Sharp Insights: What Everyone Wants
Sharp insights that can help others develop personally as well as professionally. This is what everyone craves for and as a thought leader many will look in your direction for this.
A thought leader should look at insights in two ways. The first is about creating your own original insights and the other is about promoting insights that your community desires. On the latter, it is not only about promoting your own insights but also those of others if they are relevant to your community.
When it comes to creating insights this is the test where thought leaders rise above the pack. Almost every consultant or expert within a corporation is capable of producing content. The big question is whether you can move beyond mere content and deliver insights that make a difference.
What are the elements needed to create insights? Let me share some suggestions on this.
Passion: You will never become a thought leader if you are not truly passionate about what you do. This is almost a cliché, but it is nevertheless the truth.
Inspiration: Inspiration comes to those who seek it. I read 5 newspapers every day (Wall Street Journal, US Today, New York Times and two Danish papers). I use my iPhone / iPad to read several other news apps, I subscribe to a couple of magazines including Business Week and I follow many blogs.
I also spend lots of time on Twitter checking tweets based on specific keywords. This has actually turned into my main source of inspiration.
Conversations on Twitter and in particular LinkedIn are also a great inspirational source. You think about an issue and you post a question and watch the responses trickle in over the next hours and days. This can be very inspiring for the creation of insights.
Feedback/Iteration: As you increase your capability to create insights, you will soon understand that feedback from your community is essential. As they respond to your insights, you gain new perspectives and this starts an iterative process in which you can further develop your thoughts.
That was some of my suggestions. What do you think? What can you add?
The ability to make connections. This is a skill that can be developed, and we need to consciously work on it so that the inspiration sources actually lead to the insights.
Your point about feedback/iteration should not be overlooked. A thought leader ought to have the flexibility to shift his or her paradigm when new data arrives or when he’s proven wrong. He or she ought to be able to engage others in conversation around the topic without talking down to them, especially if they are new to the topic.
Great post.
I would add that hands-on experience of actually executing the practice and methodology spoken about and advised is invaluable.
Theories are great…but proof is greater.
oh, you know, the ability to access higher states of consciousness, to understand what true value is in terms of a higher understanding of what it means to be a human being, the guts to say, most of what is being done, measured, subscribed to, is dumb, and a waste of energy .. the usual bust-the-paradigm insights …
The ability to focus, filter the relevant signals out of a sea of noise, while retaining context and respect for authorship.
Why is this important?
Filtering for focus sharpens understanding, so we can more easily get to the heart of the matter. Respecting context and authorship broadens understanding so we see where we come from, where our insights may not be applicable, and who to turn to if we want to know more.
Collaborative tools like blogs and wikis can act as servo-mechanisms to co-create sharp insights.
Needs courage to implement and experiment…
Few people do.