Real thought leadership helps people decide

It's been an exciting week for me: the Mets are on a roll and Spring is in the air in NYC!

As is often the case with this newsletter, it's driven by conversations I'm having in my network. This week I'm digging into a topic that comes up fairly often: thought leadership. Let's start with two basic questions: Are you a thought leader? Should you care?

Simply put: yes, you should care.

Whether it's looking for a job or trying to sell a product, thought leadership helps put you in the room where decisions are made. As I will explain, thought leadership helps people make better decisions.

If you want to influence decisions, be the one helping them get made.

A while back, I wrote a little satire piece called "3 Reasons You Are Not a Thought Leader." It was a bit snarky, but I was trying to make a point. Some people even missed the humor part, so I had to put an explanation at the beginning. <sigh> Not the first time people missed my sense of humor.

“Thought leader” has become one of those phrases that gets slapped on LinkedIn bios right after "visionary" and "disruptor." But here’s the thing. Done right, thought leadership isn’t about buzzwords or building a personal brand. It’s about helping people think better—especially when they’re facing real change.

In the last issue, I talked about transformation. And the 3-legged stool it requires: people, processes, and tools. Most companies only focus on the tool. But if you're trying to help people actually succeed, the other two legs are where most of the risk—and opportunity—live.

That’s where thought leadership comes in.

My Two Lightweight Definitions of Thought Leadership:

1. All transformation requires three things: people, processes, and tools. Whatever you are selling, talking about the other two is thought leadership.

2. Product marketing helps people do their jobs better. Thought leadership helps leaders make better decisions.

(I borrowed the second one from the inimitable Esteban Kolsky. Watch this space. You will likely hear more from him here.)

It's not about sounding smart. It's about being useful. It's doing the hard work of thinking, framing, and translating—so someone else doesn't have to.

And this ties directly into something I wrote last month. In a world overloaded with content and hot takes, the people we actually trust are the ones who help us make sense of it all: 

That’s the real job of a thought leader.

It’s not about being the smartest person in the room—it’s about creating a room where smarter thinking happens.

Let’s Get Practical: AI and Customer Service

Customer service is one of my favorite topics, so let's use that as an example. Let’s say you’re selling AI-powered customer support tools. The promise should be clear: scale your support, improve efficiency, reduce headcount. Great. But what does that actually look like in the real world?

You’re introducing a new tool—but it only works if new processes and new skills come with it.

Process questions:

• How do you handle escalation when the automation doesn’t know what to do?

• What’s your post-resolution workflow to feed that learning back into the system?

• How do you measure success when bots handle the easy stuff and humans only deal with the edge cases?

People questions:

• What skills do support agents need when their job shifts from resolution to relationship?

• How do you train for judgment, nuance, empathy—stuff that doesn’t come from existing playbooks?

If you're not helping your customers think through these questions, you're not a strategic partner. You're just a vendor.

Thought leadership is what earns you the right to be in the room when someone asks, “Will this actually work for us?”

Be a Guide

We don’t need more experts shouting into the void. We need guides. Translators. People who help others see the path forward and give them the confidence to walk it.

That’s when thought leadership is doing its best work.

You don’t need all the answers. You just need to help people ask better questions.

And if you do it well, you don’t have to call yourself a thought leader.
Other people will.

The Bottom Line

Thought leadership isn’t something you decide for yourself. It’s something others decide about you. It’s a reputation you earn by sharing ideas that help people think differently, make better decisions, or take action. You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room—just someone who helps everyone else leave the room feeling a little smarter. Think of it less like being the guru on the mountaintop, and more like the friend who explains the plot twist after the movie ends.

Berkson's Bits

GenAI isn’t confident because it knows the answer—it’s confident because it knows how to sound like it does.

I know I've been guilty of this in the past, confidently answering questions I don’t technically know the answer to. I would make a well-reasoned guess, state it clearly, and move on. GenAI does the same thing.

It sounds right. Sometimes it is. But don’t confuse fluency with fact. That’s true for people, too.

Caveat emptor.

What I'm Reading/Listening To

I put this down as both reading and listening because I am listening to an audiobook. It's Sly Stone's memoir: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). I'm a big fan of Sly & The Family Stone and it's fascinating to hear the impact he had on music. At the same time, it is a frank look back by someone who is aware of the impact his poor decisions and drug use had on his life.

One quote stuck with me. Talent can only get you so far. Determination is a big part of it too. Early on when he was trying to get jobs in the music business, he would say to himself: "I'm better than somebody."

Sometimes that's enough to move forward.

(You can find this book and others in my Narrative Intel Bookshop collection)

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that at one point I did have the title of "Director of Thought Leadership." I hope that was reflected in my efforts to give guidance to the market.

Still, you don't need a title to do the job. Just do it.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation...

Alan