The word thought leader has been most commonly used in the
Public Relations and the communication industry at the drop of the hat. Whether
it is an existing client or new prospect one of the key agenda is to get
thought leader ship position for their key spokesperson. I fail to understand
why people don’t think that there is step by step process to get the thought
leader position and especially in the case on a new client. While one can
understand that this is the ambition for every client and brand one need to be
patient and demonstrate his or thoughts to reach that stature. What is more
important is that you need to consistently demonstrate your ability in your
field in various forms for the world and media to respect you as the thought
leader in your space.
Thought leadership
comes from demonstrating great knowledge and leadership:
Name any good leader ,be it in retail, technology, advertising
or banking the thought leader in their respective category have not achieved this overnight. In the case of advertising
Piiyush Pandey who began his career in Account Management and then crossed the
fence to pen scripts and campaigns demonstrated his true creativity with many path
breaking campaigns. Starting from Chal mere Luna for the Kinetic Engineering
moped brand to the dancing girl in the cricket field for Cadbury’s to the evergreen
and refreshing approach on Fevicol made Piyush very popular. But his
consistency in delivering quality work made him the Guru or thought leader when
it came to any debate or arguments in advertising not only in India but the
world over. Piyush never went to the media; it is media who came to him when
became a voice of authority advertising world. That is the true hallmark of a
great thought leader.
One more example that I would like to illustrate is retail.
Kishore Biyani rewrote the retail story by strongly believing that consumer is
the king and came out with his innovative retail solutions. All of us will
vouch with out any hesitation that he is the pioneer in India ’s retail story and his
capacity to demonstrate has earned him the thought leader status in the retail
space. We have Narayan Murthy in technology and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw in bio
technology who have really demonstrated before they reached the thought leader rank.
It is the ultimate goal or ambition for every entrepreneur or founder of a
company to be a thought leader but great thought leaders are the one who truly
demonstrate their skills and knowledge with a long term agenda and will run
with the baton for a very long distance with a strong focus on the future. There
are no short cuts to emerge as a thought leader.
Key Drivers for being
a thought leader:
Innovation and showing results to me is the foremost factor
to say that you are a thought leader. Thought leaders are the people who are
always ready to take risks and face challenges. They love to think about the
out of the box ideas. The innovation is one of the main characters of the
thought leaders. The risk taking ability of the thought leaders is the main
drawback at times; however, it is also very much true that if the risk is not
taken then the higher achievement will also not come easily. A thought leader
must have or must choose an idea which is much more different than the
traditional approaches which are very safe. Higher the risk the thought leader
takes then he will be seen as a trend setter or a visionary in his own rights.
If you see most of the thought leaders who have emerged in our country they are
people who demonstrated the ability to take risk and have delivered positive
results in their respective field. The examples stated by me in this piece are
all people who have demonstrated risk taking ability backed by strong
innovation and creativity.
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