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Thought Leadership Development | Stan Lepeak
Using Thought Leadership to Build Communities
An interview with Stan Lepeak about developing and deploying organizational thought leadership.
Today’s guest is Stan Lepeak, the founder and Chief Research Officer at Lepeak LLC. Previously, he served as head of marketing research and thought leadership for KPMG consulting and global head of marketing research and thought leadership at EquaTerra. Stan has more than 20 years of experience in developing and researching thought leadership. He shares with us the difference between working at the back of the house vs client-facing and talks about what can slow down or speed up the process of moving thought leadership between the two.
Stan guides us through what content developers should be thinking about to grab the attention of busy executives and why you are wasting your time if you don’t have a next-step build into your conversation.
We end the conversation with Stan giving three great pieces of advice for anyone developing thought leadership for their organization.
If you are looking to join your organization’s thought leadership team this episode is for you!
Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:
- The key differences between qualitative and quantitative thought leadership.
- Where to find new voices for your organization’s thought leadership team.
- Why thinking about thought leadership from the view of the consumer is important.
Thought leadership development is an important piece of the puzzle for building communities. Do you need help achieving these goals? Reach out to Thought Leadership Leverage and we can assist you.
Join the Organizational Thought Leadership Newsletter to learn more about expanding thought leadership within your organization! This monthly newsletter is full of practical information, advice, and ideas to help you reach your organization’s thought leadership goals.
Transcript
Bill Sherman Hello and welcome. You’re listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. I’m your host, Bill Sherman. And today we focus on organizational thought leadership. The people who create, curate and deploy thought leadership on behalf of their organization. My guest today is Stan Lepeak. Stan has a 20 year history in research and thought leadership. A few of the titles that he’s had include VP and Research Lead at the Met Group, managing director of Global Research at Equity and eight years at KPMG. As head of research and thought leadership for their global management consulting. He’s currently the founder and chief Research Officer of Peak LLC. Dan, welcome.
Stan Lepeak Thank you, Bill. Looking forward to the conversation.
Bill Sherman Absolutely. So, Stan, you’ve served a variety of roles over your career. And we could get into the details, but maybe you could paint a picture just briefly on some of the ways that you’ve used thought leadership over the 20 years that you’ve been in this field.
Stan Lepeak Yeah, certainly. So I’ve had a bit of a diverse background. When I first started out of university, I was a consumer of thought leadership. I worked in operational areas, a variety of industries and was always keen to learn what’s going on in the market relative to advances in technologies and business practices. So I was very interested in the thought leadership of others. I kind of moved to the other side of the proverbial table. In 94, I became an analyst at the Met, A group in there thought we thought leadership was really the product of the firm. It was taking the collective knowledge of the analysts to market to help organizations understand how to adopt, embrace and exploit a variety of technologies, particularly emerging technologies moving on to equity. And then KPMG, the role shifted again a bit in that thought leadership was really to promote the brand of those organizations and ultimately, to be frank. So additional consulting services, and that’s what bothered everyone’s proverbial bread. So there it was, really looking at what’s going on in the market, what are the capabilities of the firm, but what are the questions that clients or prospects were asking that we needed to be able to answer to help them understand whatever their particular challenge was at the time, whether that be looking at new service delivery models such as offshore global business services, or helping them understand just what is intelligent automation and what should they do with it. So the most recent step was really looking at thought leadership as a way to communicate the knowledge of the organization and to help our clients understand how to progress and stay competitive and make the best of their scarce investment dollars.
Bill Sherman Now, you mentioned something there that I think is very significant in that thought leadership can serve to two very different functions. It can be used to help fill a sales pipeline. And you gave a couple examples of that as well as to influence how people are thinking.
Stan Lepeak Yes.
Bill Sherman So go ahead.
Stan Lepeak No, I was saying I think those are both complementary. And I think the key was thought leadership is to, you know, certainly an organization wants to influence a client or prospect to buy their products or services. But what I think is key and what may be thought leadership, a quality set of thought leadership is to do that in a very educated fashion. So I think there is there’s a blurry line between advertisement and good thought leadership. So both tend to try to influence a prospect or client. But I think the benefit and the value of thought leadership is to do so in a very intelligent fashion. So even if the client or prospect doesn’t ultimately buy the product or services you’re offering, you’ve given them something to help them better understand the market and market conditions. And they’re a more educated person around the topic than when you started out, regardless of whether or not you ultimately sold them anything.
Bill Sherman And you used a couple of examples of that with KPMG where you were saying, okay, you’ve got clients who are wondering how is this going to impact my business, for example, Right? And now with things and problems they’re trying to solve today, but it might be six months, a year or two years over the horizon. So what sort of modalities how did you have that conversation and how did you open those conversations with people to get them to think beyond this week, this quarter?
Stan Lepeak Well, I think the first thing is to get an understanding of where the challenges lie with the person or people that you’re having a discussion with. Because I think part of the challenge for the consumer of thought leadership is that there’s a lot out there. And honestly, a lot of it is me too thought leadership in that every big consultancy has a paper on the future of finance or the future of the CFO, or they’ll talk about the wonders of process automation. But I think what’s key is to get to the heart of what is the issue or need or challenge the organization is facing. And then to work with them to take a step back and say, well, what are your immediate needs? And perhaps you’ve been given a mandate by an executive that thou shalt invest in this new, wonderful technology. How do you take a step back and say, where do you want to be within a couple of years? What are your bigger business challenges? So investing in it. Automation is great. What do you hope to achieve out of this in the long run? What are the longer term goals of your organization? And where does this piece of technology or this piece of new business practice fit into that? So I think there’s often a lot of focus within organizations on adopting the newest and best technology or business practice. But I think what’s important is to help them to take a step back. Where is this going? What’s your endgame? And that may end up meaning that you look at these different types of investments differently than you would if you just as opposed to just wanting to check the box to say, yes, we’re doing RPA or yes, you know, thinking back a few years, yes, we have an Internet website and can do e-commerce. That’s great, but that’s keeping you up with the competition. What do you need to do to get ahead of the competition and support your long term business goals? And that can be a challenge. But I think having that strategic perspective certainly should influence the type of thought leadership and the messaging that you take to that individual, to that group.
Bill Sherman So let me jump in and ask a question there in term and going a little bit further on reaching. And you talked about, you know, getting people with a vision of the future, whether it’s evoking a sense of what’s possible, an opportunity or fear of what happens if we don’t. Rather than advocating the technology itself, but the technology as a means to an end, some of the work that you’ve done might be considered more traditional back of the House research. And some of it, I think, from what you’ve said, has also been client facing, client engaging. Can you talk about sort of that sort of distinction between when you’re working back of the House versus when you’re directly interacting with a client and trying to influence their vision in either support of a sale or just sort of engaging with them over the future?
Stan Lepeak Yeah, I think there is a distinction there, as you point out. I think the back of the House is one of the fundamental building blocks of a well-rounded research and thought leadership portfolio. You know, organizations are interested in their performance. They’re interested in understanding maybe from a broader market perspective where their organization sits versus other firms. You know, some of that can lead over into kind of your classic benchmarking. And I think that’s all important. But that’s kind of your building blocks to take a more tailored message out to an organization or a client where you get to that client facing where you’re moving from a quantitative type of market research to the qualitative, where you’re working with the executives to understand within their situation, their industry, their part of the globe, their financial situation, what’s most relevant to them, and helping them to understand how that maps against their peers. But it’s much more of a qualitative mapping than a quantitative. So one of the last big projects I worked on was interviewing 100 or so executives around what they’re doing with artificial intelligence, which, you know, even defining what that means. It can be a challenge, but it was very much focused on, you know, do you even have an initiative here? Certainly you do. But is it, you know, an initiative? Is it an aspiration? But it was looking at. What they were doing. But then, as we discussed already, helping them to put that into the bigger picture and maybe taking a step back to some of the more blocking, tackling type of research done to say that, you know, you have these inspirations and aspirations. The organization in a position to be able to capitalize that or is there some more work that needs to be done in terms of building out the building blocks of your technical infrastructure or your management infrastructure or your governance and management capabilities that will enable you to really take full advantage of their opportunities. And the challenge there is to tie this back to thought leadership is that’s not a question that can be answered, you know, in a paper. Yeah, I think you look at some of your classic market leaders or good thought leadership, it’s really defining a framework to address a challenge or a situation. And then what you want to do is take that framework and bring it to an individual client and apply it to their situation. Because the idea that the executives are going to read a good piece of thought leadership and say, okay, my problem is solved, you know, this isn’t going to happen. But I think if you can highlight, you have a framework and a structure and a process to help them work through tailoring this to their unique organizational needs, that that’s much more important. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for organizations that are selling services into market to get away from trying to provide the magic bullet in a 20 page white paper to say, Here’s the framework we have that you can utilize ideally with our help to look at this opportunity, this challenge, this market necessity, and apply it to your organization in a way that’s going to bring you benefit to your specific needs versus saying, you know, here’s a here’s the magic bullet paper that says thou shalt do what? Right?
Bill Sherman Right. So you can’t read 20 pages, become an expert in your company has the answer. And it’s like it’s not like a vaccine in that case. Right. Where one shot and you’re cured. Right. You actually need to roll up your sleeves and say, okay, this gives us a framework. What does that mean for us, for our industry? How are we going to prioritize how we’re going to commit resources and move forward based on what objectives we’re trying to achieve? Right?
Stan Lepeak Yeah, exactly. And there’s a residual opportunity there as well in terms of understanding both those providing products or services as well as those so that the consumers, you know, the client who’s more interested in the framework, in the more disciplined approach versus who is just looking for the magic bullet. Because I think if you focus on those that have the discipline to say, I need a structure, I need a format, I need a, you know, a rough template I can tailor to my organization, those are the people. And I.
Bill Sherman Think that’s.
Stan Lepeak Done.
Bill Sherman I think that’s a good example there. So, for example, the question of how do I think that person is looking for a framework versus what do I do? That person is looking for solution.
Stan Lepeak Yes, exactly.
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Bill Sherman With that, then, if you’ve got your audience and you’re trying to get your thought leadership, what you’re doing from the research side of the House to your audience, let’s talk of speed of getting ideas from back of the house to find a house. What have you seen? Slow it down and how do you accelerate it? Well, I think.
Stan Lepeak What slows down is the there’s two things. One is the opinion of the producer of the thought leadership that it needs to be a consensus built piece of thought leadership, which can get into very extensive internal review where you’re routing it to different industry leads or practices to try to get in a room and assuming those individuals even have opinions which often they don’t or they don’t have time to share them because their goal is, for example, in a consultancy to sell more business, not spend the weekend. Exactly. Trying to renew the thought leadership. So I think you need to have a limited review cycle with key individuals who really care and will respond. And then on the other hand, when you actually take it to market, is recognize that the target you have and whether that’s a CFO or a chief human resource officer or maybe a CEO or maybe a, you know, a divisional lead, they’re being inundated. By huge amounts of thought leadership. So what’s going to catch their attention in a consumable fashion? And that’s where we have things like podcasts, Bill, which you’ve done a great job of advancing, that it’s something that’s very consumable, as are the shorter pieces of information that can get to that decision maker, give them a taste of the knowledge and thought leadership you have to offer and bring them back for a little bit more. But again, that goes back to your viewing it as a as a process, not as a silver bullet, white paper solution. So I think on the internal side, keep the review tight and crisp to those who care. And on the external side, really put yourself in the seat of the consumer, of the thought leadership to understand what’s really going to get their attention and make them want to, you know, provide a comment, respond asking for more or at least remember you against the literal deluge of stuff that is coming their way, telling them what they should know about a particular topic.
Bill Sherman Absolutely. And I think that’s a good example, is I think one of the things when it comes down to creating thought leadership on a topic, there’s from the creator side almost the desire to be complete, comprehensive, to qualify every statement, to support every argument, to be almost exhaustive, right? And right from the consumer’s side, it’s like, look, I don’t want to read a dissertation. I don’t need a 200 page research report right away. Show me if this is going to be relevant to my problem. Let me make a quick decision of, Yeah, I like the way you think. Tell me more versus if I have to read 200 pages or through a book or a white paper or whatever as a report, I’m not going to do it. You know, that’s just going to say as a doorstop, I’m never going to commit that time as a consumer.
Stan Lepeak Yeah. No, exactly. And I think take that back to the creator of the thought leadership. You know, often I find this challenge in that some of those that name was going to go on, names were going to go on. The thought leadership is they wanted to have, you know, every opinion and call to action backed up by some numbers. And yeah, my position like this is this is common sense. You know, this is what we do for a living. We’re telling people they need to investigate artificial intelligence in terms of customer care. You know, we don’t need a survey to back that up. So, you know, the provider of the thought leadership, if they’re a credible organization and if they have the trust or at least the potential trust of their clients and prospects, you don’t need to back everything up. And as you cited into a dissertation with charts and graphs and calculus and something that would come out of academia, nothing wrong with that. But that’s not going to be what’s going to serve the needs of the typical executive in the market today. So the numbers back up the opinion. But the opinion should be what you’re really learning and seeing with your clients on a daily basis.
Bill Sherman So as we move forward and I want to start wrapping this up here, I’ve got a question for you. You’ve said in a number of different seats and served different roles, both on research and publishing of thought leadership. You’ve worked with different teams both on the sell side and in sort of the long term strategy side. My question for you is if you had advice for practitioners, what three tips would you give to a practitioner who’s responsible for thought leadership within their organization? How could they be more effective at what they do? Okay.
Stan Lepeak So I think.
Bill Sherman I think the.
Stan Lepeak First tip is to develop a strategy around thought leadership, and I would define strategy somewhat loosely and that just don’t go out to market with what everyone else is doing or having a me check box that you have a paper on the hot topic of the day start to look at, you know, what is your organization trying to benefit from the delivery of this thought leadership. So every organization has a product or service. They have a specialty, they have an angle, they’re strong in an industry. So look at your capabilities and frame the thought leadership strategy based on promoting thought. Leadership is going to tie back to your organization’s capabilities because, you know, in a public company or a private company, it needs to stay solvent. Producing thought leadership for its own sake really is irrelevant. You know, that’s again, for the academic.
Bill Sherman That’s just giving yourself a pat on the back, right? It’s actually. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Stan Lepeak Yeah. So if you can answer, how is this going to make us some money? Don’t do it. It’s both the opportunity to make the money, but it’s also recognizing if we raise this awareness within a client and they come back and say, hey, you cited something that’s really been bothering me, like governance of RPA. What can you do for me if you don’t have anything to do? Don’t raise that topic. So that’s one thing is look at it strategically, but also tie it back to what is your firm’s capabilities to deliver on what you’re highlighting. I think the second thing we’ve already touched on is to have a tight team focused on developing the thought leadership, which is a team that has some strong opinions on the topic. You know, I think the thought leadership the team needs to be domain experts. Maybe they’re not as smart as the smartest partner or VP within the firm or the smartest product designer. Need to really understand the capabilities of the organization such that when they’re going out to, you know, leadership, they’re taking to them an opinion, a position on what should be done with thought leadership and looking for validation. They’re not just going to a meeting saying, tell me what I should do with thought leadership. So I think there is the block and tackling. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to perform market research and turn it into thought leadership. But I think those at the top of the thought leadership group need to be pretty bright about both the market as well as what the organization is capable of bringing to the market. So, you know, asking a busy executive, what do they think they should do in market research and thought leadership for the next year is just a futile effort versus saying, I’ve identified three key things we think we should focus on. Here’s the plan, here’s the deliverables, here’s the timeline I’d like you to sign off on and give me some budget. And it’s likely there’s somebody 1 or 2 layers below that senior executive that’s probably really smart about the topic and probably very interested in getting involved. So finding those people maybe a layer below and enlisting them as part of the project team is important versus expecting the executives. They’re going to show up and provide any real practical and quality insight. And then I think the third piece is just and again, and we’ve talked a bit already, is really thinking about what you’re going to deliver to the market from the perspective of the consumer of those deliverables and delivering things that people can easily access fits into their schedule. It’s something they can consume, but also has a logical next step. So again, just to raise someone’s awareness, pique their interest is good, but if there’s not a logical next step such as, by the way, you know, we’re in your town in a month and we have someone talking about this, do you want to show up to write or you need to respond if you like this topic? We do have some underlying market research on it. Would you like a ten page PowerPoint of the numbers that could be useful? Somebody click here to get it. But provide the next step so you don’t pick their interests but provide the next step and the next day somebody else piques their interest and they’ve forgotten about what you did with them. So look at it as a continuum such that if you do provide some value to the individual, there’s the logical next step which keeps you engaged with them.
Bill Sherman And I think those are some really good points. And I want to call out a couple of things there. In terms of you talked about the level of domain experts that might be 1 or 2 levels deeper in the organization that might have a lot of strong opinions interested in doing it and are possibly motivated to advance their own careers and get some recognition by contributing thought leadership. And one of the things that I’ve seen and heard across many organizations is that sometimes thought leadership as an organizational activity focuses too much on the top of the house where you look and you say, okay, who are top ten people? Even though you have 100,000 employees, Right? And there’s a wealth of knowledge, especially in a professional services environment like we’ve been talking about, where those next 2 or 3 tiers of talent really have things to say and an eagerness to save them right to yet only get in front of clients and customers to build their own personal brand and to start establishing their voice so they get noticed within the firm. And I think that’s important to remember when you’re sort of leading the fall leadership function. The other thing I want to call out is that next step is and I think it’s absolutely critical if you put out thought leadership and you just end it full stop, no call to action. You’ve done it infographic. You’ve done a public service announcement at your peril, hoping that the rest of the world will know what to do. And from my experience, unless you put out breadcrumbs, people either don’t know what to do or. They’re busy and they’re bombarded and they don’t they don’t move forward. Right. And so if you’re trying to create value for the firm, whether that’s generating revenue or, you know, demonstrating, hey, we’re really smart and or looking here, you’ve got to invite people into the conversation. You’ve got to give them a way to move forward.
Stan Lepeak Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, everyone is very busy. And if you don’t provide that opportunity, the next day, they’ll go on to something else. And if that thought leadership creator provided that opportunity, they’re going to follow up with that firm, that organization, that group and not you. So, you know, you’ve got you’ve captured the attention of the viewer. That’s critical. And that’s the ultimate challenge. But if you don’t take advantage of that capture and move forward with it, you know, it’s just a one shot. And, you know, you’re going to be on to trying to capture the next person’s opinion. But as you say, if there’s no follow up, you really selling yourself short. If you’ve created some good thought leadership, but don’t give an individual the opportunity to learn more and move forward.
Bill Sherman Where I’ve seen thought leadership be most effective is when it’s in the context of an ongoing relationship, because then you’re deepening trust. People are coming to you and say, Hey, I got this problem or this pain point, what do you think? And when that happens, then those are opportunities. Every time is a new door because you’re on their speed dial. Right. And that’s where you want to be.
Stan Lepeak Yeah, exactly. And that’s where I think consultants have the most success with utilization of thought leadership is they don’t go into a meeting with a client. And the last thing before they walk out the door say, by the way, here’s a new paper we’ve written. Read it and let me know if you want to talk about it. They lead with that and saying, I know some of the challenges your organization is facing relative to, for example, the adoption of this technology. We just happen to have some new research came out and you hand them over 3 or 4 slides and say, let’s look at where you said it’s relative to the group of individuals we surveyed and let’s look at what your next steps are compared to some of your peers. And let’s use that as kind of the foundation for this next our discussion versus let’s just walk in and have a chat and talk about golf and the kids. And then I throw something on your desk when I leave and you throw it in the circular bin. But the most successful consultants take searching the thought leadership and use it as a fun element of a discussion. And you still might. Inquire about the quality of what you’re there for. It’s not just, here’s another vendor and I have to give him 45 minutes and I’m looking up.
Bill Sherman So, Stan, this has been a fantastic conversation and I have no doubt that we could probably go on for another hour sharing more stories and experiences. Thank you very much for joining us today here on the podcast.
Stan Lepeak Bill, thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to this more hour and keep up the good work of taking out what really should be done with thought leadership. I think there’s a lot of community in the market and I appreciate what you’re doing to help folks understand that.
Bill Sherman Thank you, Stan.
Bill Sherman If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please join our LinkedIn group. Organizational Thought Leadership. It’s a professional community where thought leadership practitioners talk shop about our field. So if you’re someone who creates curates or deploys thought leadership for your organization, then please join the conversation in the organizational thought Leadership LinkedIn.
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