Thought leadership is not just an article or blog post with a little more gravitas. It’s a specific form of content 
that contains unique insights and a distinct point of view 
that could only come from the organization or executive that produced it.
And it must be conceived with specific goals in mind—not simply informing or sharing news, but providing context for action, inspiring change, demonstrating your grasp of the future, and humanizing leaders to make a brand’s purpose come to life. These are the crucial elements of building up a magnetic brand that commands high degrees of trust and ultimately delivers business results.
It also helps to take a step back and consider both components of the phrase “thought leadership” and how many organizations are falling flat on both aspects.
In the rush to produce content—and avoid generating any controversy—brands and leaders often default to the type of generic insights that are devoid of any originality or personality. And, on the “leadership” dimension, organizations sometimes forget what it means to be persuasive and instead employ brute force subject matter expertise and lists of facts and figures.
If this sounds like striking a delicate balance, that’s because it is.
Thought leadership, much like obscenity, could be classified under former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s unhelpful definition of “something [you] know when [you] see it.”
More helpfully, however, at SJR we believe that thought leadership exists on a wider spectrum of content. We work with our clients to achieve the right equilibriums by balancing competing enterprise objectives.
Equilibrium #1:
Balance the Macro and the Micro
The real art of producing great thought leadership is finding the right place between vague observation and overwhelming, in-the-weeds discussion.
C-suite executives, hoping to sound authoritative, issue broad LinkedIn proclamations about “pursuing operational excellence.” Professional-services firms, defaulting to the other extreme, issue reports filled with so many Gantt charts and process diagrams that they are functionally writing in hieroglyphics.
True thought leadership focuses on delivering original but straightforward observations that are a jumping-off point for your readers to think about the world—or their business challenges—differently.
Equilibrium #2:
Give Actionable Advice, Not Naked Insights
Producing thought leadership, however, is a digestive process that requires some upfront work.
It’s not enough to just deliver a Freakonomics-style counterintuitive sound bite or the most pertinent findings from your annual report. Instead, you have to provide the necessary context for your insights and how they might change your readers’ and customers’ day-to-day lives.
It’s one thing to simply report that 70% of digital transformations fail, and entirely another to help your audience understand what bearing that has on the next wave of AI transformation.
Equilibrium #3:
Avoid the Refreshed Sales Material Trap
To drive results for your business, your corporate and executive-driven thought leadership should be intimately tied to key enterprise priorities. Whether that’s increased sales and conversions or establishing yourself as an employer of choice, your thought leadership is your soft-selling way of broadcasting that desired image to key audiences.
At one extreme, you have leaders out there who have built up huge personal brands, but their output seems utterly unspecific to their organization (they could be confused for the CMO of any company).
On the other hand, if you start repackaging sales collateral as LinkedIn articles or hastily placed bylines, audiences will immediately see you as a salesperson and not a trusted source of information and novel thinking.
Equilibrium #4:
Be Authentic, But Stay Professional
Whether as a brand or an executive, you need to connect with your audiences on a personal, human level to break through the crowded marketplace of competing voices and ideas.
Part and parcel of creating that connection is having a distinct identity and tone; real humans don’t develop trust or affinity with dime-a-dozen corporate reports or bromide-dispensing “thought-fluencers.”
However, it bears repeating, this is still a professional endeavor. For serious companies, avoid the easy trap of going Brand Twitter and adapting a vapid, sassy, and pop-culture-inflected tone of voice in favor of sharing more sober, but unique, observations. Individual leaders shouldn’t confuse confessional-style meditations for authentic insights that actually move audiences.
The New Thought Leadership
The Problem
Our standard joke here at SJR is that the ratio of thought leader to thought follower is typically… 1:1. There are simply too many self-proclaimed business gurus competing to build robust audiences.
Buried deep in a 2024 report that LinkedIn and Edelman put out were unusually skeptical sentiments that cast doubt on thought leadership’s reputation as the perfect sales tool: Less than half of B2B decision-makers say the overall quality of thought leadership they read is good.
The New Thought Leadership
The Solution
So now, with adjusted expectations and a clear sense of focus, how do you start producing the type of thought leadership that commands respect and influences decision-making?
Start with clarifying what you mean by thought leadership. And no, this is not an annoying word game, but instead a critical exercise that will save your organization tons of wasted time and effort and set the appropriate bar for future endeavors.
The New Thought Leadership
Picking the Right Persona
Discovering what kind of thought leader you are doesn’t take divine intervention. Much like the archetypes found in a tarot deck, there are different personifications of thought leadership. To begin your hero’s journey, run an honest inventory of your talents.
The New Thought Leadership
Break the Rules
It’s getting harder and harder for thought leaders to break through the noise. In the fierce attention economy, to the nonconformist go the spoils.
The New Thought Leadership
Dress Up—and Show Up—in New Ways
While audience viewing habits (even B2B ones!) have radically changed, many leaders and brands are stuck producing orthodox content. That’s why the most effective thought leaders are experimenting to reach audiences where they are.
The New Thought Leadership
The Case for the Chief Thoughts and Feelings Organizer
Executives are busy. And with so much under their purview, they often start a thought leadership program (for themselves or their teams) full of zeal but then shift their attention to other priorities and projects. Unfortunately, this cancels out any initial strategic efforts, because a key to successful thought leadership is consistency.
The New Thought Leadership
The Future of Followership
We strongly believe that creating content with Gen AI is antithetical to thought leadership. It has to come from real humans who are actively moving through the richness, colors, and complexities of their organizations.
The New Thought Leadership
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