is possible but not a given, and that it will take between 12-18 months to achieve, IF they are consistent in terms of their marketing and engagement around their book. If they are not interested, willing or able to market their book (i.e. generate visibility) or delegate someone else to do this, it’s unlikely they will cost recover their financial investment.?

This, however, is not a significant issue for them as they’re focused on the ROO not the ROI. Sure, they’d like to cost recover at worst and make some money at best, but ROO is significantly more important to them.