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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Thursday, May 12, 2005

THOUGHT LEADER

So here’s UD stuck in the back of a cab in the middle of Bethesda at three o’clock in the afternoon, slow traffic. She’s asked the cabbie to switch the sound of WTOP news radio from the back of her head to the front of his, but he’s driving a new car today and doesn’t know how to do it.

There are reasons UD doesn’t watch tv. There are reasons she doesn’t listen to commercial radio. UD is made unhappy by these things, and she dislikes being trapped with them.

The soft slow voices on WTOP, exactly like those on television, want UD to keep in mind the following:

***she is stupid
***she wants an SUV
***she thinks Oprah Winfrey and Jane Fonda are interesting and intelligent

und so weiter. UD hasn’t got the sort of mind that can switch this sort of thing off -- on the contrary, she’s compelled to listen and even to think about what she’s hearing.

Which is just as well, because today she discovered the term “thought leader.” WTOP ran an ad for executives who want to get a business degree online, and at one point, in describing a local business school, the announcer said it’s full of “thought leaders” who can make you a thought leader because they specialize in teaching “thought leadership.”





But, UD asked herself as she finally got out of the cab, what is a thought leader, really?

The phrase - nay, the very concept - is controversial. There are those who confidently assert its meaning and importance, as in:

What sets a business leader apart? Some say it's imagination, or vision, or passion. At Montgomery Research, we call it thought leadership.

Thought leadership is the ability to see a trend before it starts, and the wisdom to find opportunity in every challenge. It's the confidence to act decisively because you know your company is a step ahead of the competition
. ‘



But there are those who claim that thought leadership isn’t about predicting the future so much as being a solid respected businessperson, as in

‘ Be A Thought Leader!

Small companies have to work hard to get visibility, especially when the market is crowded with competitors all vying for the same business. In high tech they face the added dilemma that IT departments don’t want to buy from a small unknown vendor, and the vendor can’t become large and reputable unless it has major customers. So, how does a company become better known with limited resources? By becoming an industry thought leader.

What’s a thought leader?

A thought leader is a recognized leader in one’s field. What differentiates a thought leader from any other knowledgeable company, is the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.’




Still others insist it’s simply about doing your job well, as in

Jim is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of facility design and integrated distribution systems. His contributions to the improvement of distribution practices have been recognized by his receipt of the prestigious Reed-Apple Award, which is given for lifetime contributions to the advancement of the material handling profession.’






Many many people are thought leaders. The long list of visiting speakers in an upcoming Stanford University course is titled not “Visiting Speakers” or “Guest Lecturers,” but “Thought Leaders.”





A few dissenting voices have begun to suggest that the terms “thought leader” and “thought leadership” are bogus:

‘ ANOTHER MEANINGLESS TERM

“Thought leadership”- another bogus term speechwriters toss around?

In my last post, I really hoped somebody would set me straight on “message drivers.”

I’ll be honest: I don’t think anybody can give me a sufficient definition of the other term that has lately been dancing on my last nerve: “thought leadership.”

We all want our CEOs to be “thought leaders.”

Which means, as far as I can tell, that we want our CEOs to “seem smart.”

And so we try to infuse their speeches with some “thought leadership.”

But to be a true “thought leader”—as opposed to a CEO who “sounds smart”—doesn’t one have to have an innovative idea that sincerely inspires “thought followers”?

It seems to me “thought leadership” is a term invented by speechwriters—no doubt speechwriters working for a big PR agency—who want to claim that they can turn their clients’ CEOs into people recognized as geniuses, far and wide.

But “genius” sounds like too improbable a goal. How about “thought leader”?

I think “thought leader” is similar to the 1990s darling term: “world class.”

Companies that wanted to claim they were the best in the world but knew they’d be laughed out of the NYSE for saying so, instead settled for saying they were “world class.”

The term was meaningless, and thankfully it has mostly evaporated.

Here’s hoping the same happens to “thought leadership
.” '



UD figures the same thing will indeed happen to “thought leadership,” but she wants to predict something about it.

As “thought leader” begins to evaporate from the world of corporations and public relations, it will begin a short second life on annual review forms in American universities. After all, the word “thought” is prominent in the phrase. Just under the category “Membership in Professional Organizations,” UD will now predict, two new categories will be inserted:

Evidence of Thought Leadership

Number of Thought Followers Supervised