Eights Pillars of Thought Leadership | Services Marketing Blog

Quality of intellectual capital is, of course, subjective. With notable exceptions, too much so-called intellectual capital doesn’t deserve the label. People dive in to “write articles,” “write a white paper,” or “deliver seminars” because these are “good marketing things to do.” Without rigorous inquiry and attention to quality, they’re bad marketing things to do.

Assuming quality is your goal, you can use the following as a litmus test. Pass each test and you are in good shape.

1. Distinction. Contrary to popular thought, intellectual capital doesn’t need to be new in the sense of the breakthrough new idea or the unique, totally novel concept.

In What’s the Big Idea: Generating and Capitalizing on the Best Management Thinking authors Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak suggest, “Almost all ideas share one or more of three business objectives: improved efficiency, greater effectiveness, and innovation in products or processes.” They go on to say, “In describing the role gurus play in business ideas, ‘create’ isn’t exactly the right word. Gurus tend to assemble, package, and broadcast business ideas; they will rarely create the whole thing from scratch.”

Great thought leadership is, however, distinct; it can stand on its own as a worthwhile contribution. While intellectual capital may contain new models, new case studies, new stories, and new research, as Davenport and Prusak suggest, the creation can be as much assembly and packaging as it is pure originality.

2. Salience. The word salient can be defined as “conspicuous” or “noticeable,” and that gets the idea about right, but there’s another definition more apt. Something is salient when it “has a quality that thrusts itself into attention.” Your thought leadership might be everything else in this list, but it won’t be contagious if it’s not salient.

Think of your intellectual capital as a spark waiting to start a fire. If it’s not salient, it’s like a spark in the middle of a damp swamp; much as you might try to keep it going it’s more likely to go out than anything else. But if it is salient, your spark is sitting on a pile of tinder. Just the slightest blow…

3. Relevance. Change management. Leadership. Supply chain. Innovation. Entrepreneurship. Activity-based costing. Coaching. These ideas are on the minds of many. And with these ideas, you can be a thought leader with a capital “T,” reaching a broad business market. You can also be a niche thought leader – a leader with a little “t,” and choose ideas that are relevant to only a select few. If the market you target is big enough, niche thought leadership may not be a bad idea. But, like any service you may offer, there needs to be a market of worthwhile size for your ideas.

4. Consequence. Consequence works with relevance. Your ideas may have a market, but then they must pass the “so what” test. For your thought leadership to have impact, your ideas must be to-do-list worthy. If you can’t answer the “so what” question clearly, brilliant as your ideas might be, you’re not going to get decision makers to pay attention.

5. Defensibility. Even the greatest business ideas have their detractors. While few business ideas will be bulletproof (as much as you might think they are), you do need to be able to defend the ideas on their merits.

People often confuse defensibility with rigor. Good intellectual capital may be rigorous in the traditional sense with impeccable research and testing, but many ideas aren’t rigorous in this sense. Many of Peter Drucker’s observations, while based on his experiences, aren’t rigorous in the traditional sense. Dr. Spencer Johnson moved all of our cheeses and took the business world by storm with four mice named Sniff, Scratch, Hem, and Haw. Helpful? For many, yes. (Just by being helpful, it’s defensible.) Salient? For sure. Rigorous? You be the judge.

6. Realism. The kiss of death for thought leadership is when people say, “That’s not realistic.” It’s perfectly fine if some people think it’s not realistic – perhaps it will take a visionary to bring your ideas to life. Your ideas do, however, need to be able to make the leap from theory to implementation.

7. Elegance. Unpack the word elegance and you’ll find flavors such as simplicity, effectiveness, refinement, grace, and even dignified propriety. Perhaps it’s your conceptual model, perhaps it’s your writing, or perhaps it’s the simplicity of the idea you are advancing. Whatever it is, elegance in intellectual capital is the tide that raises all boats as elegant intellectual capital is often salient, distinct, and defensible. It’s easier to see if it’s relevant and consequential. Its simplicity often makes it seem more realistic. And the marketer in you will have a great time packaging it up for the world to consume.

8. Presentation. Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about pornography; he couldn’t define it, but he knows it when he sees it. While it’s certainly easier to define the elements of a top quality speech, white paper, research report or book, most people don’t pick it apart by its elements. They simply observe the presentation of your intellectual capital (in whatever form they see it) and make judgments that range from amazing and life-changing to amateurish and uninteresting.

The problem with presentation is this: not everyone knows a great speech, white paper, or book from a good, fair, or poor one. Many professionals are paranoid perfectionists and they underestimate their speaking and writing skills. The opposite problems all too often exist as well: either inflated views of speaking and writing quality, or simply allowing triple A material out the door when it needs to be major league.

Now that you’ve taken the test, how did you do?