Thought Leader? Really?

Is it just my imagination, or has Thought Leader lost its edge? It seems that every time the front page opens, we’re bombarded with individual’s views of how much is wrong with our country, and in that respect, there is little to distinguish it from the daily news [both newspaper and television]. During the course of last year, this site was one of my first and favourite stops for good reading, but now I struggle to even open the site without specific cause to do so, merely to avoid the onslaught of pessimism and camouflaged insults that permeate the pages. Judging from the first comment on this recent TL post, it seems I’m not the only one who feels this way.

“Thought Leader” is a truly great name. It conjures up images of inspiring writing, simply overflowing with innovative ideas and contributing towards leadership development amongst its readership. In fact, the Wikipedia entry for “thought leader” says this term is “used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll gladly admit that most of the contributors on TL are highly skilled writers with an excellent knowledge of their subject matter - hence they are most probably considered leaders in their field. And as a social commentary forum, I greatly respect what Matthew, Vincent and company have built here. It’s just sad to see that this social media leader now largely consists primarily of para-journalism and critical political commentary... and too often doesn't continue from there with the thought leadership that its name promises.

At my last count there were 112 signed-up bloggers. With so many contributors, its obvious that new posts fly through the front page faster than you can say “Mail & Guardian”. And what is the prevalent message being put out there? Well, I’m not too sure, because the consistent flow of bitter anger is drowning out even the real thought leaders amongst the arsenal of contributors.

[As an aside, if Vincent’s target of 1,000 contributors ever realises, it will be even more difficult to hear anything amongst all the noise. Perhaps allowing users to “follow” or “block” specific contributors [as used on Twitter] would help keep content relevant to readers individually?]

Surely thought leadership requires the exhibition of at least some of the following characteristics: innovation; constructive writing; inspirational thinking; instigating positive action; either describing or demonstrating leadership qualities; and encouraging readers to make a difference and change the world. In his post referenced above, Vincent even describes the characteristics required of contributors as being the ability to “provide high-quality critical commentary on his or her field of expertise and provide leadership in terms of starting important conversations.”

Okay, perhaps I’m wrong here. I actually hope I am. In the last paragraph of this TL post, Grant Walliser makes a fair argument that Thought Leader is indeed serving its purpose. I’m sorry to say that I still can’t agree with him. Do yourself a favour and just look at the posts on the front page at any given time, and ask yourself whether they are constructive, negative or irrelevant. Sure, this is a subjective assessment, but the best I could come up with was about half of the posts being constructive in any way at any given moment.

Most people would probably believe that the site as it currently stands is social media in all its splendour. I agree that it cannot be censored to weed out the negative commentary, nor can restrictive guidelines be used to ensure a warm and fuzzy tone, as that would defeat the purpose.

However, one thing I would challenge all involved to ask is why you do it. Are you just using it as a platform to vent your own thoughts, regardless of any consequences whatsoever and without thought to the thousands of influential and influence-able people that read these posts?

Or are you truly aiming to be thought leaders in whatever sphere you write about, to understand the world and environment we live in [yes, the good and the bad] and to put forth constructive ideas and solutions that generate real excitement and perhaps, just maybe, instigate change?

Is this really SA thought leadership at its best? Think about it.

How much do your good decisions really cost you?

Consider this:

You’re selling a house, so you put it on the market and you get a high offer of R1 million, but you know if its fixed up a bit you could get as much as R1.5 million. So to sell at its highest value, you hire a consultant/designer/whatever [lets call her Sue] to help you with it.

Sue puts together a list of everything you can do that will help and gives it to you. Her list looks something like this:

• general maintenance and repairs – R50,000
• new paving – R50,000
• waterproof and paint roof – R50,000
• garden landscaping – R100,000
• and the cost of employing Sue for the whole time is R50,000.

Total expected cost R300,000.

Two possible scenarios

Scenario 1 – You trust your vision

You dislike the idea of spending an extra R300,000 when all you actually want to do is make more money. You tell Sue to only spend R30,000 on general repairs and maintenance, and forget the rest. She does this and then resigns from the job [so you cut her fee to R20,000 citing any number of legal arguments]. In total you spend R50,000 and after a few weeks of waiting, sell the house for R1.2 million. You give yourself a pat on the back for your excellent money-making skills and the fantastic R150,000 windfall. Well done.

Scenario 2 – You trust Sue [the expert that you hired] and back her

You tell Sue to go ahead. She gets everything done, total cost comes in at the R300,000 and the place sells straight away for R1.7 million. You and Sue see how well you work together, and with the extra profit of R400,000 you start a successful renovation business together that just takes off.

This begs the question...

...what if that house is actually your business [sure, perhaps you’re not trying to sell, but you are trying to maximise its value]. And what if Sue is actually one of your top employees. While your decisions might seem good at face value [extra R150,000 cash], are you sure that they are the best decisions, and that you’re not actually missing out on so much more value [extra R400,000 cash]? Open your mind to this possibility.

To me, the moral of the story – as a great business leader, its not only important to surround yourself with people who are better than you. You must also encourage them, support them and trust them [and the other difficult one – back them with cash when its required]. Because you can go 98% of the way [choose the right people, the right business, get the right tools in place, etc], but if you don’t do that last 2% and finish strong [empower your stars], its all for nothing really.

Start thinking upside down

Amazing how the little moments in life can really bring a change in the way you look at things, and how questioning the small things can lead to BIG changes in the reality you live within.

This morning was one of these moments for me - confronted by paid parking at a hospital [I won't go into that now as its a whole other story] where the first 45 minutes was free and then you pay for time after that.

What first got me was that if a "customer" [aka patient in reality] is delayed through no fault of their own - why should they get penalised for this. After all, there must be cases where its actually beneficial to entice people to stay longer...

... shopping malls, for instance. Menlyn Park [in Pretoria] - the paid parking does disgruntle me somewhat. But what if they encouraged you to stay by reversing the rates. Still make the first 15 minutes free for sure. But then what about, for example, R10 for the first hour, R8 for 1 - 2 hours, R7 for 2 - 3 hours... working down to a flat R2 for over 6 hours.

Psychologically, couldn't this drastically impact a shoppers perceptions. To the point of encouraging people to spend another hour [and several hundred rand, probably] at a restuarant [or wherever] to "save" a buck or two on parking. Sounds crazy, but stranger things have happened.

Please, I'm not encouraging shopping malls to subconsciously rip off consumers.

All I'm trying to do is give an example of how turning your thinking upside down is sometimes a wonderful thing and can open a world of opportunities we were previously blind to. Not to mention that it could be substantially profitable at the same time.

Does anyone else have a good example of how turning our thinking upside down opens big windows of opportunity?

The times, they are a-changing...some more

The times they are a-changing [1]

What's that they say about death and taxes? The only certainties in life are... well, I can think of one other big certainty which makes life worth living, but other than that, its pretty close.

Looking at people's needs, you would probably say with fairly high certainty that doctor's will always be in demand, as sick people (of which there are many) need doctors. Well, according to this Fin24 article, that's not necessarily true. The article talks of how the landscape is changing for regular GP's, and goes on to explain how the entire business model is changing, with the main driver of this change being... you guessed it - attempts to reduce medical costs.

So does this mean that value means nothing? I have always taken the view [although not always easy to do] that cost is not the main focus, rather value is. The old economic conundrum about price vs quality comes to mind here.

Does this mean that value is out the window? As we advance technologically, [not just good but excellent] systems become commonplace and barriers to entry in many industries continue to dwindle... it seems cost is becoming a very large focus indeed. Having trained as an accountant, its easy for me to see why this is important, but something within me balks at the thought of every decision, every business being concentrated on minimising costs.

Just think of what we would be missing out on if this were the case.



Or is it just me?

Lesson in this [one of them, anyway] - in the changing times, cost has become a large driver for many businesses and decisions. We have two choices: accept it, join the hordes and beat that supplier down... or face it head-on and try to prove that value still has its place - after all, if you can deliver an excellent product or service, surely someone will be willing to pay for it?

The times, they are a-changing

Let's face facts - this is a [fast] changing world.

When I was in school, the road ahead was easy: study hard; go to varsity; get a good degree and a professional qualification; work hard for a while, and the rest was supposed to be easy. Tick, tick, tick, tick, um... boom? (with apologies to Will Smith).

If there's one thing that really drives me up the wall, it's corporate bureaucracy! Having been exposed to large corporates for much of six years I spent in the professional environment, I swear most of corporate South Africa is busy steering the Titanic - it takes about three months and seven levels of management just to turn the ship, but hitting the iceberg is inevitable. Now before you go getting mad at me for saying this, give me one good reason to believe this isn't true. Just one. Any takers?

There are some incredibly intelligent people out there who have seen this coming for a while, and have tried to sound the warning. Tom Peters for one - his book "Re-imagine" is, by miles, the best business book I have ever picked up (and I'm not even halfway through it yet). This is an incredibly challenging read, where every paragraph brings with it serious questioning of the way things are done. Awesome stuff, and I would encourage anyone who has even the faintest interest in business to give it a glance.

What we need to understand going forward is that the rules have changed! And are constantly changing! And we need to be preparing accordingly. We are in a state of flux, but there's no point in preparing the future generation to make the same mistakes as past and current ones. We need to be teaching entrepreneurs how to build flexible, creative, even virtual businesses. And we need to be supporting this as far as possible. Instead, we have enough legislation and red-tape to bury a small country in - literally.

This is my cry - to government, professionals, decision-makers - lets free it up before its too late. We have to take our eyes of our feet, trying to place every foot step perfectly while heading off in who knows what direction. Instead, lets lift our eyes to the horizon, see where we're going and make sure we get there even if we do occasionally make mistakes. After all, its only when we make mistakes that we really learn.

Think!

Well, its about that time of the year when winter starts setting in (for those of us here in the Southern hemisphere, anyway), and when curling up under the covers with a good book appeals more to the senses than any other time of year. And I must admit, there are some amazing books out there that I would love to really get stuck into.

I love reading, especially as it will often ignite a creative flint where you least thought one existed. And that's why I'm writing this - I would like to create a place for good ideas to be planted, get watered, grow a bit and eventually bear fruit.

In South Africa, I truly believe this is critical to the successful regeneration of our country - and our continent, for that matter. Don't get me wrong, there are a number of brilliant catalysts out there at the moment (which I will explore in later posts), but we, as a nation, have to catch this! In such a creative nation, where entrepreneurs, artists and inventors abound, lets make this the best environment it can be for these characteristics to flourish! And as I continue to write, I hope that you will join me in exploring and debating how we can make this work, and also share some fresh ideas for growth.

Give it some thought... lets see where it leads to.