How do you become a thought leader? It's easy. Follow these 5 important steps.
1. Have thoughts
2. Make sure no one else has the same thoughts.. mind control.
3. If you are a leader already, you have nothing to worry about.
4. If you are not a leader, find followers.
5. Call yourself a thought leader, in all your intros. Express yourself widely, on social media, particularly the 'professional' social media.
You are done.
How do you become a thought leader? You don't, in a jump. There's no formula. You evolve into being recognised as one, over time.
Consistently high quality of thought processes about everything, including an area of expertise, is usually needed. Life is bigger than a single tech innovation, but an innovation that can change lives of people for the better are a good start. I am not talking Apple phones, because just a small fraction of people can afford those.
An idea is as good. For governance, as demonstrated by people over centuries. Or a cooperative to be formed, as Mr. Verghese Kurien did, when Amul was born. A phenomenal boost to Brand India too, with one of the best advertising campaigns over the longest time.
Walt Disney and his characters that gave joy o millions of kids worldwide.
Just examples. There are lots more if you look around. Fascinating stuff, thoughts.. think good ones.
It's not about just being a disruptor. Thought leaders have to qualify on multiple counts to be thought leaders.
They should be different, of course, but ahead of their times. Visionary is some sense, and breaking the mould.
They may or may not have a lot of followers, but their thought could gain acceptance later, as has happened in radical theories about the shape of the earth, or the Earth going around the Sun in Astronomy, or many others.
Nobody accepts anything new without kicking and screaming. So a lot of antipathy can sometimes be a precursor to acceptance, though not always.
You can have thought leaders in Feminism, LGBT rights, or simpler things, like new ways of teaching, discovery or looking at cures for hitherto incurable diseases. Any field of human endeavour, really. We wouldn't be high-fliers without the Wright brothers, right?
There have been many in Management academia and consulting- some of them have also been CEOs, like Ricardo Semler, but practised many path-breaking ideas.
Peter Drucker, Sharu Rangnekar, Maslow, Erik Erikson, Jerome McCarthy, Igor Ansoff, Philip Kotler, Parasuraman, C.K. Prahalad, Michael Hammer (propagated Business Process Re-engineering), Seth Godin, David Ogilvy, Guy Kawasaki, Ricardo Semler, Jag Sheth, David Aaker, Kenichi Ohmae (globalization, strategy), Ries and Trout (the concept of Positioning), Rensis Likert, HJ Eysenck
Maybe one thing common to most of them was that they dealt with practice of management or related fields like Psychology, Sociology in some way. Barring a couple, most were not great academic researchers by way of journal publications. Even Kotler is famous more due to his simplification of marketing concepts into a best-selling text book.
Breakthrough ideas generally need proof of practice, at least to an extent that it is useful in some contexts. Science recommends experimentation, with replicability, as proof. Social science finds usefulness in practice a good substitute.
Reading some of these people has been an eye-opener.
These are few and far between. In any field. This is ironic, since as a species, humans are supposed to be thinkers of a higher order than other animals/species. Maybe the way we have built society, politics, governance, bureaucracy, education etc. has something to do with it. Thinking skills are hardly rewarded anywhere, from education to corporate work cultures, despite the usual lip service to 'thinking outside the box.'
But there have been a few souls that I can think of in India, who contributed immensely to our country's progress, through thinking big, fresh and also helping implement those thoughts-at least one of these two.
Verghese Kurien, through spearheading the White Revolution, ensured availability of milk, to a population that was malnourished and deprived of this basic nutrition-especially children. Farmers' interests were also protected, because it was done through cooperatives.
Sreedharan, on the other hand, implemented Metro railway and other projects successfully, and brought to urban commuters a safe and reliable mode of transport. The founder of Nirma showed us the power of advertising and pricing, albeit with help from an ad agency that created the best-selling campaign. Similarly, Amitabh Kant spearheaded advertising campaigns for Brand India and Brand Kerala with the Incredible India and God's Own Country campaigns.
The Tatas set up institutes of learning in diverse fields such as Science and Social sciences, when none existed-at least not of high quality.
ISRO did some good things.
Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao at the centre, and Chandrababu Naidu in his stint as Chief Minister, brought in a vision of something drastically different from the plodding on governance and licensing. Maybe the Healthcare crisis brought on by COVID 19 will spur something in the healthcare sector? Maybe we can become vaccine suppliers to the world, at the very least?
Went to Chennai for a few days, after quite a while. I used to attend a December conference at Great Lakes Institute for a long time. This ...
