Unlocking Team Potential Through Leadership Alignment | Julie Williamson

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Long-term Strategies for Lasting Organizational Change

A conversation with Julie Williamson on helping leaders bring teams into alignment for greater results.

In the latest episode of Thought Leadership Leverage, Peter Winick chats with Julie Williamson, CEO of The Karrikins Group. Julie is a trailblazer in connecting communication, design, strategy, sales, marketing, and service to drive sustainable growth. Julie shares her unconventional journey into thought leadership. Despite her passion or writing and English, she opted for a degree in Information Systems during the 80s, a time when women in tech were rare. This path gave her a unique vantage point, blending technical, business, and social insights, which she now leverages to help organizations grow and innovate. Julie describes her ideal client as a “frustrated leader.” She excels in enhancing team performance, combining business acumen, tech background, and social science to foster organizational communication and cohesion. Her focus is on “Leadership Alignment,” ensuring teams outperform individually.

Julie’s approach involves both publications and hands-on consulting, emphasizing that true transformation requires sustained engagement, not just quick fixes. Her team typically works with clients for 3 to 12 months to catalyze real change. To develop and deploy thought leadership, Julie regularly creates short-form content on platforms like LinkedIn and Forbes Expert Panels. She believes in the discipline of consistent content creation to hone her voice and impact.

Addressing the challenges of linking thought leadership to business results, Julie acknowledges the difficulty in measuring the direct impact of her work. Her strategy focuses on continuous contribution to leadership effectiveness, ensuring her insights make a tangible difference.

Three Key Takeaways:

Leadership Alignment: Julie Williamson emphasizes the importance of aligning leadership to enhance team performance. By fostering strong organizational communication and cohesion, aligned teams can achieve greater results than individuals working alone.

Sustained Engagement for Transformation: True change within organizations requires sustained effort. Julie’s approach involves long-term engagements (3 to 12 months) rather than one-off workshops, ensuring lasting transformation and meaningful impact.

Consistent Content Creation: To develop and deploy effective thought leadership, Julie advocates for regular content creation. She underscores the necessity of disciplined, consistent efforts in writing and sharing insights, which helps in refining one’s voice and maximizing impact.

Julie understands what it takes to bring teams into alignment for better success. When it comes to Thought Leadership, Peter Winick knows how to bring Strategy, Tactics and Goals into alignment. To supercharge your thought leadership, check out this video!

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Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast, which is leveraging thought leadership. Today my guest is Julie Williamson. And Julie, is a leading voice in how organizations link together communication, design, strategy, sales, marketing and service to deliver sustainable growth results using both traditional and forward-looking resources. There’s a lot of interesting things that she’s done over the years, but as opposed to talking about them, I’d rather just rather just talk to her. So. Welcome, Julie.

Julie Williamson Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Peter Winick Yeah. So let’s start with, the journey. How did, tell me about the logical and linear path that took you to. Do you follow people?

Julie Williamson Because everybody’s path is so logical and linear.

Peter Winick I have been walking this business, which is what kind of makes it fun.

Julie Williamson Yeah, yeah. Do you know, Peter? It’s so funny. I was thinking about this just a minute ago when I was trying to figure out what to do in college. I remember saying to my parents, you know, I think I’m gonna get an English degree because I loved reading, I loved writing, and I was a, you know, kind of in that space and one and somehow the conversation came up. You know, you might want to be able to get a job after college. So I ended up with a degree in information systems, which was great. Served me very well. It was the 80s. There weren’t a lot of women in tech. I like the opportunity to get into a big systems integrator and do some amazing work around the world, but it pulled me away from writing and kind of this space that I really enjoy being in, where I’m exploring. Like, how do we share ideas in a way that helps us to grow and also makes a contribution to how other people are thinking about solving problems. So, that was my linear path, right? Was I took a big detour early in my career, but I’m really grateful for that because it gave me great content to pull from. As I’m thinking about how do I share, my experiences and insights and learnings, from a technical perspective, as well as a business perspective and a social science perspective.

Peter Winick Right. Yeah. Interesting. I, I took a quasi-practical approach and only took a minor in English.

Julie Williamson Yeah, I think I have a minor in English actually.

Peter Winick Yeah. Yeah. Because then everyone said, well, what are you going to do with that? In business you can’t do anything with that business. Like, I don’t know, I spent a lot of time in business now, and I write a lot and speak a lot and actually read a lot. So it’s not all that. It’s not just Shakespeare anymore. So. Right. So tell us a little bit about the work that you do, sort of the types of clients that you support and what your types of problems you’re helping them through.

Julie Williamson Yeah, I always like to say our best client is a frustrated leader. If you think your team could be doing better, faster, more, whatever, that’s the space that we lean into. And we bring to that leadership perspective an intersection of deep appreciation of the complexities of business. A lot of background, obviously, a tech and social science dimension of organizational communication. And how do teams really connect and come together so that they can deliver as well as possible as a team?

Peter Winick So when you say frustrated, you know, frustrated has a connotation that’s sort of negative. But I as you were explaining that, I’m thinking, well, the opposite of that might be complacent. And that’s the worst thing for a leader to be right is to be. Well, you said probably something they should be. And maybe frustrated is a strong word, but less satisfied with or whatever. Because if you’re sitting there as a leader, everything’s perfect. Like what? You know, along comes something and you’re going to get knocked off your perch.

Julie Williamson Yeah. Well, and I think complacency is in that we’re doing just fine space.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Julie Williamson Like it’s fine the decisions take too long to make. Eventually we get there or it’s fine that, you know, we’re at 90% instead of 95% of where we should be. So that’s actually not a great client for us if they’re satisfied with being fine. But if you’re frustrated and you feel like you could be doing again, more, better, faster, whatever it might be, and that’s a space that we can really lean into.

Peter Winick Well, you know, I would argue that, you know, how many organizations today can be in that complacent mode where, I mean, it used to be lots and lots of organizations, big entities. It can be in that, you know, what’s your goal this year? We have we want to grow 2% or, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like everyone’s going through digital transformation and everyone’s trying to figure out how to integrate AI. Everyone’s going through what does it mean from a cultural standpoint in a work from home revolution? Like, what are the intergenerational like? You can’t just sit there, go, yeah, we could just be, you know, big fat insurance company does a little bit better each year. It doesn’t it doesn’t get anymore.

Julie Williamson Yeah I would agree with that.

Peter Winick Yeah. So what are the business models then for you. Like how do you who’s paying you to do what. What does that look like.

Julie Williamson Yeah. So we bring our thought leadership around this idea of leadership alignment. And how do we bring aligned teams into doing better than any one of them can do individually out into the market through both publication? You know, I’m writing a lot of articles, podcasts, things like that, but also we get hands on experience that informs all of that work through the consulting work that we do. So we’re working hands on with teams who are in pursuit of better, who are looking to be better at how they deliver to their customers, to their colleagues, to their communities.

Peter Winick Got it. And what? How long is it? An intervention usually lasts. What does it look like?

Julie Williamson Yeah, yeah. Our programs typically last anywhere from 3 to 12 months on average. We know that. We know that change and transformation doesn’t happen in a catalytic moment. So people say, well, can’t we just do a one day workshop? And you’re like, no, that’s not how people work.

Peter Winick That’s right. Yeah.

Julie Williamson It’s Yeah. Yeah. But we’re not in there 40 hours a week. Right. So it’s a very methodical, it is intervention focused, but not trying to cram all of the work into one day. So we know things have to happen over time.

Peter Winick Got it. And. Talk to me about. How you decide to develop and deploy the thought leadership, right? You know, some people like to write long form, some people videos like what’s your cadence, what do you how do you like. Yeah. In that regard.

Julie Williamson You know, that’s such a great question. Like how do you think about that. And immediately what came to mind for me is a few years ago I was at a mountain biking clinic. This comes back to this question, by the way. I was at a mountain biking clinic and the instructor said, you don’t get better by going out and riding really big, challenging trails. You get better in the parking lot by doing skills and drills, and then you take those skills that you’ve learned and you bring them into the big. Ride that you want to do, right? And I think writing or bringing your thought leadership out into the market is a lot like that. You have to find ways to practice and to, you know, build up that cadence and that muscle so that when you want to do something long form, you have the skills to do it right. You have the ability to do it. And so I really do a lot of short form things like what do we do? What are we doing on LinkedIn? Are there opportunities for us to do, you know, 400 to 600 word articles or placements? And involved with the Sports Business Council where you can pop things out there in their expert panels. Right. So how do you find those opportunities to build up your muscle, right. And build your voice in that kind of space so that when you have the opportunity to do something more long form, the skills are there.

Peter Winick And got it. And if you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a five-star review at ratethispodcast.com/ltl and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com, forward slash podcast. And what are some of the things you’ve been doing more of or differently, let’s say, the last year or two that are a working or the flip side of that that you stopped doing because they just weren’t working anymore.

Julie Williamson Yeah, yeah, we do a lot of our own longer form pieces that we use within our client engagements. So as we’re working with clients, we want to help them to understand the process or understand the next step that’s available for them. One of the things that we found is that that’s not as effective from a business development or marketing perspective, because they’re almost too technical in nature. And so they’re, too specific to the process that somebody might be in with us as they’re doing a program with us. So I’ve really had a push to think about how do we create better context for what can feel like very dense and technical material. And that shift has been that’s been a good push, I think, for us, a good, healthy push to say, how do we make things more accessible for somebody who’s not deeply in our programs or language?

Peter Winick Yeah, I love that. And, what about consistency slash frequency of publishing? Because some people, are obsessive when it comes to sticking to a routine. Others it’s an inverse of when they’re busy. Hey, if I’m not busy, I might as well not step out. And then I’ve seen everything in what works for you.

Julie Williamson Yeah, I think that if you’re too busy to write today, you’re going to be too busy to write tomorrow.

Peter Winick Oh, exactly. I love that, I love it. Yeah.

Julie Williamson So with that, I think that answers your question. Right?

Peter Winick Right. Well, so what do you do with that density of force yourself to block out time to say, on such and such a time? That’s what I’ve got.

Julie Williamson Yeah, I’m pretty disciplined about it. I try to make sure that I’m writing something at least 4 or 5 times a week, and that something could be just a LinkedIn post. It could be, response to a prompt on a publishing site. It could be, something that we’re sending out to a client to help them with some work that they’re doing. But how do I make sure that I’m being really disciplined, that I’m putting something out into the world on a regular basis?

Peter Winick Yeah. And I think what people fail to realize sometimes is we’re looking for that immediate hit. I’ve seen this firsthand, and I’ve seen it with clients where let’s say you, always put something out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Whatever. Right. And maybe it’s a video on Tuesdays and an article, whatever it is. Right. And, you know, you get the response that you get, etc., etc. and for some reason, there’s a Thursday that you’re traveling or on vacation, you miss it and people start emailing you like, wait, I didn’t get the thing today. Like people almost. Not that they depend on it. They’re going to live, but they’re like, everything okay. Like that’s part of my routine is on. It’s all this thing on Thursday that I kind of enjoy. I might not comment every time. I’m not engage within any time like I expected from them. And when they violate that expectation, I’m like, whoa, what’s up? I’m a little shaken from that.

Julie Williamson Yeah, I love that observation that you know, that you’re being, I guess, successful in this thought leadership space. If when your routine is disrupted, it disrupts other people’s routines.

Peter Winick Yeah, right. Well, because there’s that I don’t know if was Jim Collins was good to go to one of those that’s, you know, who would really care if your entity cease to exist. That’s like a horrible question. Right. And the reality is most people wouldn’t care. But like when you get a little signal like that, that like, may I tell you that I read your thing every Tuesday, but it didn’t come this week. And then like, I wanted that little cut, little red.

Julie Williamson Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a great measure, right I love that.

Peter Winick So what are the challenges that you’re facing now relative to the business and the thought leadership. And what is your strategy to overcome them?

Julie Williamson I think one of our challenges is that we do struggle as a business to draw a straight line between thought leadership pieces and business results for us.

Peter Winick Yeah, right. Great. Great answer. Yeah.

Julie Williamson Yeah. So that that’s a question of is it working from a marketing or business development perspective, as well as making a contribution to the people who we want to have an impact on? And I think at some point you have to lean into that contribution piece and say, I’m going to keep making what I believe is a contribution on to the greater conversation about how do leaders and teams be as effective as possible. And even though I can’t draw a straight line necessarily into our business results, we work on that, you know, as you, I’m sure, know how to do behind the scenes around tracking clicks and where are things coming from and asking people, how did they hear about us and so forth. But it is hard to do that again, just hard enough.

Peter Winick But I think the measurement piece, you know, as marketers. We’re all trained that, you know, what’s the call to action, what’s the impact, what’s the results? And then we’ve got all these tools that literally you can send out your newsletter and within seconds watched the open rates pop and the click rates pop and, you know, the dashboard and the like. Whoa. Okay. Well, if it’s a direct response piece, that’s what you need to be doing. And I say you have to measure thought leadership in the aggregate. What’s our total spend time, energy, effort, money over a period of time across a variety of formats. And what can we attribute to it directly and indirectly. Right. So something that happened is I think that we obsess too much over engagement and likes and shares because it’s easy. It’s a lazy marketers like, oh, how many clicks did I get? Oh, click. Here’s an answer. Right? And more people than one would tend to like to think. Or what I would call lurkers. They’re sitting there, they’re reading the content, doing it, but they don’t feel the need to comment or engage or share or whatever. But then when they come back to you, they’re ready to rock and roll, right? So someone might be sort of in the mezzanine for two years, and then all of a sudden, bang, they reach out to you and they’re ready to do business because they’ve been following you, and they know what you think and how you’re thinking. Like, we get this all the time where folks that we’re not even they’re not even on our radar can say, hey, I’ve been on your newsletter for three years or all your stuff, and we need to talk because I think you can help me now. Like, how do you measure the value of that? Right. Like that’s something that’s an interesting one to think about. Yeah, yeah.

Julie Williamson Yeah. I really appreciate your idea about measuring it in aggregate. And I think that’s something that we could take on as well.

Peter Winick Yeah. And it doesn’t mean that if there are things that, you know, are losers, that you don’t sort of reallocate resources, but it’s really hard to say, oh, we did that white paper, and it came out three weeks ago. What’s the impact of that? Well, that what I would say you’d have to measure over, you know, six months, nine months, maybe a year, sometimes two to get the feel like what is the shelf life of the thing and how do you extract value from it? So it’s not I don’t have all the answers there, but it’s something that we all wrestle with.

Julie Williamson Yeah, exactly. And I think just knowing that. Right. This is a this is a challenging space and it’s a challenging question. I think it’s helpful for people.

Peter Winick Yeah. Then I think the other thing is some of us think that we constantly need new stuff, new stuff, new stuff. And I think you get to a point where you’ve created a lot of stuff in a variety of modalities and formats reuse it, repurpose it, recycle it, you know, get it out there again, because that one post that you did on LinkedIn that killed it two years ago, guess what? Only a small percentage of your followers even saw it. Put it out there again, either with a minor tweak or without and assuming it’s evergreen, give it another shot. You don’t have to create the new masterpiece every time, right?

Julie Williamson Yeah, not everything has to be original, but well, in that space, I love that. I love that idea. You know, there’s also something, I think to be said for brevity, right? That not everything has to be, you know, 900 words. And it as we were talking, it just reminded me, I remember all the way back when Twitter first came out, you remember they had the 140-character limit and there was some comedian, I think it might have been Conan O’Brien. I can’t remember exactly who said, you know, basically anyone can be brilliant in a ten-minute monologue, but it takes a genius to be funny and 140 characters. Right? And so, you know, how do you continue to challenge yourself to get your message out there in a way that’s super digestible?

Peter Winick Well, in that super digestible piece, the vision that I always have for that is what is the use case. So I love to read books. I read two books a week, but that’s not I wouldn’t say that’s abnormal, but that’s not typical, right? Yeah, yeah. Our people consuming information. I think you have to look around you and say, listen, even if you were, you know, like me, your daughter read a lot of books. I walk into Starbucks, I order my coffee, I’m standing in line and I’m watching people and they’ve got, you know, 73 seconds to wait for their latte. What are they? They’re scrolling. And if I can’t shake them out of this trance with something quick and punchy, they’re not going to immediately. That’s not the context by which they’re going to sit there and say, oh, this is a good time for me to open up a 28 page white paper with charts and infographics and all that. There’s a time for that later. So it’s also sequence and can I and you hook them early with something pithy and short and slick so that they can go deeper later on? I think that’s we need to think about how people are consuming things.

Julie Williamson Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. And one of the things that I think we did early on that was not as effective is we have a lot of really great content on our website that’s deep, right? So people can go out there and it backstops, somebody who is like, oh, I want to figure out who this character is. Group. This is all about this character grouping is all about. Right. They go out there, they’re going to see a lot of really well thought out and deep work, but it doesn’t. That’s not getting them there. Right. So it’s like that it it’s just that backstop A we put a lot of time and energy into that and thought really good about it. But then the question was, okay how do we get people there. Right. And that doesn’t come from the deep. And, you know, cut d stuff that comes from is exactly like you’re saying something that can catch somebody in the 75 seconds that they’re waiting for their latte.

Peter Winick Yeah. Love it. Well this has been fantastic. Appreciate your time. Julie. Thanks for coming on today. Yeah.

Julie Williamson Yeah. Thanks. Good to see you.

Peter Winick To learn more about Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com to reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com, and please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.