7 minute read
For the past couple of months I have opened up a space of potentiality for myself and my co-conspirators at The Holos Group; a space designed to inspire each of use to connect even more deeply into what makes each of us unique, and how we each release that uniqueness for the world.
This initiative forms part of a broader, more audacious, goal - a global movement in early gestation - to spark, shape and ship 1,000,001 awesome ideas for the future of humanity by 2020.
This first (of four) iterations involves each of us activating, acknowledging, anchoring and authenticating our individual thought leadership. It is an inner journey of knowing, owning and embodying fully those aspects of Self that both form and inform our 'natural way' in the world. It also involves fully embracing a truth that each of us are the architects of our own future potentiality and authors of our own destinies.
We are six weeks into this first interation.
Emerging from our co-exploration and co-action are the foundational 'materials' for catalysing, crystallising and cohering our individual thought leadership. Together we are discovering that these are the foundational building blocks for architecting the release of our fullest potentiality for the world.
1. Thought Leadership ‘Purpose’
Definition: Why you are doing what you are doing, and How you will know you are ‘making progress’ through in amplifying your thought leadership.
Example: To catalyse a global movement to generate 1M1 awesome ideas for the future of humanity (the Why); establish a credible prototype platform for catalysing the “sparking, shaping and shipping” of ideas through this platform by June 30th, 2015 (the How)
2. Thought Leadership ‘Proposition’
Definition: Your ‘promise’ to the ideal end user of your unique Thought Leadership presented in ways that align your unique offer with ideal end user’s ‘issue’ to be solved.
Example: To inspire and enable idea-preneurs globally to make their awesome idea happen in ways that deliver valuable, viable and virtuous business and social impact.
3. Thought Leadership ‘Palette’
Definition: A portfolio of Thought Leadership Intellectual Property (concepts, models, writings, product prototypes, processes, etc) that all relate to a similar topic ('colour') or range of your thought leadership topics ('colour range')
Example: To inspire and enable idea-preneurs globally to make their awesome idea happen (the Value Proposition) through the provision of cutting-edge insights and actions focused on building generative innovation, generative leadership and generative change (the ‘colour range’).
4. Thought Leadership 'Practice'
Definition: Your Thought Leadership Value Proposition and underlying Palette distilled through rapid, interactive prototyping into an elegant, engaging and highly valuable product, service, process and/or platform (your practice fields as a thought leader).
Examples: professional development programs in Generative Leadership, Generative Innovation, Generative Change; Bringing Ideas To Life - The How To Guide/Book; Making Learning Agile video series; Coaching For Success self-paced learning program; Purposeful Leadership Retreat; Integral Coaching program; etc.
5. Thought Leadership ‘Poetic’
Definition: How you will express your Thought Leadership Value Proposition and Thought Leadership in a range of modes (speaking, writing, training, etc) and how you want others to experience you as a Thought Leader.
Example: My video work is … short and sharp. All videos use strong imagery, usually hand drawn by me. Models are unfolded in real time during a video. Each video delivers significant of value to the viewer in short 5 minute clips (maximum of 10 minutes - longer clips are broken into a video sequence).
6. Audience ‘Persona’ or 'Persona Portfolio'
Definition: A fictional character (or set of characters) developed to represent a sub-set of an audience we want to target used to encourage greater focus upon and empathy for the ‘end user’ of our Thought Leadership.
Example: Kenny is a social entrepreneur who lives by the mantra of "Inspire Different"; Kenny is 29 years of age, lives in Melbourne and has a steady income in excess of $100,000 per annum; Kenny feels stuck and wants to start his own social enterprise focused on inspiring other budding entrepreneurs to take the plunge (perhaps with him) to be the difference they want to see in the world; Kenny wants to learn in his own time and is price sensitive in what he buys and engages with online, but will not skimp on purchasing a self improvement product in the $1,000 price range if he believes it will help him realise his vision for himself and others.
As the first iteration of our thought leadership amplification program enters its final sprint our focus in on documenting, validating (through end-user feedback) and refining these foundational building blocks (the raw materials of our thought leadership) in preparation for our next iteration (Announcing, Amplifying and Accelerating our individual and collective unique thought leadership).
In sharing our discoveries with you my invitation is this: Cultivate your unique thought leadership for the world, and codify what makes you 'you' in ways that enable others to also benefit from you being you?
And why would you want to?
A recent article in Forbes identified thought leadership as the new strategy for corporate growth. The article promotes:
Corporations that embrace thought leadership as a strategy for growth represent the essence of market leadership, corporate accountability and changing the rules of client engagement. (Tweet this)
In our increasingly competitive global marketplace individuals and organisations who are able to "... assess, package and share their own best practices, knowledge-sets, case studies and highly skilled and talented leaders to serve as value-added resources to fuel business growth".
You are the architect of your own (and others) future vibrancy and viability. Now what?
