If you’re going to practice thought leadership, you need good instincts.

You’ve also got to ask good questions! To discuss how thought leadership can be beneficial in change management I’ve invited The Chief Innovation Officer at Prosci, Tim Creasey to join me.  In addition to his work helping individuals and organizations build their own capabilities in change management, Tim is the author of Change Management: The People Side of Change. For Tim and Prosci, creating thought leadership starts with pattern recognition and identification.  By asking questions of hundreds of people and documenting their answers you are able to start to see the patterns that already exist and get input on how to create impactful change. Only then can you synthesize the information into content that is actionable and accessible. Creating content that can have a positive impact goes beyond research and a good idea. What you make has to be relevant to the audience and suited to their knowledge level.  Tim discusses setting a contextual anchor for the conversation and using different modalities to reach the audience where they are comfortable and in a way they can understand.

Three Key Takeaways:

·         Thought leadership comes from a lot of hard work, and asking smart questions.  Then discerning the patterns that others can act on.

·         There is an art to asking the nuanced questions that are going to yield the insights you are looking for. 

·         Creating good thought leadership comes from collecting data, analyzing it, and then turning those findings into actionable content that is easily accessible.