Writing My Way [in]

Every month, LinkedIn employees take a day to step away from their normal routines and invest in themselves, the company, and the world. Today happens to be December's "InDay," focused on "Reflection." It's also the end of my second week as a LinkedIn employee. As such, it seemed a fitting time to think back on how writing on LinkedIn has both reflected and shaped my career for the past five years.

Origin Story

The story actually starts well before I even had a career. I was an awkward punk kid growing up in suburban NJ. With no discernible athletic talent (23 and Me would later confirm it was not my fault), my saving grace was that people seemed to like my writing. One classmate summed it up as we meandered down the hallway together: “You write the way someone would speak.” I thought to myself, “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

Writing was both a creative outlet and a mechanism for structuring my thoughts and making an argument. It kept me from being bored. I also think it got me a couple extra points from my teachers. If I didn’t exactly nail all the points in a history paper, at least I could make it a little less boring for the weary grader with some flourishes. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Learn those things that are likely to be most useful AND most ornamental.”

Fast forward to 2014. For nearly a decade and a half, I’d written a ton of emails, dense business cases, draft press releases, schlocky marketing copy, bullets on slides... and little else. Business writing (bordering on the oxymoron) was all writing for me. And while that had emanated from a demanding but rewarding career to date, something in me missed the opportunity for creative expression.

This was exacerbated by the restrictiveness of being a product marketer for a measurement company. Nobody wants to hear the referee run his mouth. I understood this but still longed to put forth a provocative point of view, not just anodyne thought leadership to generate some leads.

Startup Scribbles

Enter LinkedIn Pulse, the social network’s self-publishing platform. Initially available only to “influencers” - business and political leaders - they opened it up to all members in mid-2014. While many other blogging platforms had existed for some time, I found Pulse intriguing, as it provided a built-in audience: my entire professional network. It was an exciting prospect to put something out into the world that a bunch of friends, colleagues, and partners might see, shaping opinions and setting up interesting discussions. However, it was also a daunting one - what if I wrote something stupid and committed professional suicide?

I decided to dip a toe into the water, with an article on how recent grads can have impact from day one and stand out by taking true ownership for their work (a long held belief of mine). Nothing controversial there. The article had minimal views and engagement, but I enjoyed the process of thinking and writing enough that I decided to keep it up.

My next article, on the massive and under-appreciated cost that meetings have for companies, turned out to be relatively popular. The gamification of amassing views / likes / comments encouraged and emboldened me. It was vanity to be sure, but at least it kept me productive.

Leap of Faith

After about a month, I decided to take a leap of faith and show some vulnerability. I wrote about what remains the most trying experience of my career: a failure on a study at McKinsey that ultimately caused me to reassess things and leave the firm and consulting. I knew the click-baity title (“What It’s Like To Fail At McKinsey”) would probably attract some interest. That’s not a great reason to risk reputational damage though, and I went back and forth on whether to hit “publish.”

Ultimately, I decided to put that story into the world for two reasons: a) it might help someone else having a similar crisis of confidence, and b) catharsis. And I’m so glad I did it. On (a), I have had numerous people reach out and tell me it helped them, with one even schlepping downtown to buy me coffee. A McKinsey partner once stopped me at my local playground to say how much he appreciated this article which had put “McKinsey” and “fail” in the same title.

On (b), I didn’t realize how much I personally needed the chance to work through these feelings about an experience from years earlier. The struggle and recovery were formative. I now share this with teams that I join (as recently as this week in fact). I have had one prospective employer dig around as a result of reading the article, but I’m okay with that; the value of transparency and candor is that you have nothing to hide. It’s like that meme: if you don’t love me at my ??, then you don’t deserve me at my ??.

It also happens to be the most widely read thing I’ve ever written, buoyed by LinkedIn publishing chief Dan Roth putting it on the inaugural list of “most memorable LinkedIn posts.” But the personal interactions I had as a result of this article made me realize the numbers are not what publishing on LinkedIn is about for an individual. The meaningful impact on others and yourself is what matters.

From Posts to Published

Over the next year, I wrote a LinkedIn article every couple weeks. Emboldened by my McK article experience, I threw caution to the wind and opined on industry-related topics, such as the app-ification of TV and Netflix episode dumping. These weren’t really controversial topics, but they were still “guy at Nielsen writing about TV.”

Shockingly, the sky did not fall. In fact, several colleagues and business partners mentioned some of the articles to me unprompted, leading to some productive discussions. Rather than landing in comms jail, I was benefitting professionally from putting out an opinion on our industry.

This positive encouragement led me to explore writing think pieces on the Nielsen external blog (1, 2, 3). An internal article I wrote on the criticality of measurement in a programmatic advertising world got a lot of traction with our sales team. With the help of a professional editor and some great comms support, we were able to get it into Ad Age as a two part series (1, 2). My mug was in a legitimate publication.

I Think HR, Therefore I Am HR?

Upon learning about my background, people often ask me what spurred my move to HR. I anticipated this, to the point that I had a LinkedIn article on "Why I Took an HR Job" timed for release the same day as my internal org announcement. The article captures much of the rationale - opportunity for impact, desire to grow my understanding of the business and business in general, chance to jump on top of an innovation wave - which still holds true today.

What I didn't mention in the article is that my earlier writing on LinkedIn on topics related to talent, management, and the workplace (1, 2, 3, 4) played a significant part in my decision. By taking the time to formulate my thoughts and ideas in these areas, I realized that I did have a passion for them. And as a result of the feedback and discussions that followed, I found that I had meaningful things to say. Actually moving into HR would give me an opportunity to put theory into practice and continue to focus on this as my day job.

I've continued to write articles on LinkedIn since my move into HR, with an emphasis on talent acquisition and people analytics (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) - not surprising, given my two areas of ownership at Nielsen. Sometimes, it's a mechanism for me to think through different topics in a first principles kind of way; this is very much an artifact of me not having preexisting experience in this area, which has both bad (I don't know anything!) and good (I'm not beholden to any existing ideology!) implications. Sometimes, I have a fully formulated plan that I'm confident in and want to share with other practitioners and periodically reinforce the thinking with my own team.

The effect of all of this writing and posting has been similar to what I found when I'd been focused on media and advertising. People who have seen my stuff ascribe some level of expertise to me. I'd like to think this is because they have read it and value my perspective. A colleague once hypothesized that LinkedIn posting could have an "Inception" effect: if people see you posting about something enough, even if it's just in their feed, they'll start to think of you as a thought leader. There's probably a bit of truth to this.

Whatever the case, getting noticed for my LinkedIn articles on talent-related topics has helped form relationships and open doors for me - speaking invites, parlor-style discussions, and some good informal conversations with smart people. It's been worth the investment in time.

Get [in]

It's time for the "incredibly meta" portion of this article - the story of how writing LinkedIn articles and posts - periodically about LinkedIn itself - helped me get a job at LinkedIn (to an unknowable but non-zero extent).

As a tech-inclined and product-oriented individual coming into the HR space in talent acquisition it was inevitable that I'd spend a lot of time with LinkedIn. Having amassed a large, close to census (from a corporate perspective) repository of the world's professionals and an environment where members are open to connections and dialogue, being well-versed in LinkedIn is a must fore a talent professional today. The first thing I did to immerse myself in TA was to attend Talent Connect and drink from the firehose.

After getting up to speed on LinkedIn and its Talent Solutions (LTS) product line - through use, consultation with other practitioners, and reviews with my dedicated account team, I started to develop a perspective on the value and challenges of the LTS offering. Then true to form, I wrote it out in the form of a LinkedIn article, which I tried hard to make constructive but pointed - "A Recruiting Leader's LinkedIn Wishlist."

This is where "relationships matter" (a core LinkedIn value) enters the story. My friend Kate happened to be attending a meeting of LTS leaders at the time of posting and circulated the article. This resulted in a meeting with a handful of the top folks on the team at the next Talent Connect, where I was impressed by their self-awareness, openness to feedback, and graciousness with their time. It also put me on their radar screen, I believe; I know that it started the wheels turning in my head.

Over the next few years, I continued to write semi-regularly about my views on LinkedIn... on LinkedIn (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). And periodically, I'd then have a conversation with someone at LinkedIn about it, usually initiated by them. As I got more connected to more folks, they started inviting me to participate in events (like their amazing LEAD program to build a community between their most progressive clients) and client feedback and innovation sessions. I also had the opportunity to connect with some very impressive members of their Global Talent Organization - practitioners like me, with whom I could trade notes and from whom I could learn.

The thing that I appreciated about this was that it all felt like a natural part of the work at hand. I was doing my job as for Nielsen as a talent leader, getting us information and access (including to exciting new products like LinkedIn Talent Insights). They were getting (hopefully) some valuable client input. It didn't feel like a forced or artificial exchange. It was legitimately synergistic.

And because that was the case, perhaps, it lit up something that we talk a lot about at LinkedIn today: a sense of belonging. Enough that I felt comfortable (although understandably, lachrymose) in leaving Nielsen, my professional home for the past nearly nine years. To think that it all started with one post, albeit one built on hours of thinking, writing, posting, and engaging.

The Write Stuff

The LinkedIn self-publishing platform has grown tremendously over the past five years. In an early 2017 interview, Roth cited 160K articles/week and 3 million members with credits. This includes the hoi polloi like me, but it also includes heads of state and CEOs looking to make a statement on LinkedIn first. For example, Nielsen's new CEO David Kenny used LinkedIn to make a statement on the future of the company a week into the job. A hard hitting Ad Week interview came, but not until three days later.

LinkedIn self-publishing can be a platform for different things to different people, for different reasons. For me, as recounted in this article, it's served many purposes:

• A public journal to capture ideas and opinions, refine my thinking and improve my writing (as is evident to everyone reading this, I definitely need an editor)
• A channel to reach my intended audience (internal and external) in their professional feed
• A launching pad for relationships and partnership, both individual and institutional
• A positive influence on discovering and landing an exciting opportunity
• For the purposes of this article, a time machine (credit: Don Draper)

And yet, for all that, it's the case that the vast majority of people don't write on LinkedIn (3 million isn't cool... you know what's cool? 590 million), or anywhere else publicly.

If any of above resonates with you, I'd encourage you - on this day of reflection for many - to pick up the pen (at least, metaphorically speaking) and give it a try.

The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my current or past employers. If you would like to read more of my writing, you can follow me here on LinkedIn and/or on Twitter at @chrislouie.

You can also read a few of my other LinkedIn posts:

• My Watch Is Ended - Leaving Nielsen
• In The Era of #MeToo, A Hippocratic Oath for HR?
• Can LinkedIn Solve the "Time Well Spent" Paradox?