thought leaders march/april 2010
magazine #tlmag
inside: how to discover ideas the power of polarising opinion how to make money from your ideas intellectual property development an amazing new way to meet why your audience is looking down
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Global Update Thought Leaders was created in 2001 by Matt Church to act as an educational curriculum and networking community for experts. Designed to have an explicitly commercial agenda it was created ‘to help clever people to be commercially smart!’ It’s delivered through the concept of Mentoring, which specifically means the people giving advice have been there and done that. Over the years we have had all kinds of programs, formats and events that all respond to the needs of the growing ‘Expert’ community. Some of these have been awesome and some have been fabulous learning opportunities for us as a group. This year we have continued to decentralise the administration of the Thought Leaders entity into the hands of our stunningly capable Mentor community in each local city. As a result of this we have more than 25 Mentors in 15 cities who all exist to develop expertise in others and to help those experts be commercially savvy. Hook up with them through http:// www.thoughtleaderscentral.com our online community network.
This year saw the launch of the complimentary educational platform, http:// www.thoughtleadersstudio.com You should add it as an RSS feed to your browser and as new episodes get loaded you will be the first to know. Our twitter account for Thought Leaders is @thoughtglobal and is manned by our team of Mentors, who each post thoughts on how you can develop your expertise. We also use this channel to communicate what’s coming up and new postings to STUDIO and the BLOG. You will notice that this magazine has a backchannel through the hashtag #tlmag. Start tracking and commenting in real time your thoughts and feelings about the various articles and more. The blog, http:// www.thoughtleadersblog.com is up and running and acts as a digital forum for the sharing of specific ideas on developing expertise. AND all of this is FREE! Once you get a room full of experts sharing their thoughts, amazing things begin to happen. It’s with this in mind we have launched our much anticipated ‘unconferences’. We call these SUMMITS and you can find out more at http://
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what’s going on at a Leadership level at Thought Leaders
YOUR THOUGHT LEADERS....
navigating your way around the Thought Leaders online world WHERE
WHY
WHAT (TO DO ONCE THERE)
Thought Leaders Central
It’s not what you know but also who you know. This is the key place to meet, network and communicate directly with the whole Thought Leaders membership community.
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Build a profile Join the local community group Introduce yourself to a local mentor Blog your thoughts Be cool; ‘serve don’t sell’
Thought Leaders Studio
You get tonnes of great information on how to capture, package and deliver your expertise.
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Create an RSS feed to the episode list Watch videos, post comments, share the content with your friends, clients and colleagues via facebook, twitter etc
Thought Leaders Blog
Read streamed articles and specific thoughts on how you go about developing your expertise.
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Set up an RSS feed Post comments Share the content
Follow Thought Leaders on Twitter
Get short bursts of mentoring. Stay up to date with latest networking and learning opportunities
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Follow Re-tweet the stuff you like
Thought Leaders Home page
It’s the one stop portal for all these different online places.
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Link to all the above good stuff
Attend Thought Leaders Summits
They are the live, belly-to-belly, face-toface experiences that combine the multiple benefits of sharing, learning and meeting.
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Participate
http://www.thoughtleaderscentral.com
http://www.thoughtleadersstudio.com
http://www.thoughtleadersblog.com
http://www.twitter.com/thoughtglobal
http://www.thoughtleadersglobal.com
http://www.thoughtleaderssummits.com
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•
WHERE ARE ALL THE GREAT IDEAS? New topics are often found behind unprepossessing, unlabelled doors; the sort of doors most people would pass by and not even notice. Start looking out for these doorways to your thought leadership!
Doorways to Thought Leadership by Shelley Dunstone To be a thought leader means you are known for your original thinking.
An example of a locked door is your own whinges and complaints about the world; problems you assume are insoluble. Do you ever hear yourself saying or thinking “The problem is…” “Most people never…” “I wish…”? If you ask yourself what could be done to fix the problem, you’re on your way to some new thinking. When you hear yourself ranting, see it as a doorway.
Therefore, you have to keep coming up with new ideas, angles and perspectives for your writing and speaking. That’s easy to say, but not so easy to do. The world is crowded with information. You and your topic can easily become a commodity. How can you be more prolific in your output of original material? When I started with Thought Leaders, I found this a real challenge. I kept wishing that a door would appear with a sign saying “Topic Inside – Please Enter”. Sadly, there is no such door. There’s no single source of ideas. Ideas are “out there”, but they can be hard to recognise.
open yourself up to new ideas
Being an academic type of person, I buried myself in books. I found great topics, but they didn’t translate into thought leadership for me. The topic headings you find in textbooks are already mainstream. Lots of people are already offering expertise on those issues. And the topics in business books are already “taken”. You can’t use “Who Moved my Cheese?” or “Purple Cow” because someone already owns them.
Sometimes you happen to open a door, but you don’t bother to go in and look around. Have you ever been to a seminar or conference, and asked a question, but received a very unsatisfactory answer? Don’t write off the speaker; write down the question, because you’ve just asked a good question that other people are not thinking about! Go through the doorway and see what is inside.
When someone says “That can’t be taught!”, they just opened a door for you. People think a thing can’t be taught because they have never thought about how to teach it. Think about its elements and what people need to know. And pay attention to questions that people are asking. For example, join groups on Linked In, and click on the Discussions tab to see what people are thinking about.
As thought leaders, we are looking for new material; what’s not already there. It’s hard to see something that’s invisible. I’ve learned to recognise some signs of where a new topic may be hiding – this is my concept of “doorways to thought leadership”.
New topics are often found behind unprepossessing, unlabelled doors; the sort of doors most people would pass by and not even notice. Start looking out for these doorways to your thought leadership!
I’ve noticed three kinds of doors: 1. A door that seems to be locked, 2. A door that you open unexpectedly, and 3. A door that someone opens for you, without realising it.
Shelley helps leaders lead for innovation and is a Thought Leaders mentor in Adelaide. Contact details: Web www.shelleydunstone.com Email shelley@shelleydunstone.com Phone +61 8 8407 3532
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1 Your own whinges and complaints...are often your ideas waiting to be discovered.
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2 Questions without answers...can start you thinking about your great ideas.
3 When someone says that can’t be taught...see it as an opportunity.
THREE PHASE POWER OF THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tell Show Ask Everybody knows general household power usage is driven by 240V. It is a dependable, useful and familiar power source that is known to most, and relied upon by many. 240V power is a staple in our lives and keeps us in a lifestyle that is comfortable. But 240V power has many limitations, the biggest drawback being it doesn't have the robust energy to drive serious change. If you go to most industrial sites, a different type of power is used; 3-phase power is the power of choice for heavy industry. Just like the comparison of 240V and 3-phase power, everyday thinking and thought leadership are clearly distinguishable. Everyday thinking runs our lives, makes us comfortable and generally fulfils our needs. But in times of change or upheaval; when new empires need to be built or the methods that drive existing ones need to be re-thought, ordinary thinking is not enough. What is required is the power of thought leadership. Just like 3-phase power, thought leadership has the capacity to carry power that can change the world around us. It can drive huge mechanics and metaphysics and in short spaces of time can be the key driver of any construction or deconstruction. Somewhat like 3-phase power, thought leadership has three distinct channels to carry your message, idea or process. Consider these three pathways you can concentrate on to supercharge your own environment; Tell - through speaking or authorship, you can disseminate your thought leadership to large audiences...sometimes even global audiences Show - by building awesome training and mentoring programs you can instruct people towards a better process through your ideas and concepts Ask - build a phenomenal coaching and facilitation thought leadership practice by asking people critical questions to help them unlock their own thought leadership Power up your business, team or simply your thinking today. Move away from the dependable, reliable and familiar energy of 240V; forget about positive, negative and neutral channels! Work the 3 channels of thought leadership. Tell, Show and Ask. Step into the life-changing 3-phase power of thought leadership today.
Attribution: The mode model was created by Matt Church to help explain the key delivery modes for Thought Leadership.
Darren Hill is the Northern Territory Mentor for Thought Leaders and an expert on human behaviour and leadership. Contact details: Web www.changeworksweb.com Email darren@changeworksweb.com Phone +61 8 8945 3199
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THE
VIRTUAL PRESENTER
This Book Rapper extract is centred on keynote presenting. And like everyone else, professional speakers will need to heed the seeds of digital media. Their path sounds like the introduction of the telephone: a move from the natural to the virtual. A natural conversation is face-to-face, in real-time and two-way. A virtual conversation may be the opposite: Face to Place: Like a phone call, the speaker and the audience are in different places Time-Reel: Like an audio recording, the listener tunes in when it suits them One-Way: Like TV, the audience is not able to interact with the speaker. Or, it may be a hybrid, some combination of these three styles.
Download the full rap online at http://www.bookrapper.com
New communications Digital media is changing the way we communicate. Many of our communication industries and professions are morphing too – or at least they need to be! •
Newspapers are no longer viable in their current form.
Do you know where the word ‘phoney’ comes from? If you guessed it had something to do with the ‘telephone’, then you’re on the right track.
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Independent Bloggers have become a compelling new media channel.
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Mass media advertising has been Googled.
The first phone conversations were not considered to be real conversations. They were ‘phoney’. Today this word is synonymous with ‘fake and false’. Most of us now accept phone calls as being a valid way to catch up, chat up and make up with our friends, family and colleagues. Other communication modes have taken a similar path.
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Traditional PR has a feather-like impact on public opinion.
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The movie industry has been outplayed by the gaming revolution.
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Speakers Bureaus and other brokers are losing their voice. Google lets you tap the source directly.
True connection
Email was considered not a ‘true’ communication mode. It didn’t let you express your tone of voice. : ) Txting wasn’t either – particularly because it did a hatchet job on our traditional ways of spelling. Now, social media is under the same spell. They’re not ‘real friends’, they’re merely ‘friendlies’.
Geoff McDonald is the creator of the Book Rapper concept and is a Thought Leaders Mentor based in Victoria. Contact details: Web www.geoffmcdonald.com Email geoff@bookrapper.com Phone +61 3 9374 3498
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POSITIONING
PIRANDELLO?
Does everyone love your ideas? A new adaptation of master dramatist Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author recently played as part of the Sydney Festival. The innovative and probing play was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" ("Madhouse!"). It changed theatre's perception of itself and is regarded as his tour de force. ‘Who are you?’ ‘What are you?’ ‘What is truth?’ These are some of the questions the controversial work raises in its essential examination of how we present ourselves to the world and the masks that we wear. The work continues to spark controversial reactions whenever it is performed, and divides audiences. Scottish actor Ian McDiarmid, feels however that this is essential. Performing one of the lead roles in the Australian production of the play, when interviewed on Australian radio this week, McDiarmid went to lengths to explain why an actor and director does not and should not seek only critical acclaim.
Positioning in thought leadership is all about how we present ourselves and our ideas to the world. Do we seek to divide the room or are we looking only to please? A thought leader by definition is a person who is pursuing a new or alternative line of thought and who seeks to change the way people think about a particular issue. Such a role must naturally attract some dissent and disagreement. There is a risk however, that the commercial imperative to produce rave reviews can override presenting ideas and thinking that will upset the status quo and perhaps even have people leave the room.
are you comfortable dividing a room?
Pirandello’s play examines the face we position to the world. In your thought leadership, what are you positioning and are you comfortable with dividing the room?
McDiarmid feels that success with this production is not just about glowing reviews, and that not only did they seek to divide the room, they were actually pleased when some audience members walked out in the first act.
Libby helps leaders build cultures that work and is a Thought Leaders mentor in Brisbane. Contact details: Web www.libbysander.com Email libby@libbysander.com Phone +61 7 5543 8115
Summit News
Mentoring News
Showcase News
This year the new summit experience is running throughout Australia and New Zealand. A totally OPEN space experience which we believe will lead to great conversations. It’s all about choice and is built on the premise that the audience is worth meeting. info@thoughtleaders.com.au to find out more
Group Mentoring is still being offered in all major cities throughout Australia and New Zealand. There are often multiple sessions in each city each month. Make sure you check out www.thoughtleaderscentral.com for locations, dates and times. There is a one-off annual fee to attend these sessions Find out more here...
Matt Church is hosting the 2010 Thought Leaders Showcase. Eight (8) fabulous Thought Leaders will be presented to the Australian Conference Market. There are 4 spots available. Please contact elouisemccallum@thoughtleaders.com.au to find out more.
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SCARCITY VERSUS ABUNDANCE Giving it all away... In his latest book, editor of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson delivers an essay on the challenges of giving things away to create a reputation economy. It’s a great read for those who work to charge for the information they deliver. The table on this page lays down the key distinctions between a business/economy based on Scarcity or Abundance.
Chris Anderson is the editor of WIRED magazine and the author of the LONG TAIL and now his latest book FREE. Follow Chris on twitter: @chr1sa
ELEMENT
SCARCITY
ABUNDANCE
rules
Everything is forbidden unless it is permitted
Everything is permitted unless it is forbidden
social model
Paternalism “We know best”
Egalitarianism “You know what is best”
profit plan
Business Model
We’ll figure it out
decision process
Top Down
Bottom Up
management style
Command and control
Out of control
provocations: what do you currently charge for and is it being offered for FREE by anyone else? what do you currently GIVE away that you could charge for? if you do give it away for free what are you TRADING that access for? (eg reputation, friendship) what BONUSES can you add to what you currently deliver for a fee? what is an experience product you can CHARGE a premium for?
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new
a way to share, learn and meet It was Charlie Jones who said that the key factors that make a difference between who you are today and who you will be in 5 years time are the books you read and the people you meet. We reckon he was right but now the change can happen quicker and the ways you can learn are more diverse. We have been running meetings for thought leaders for almost 10 years. A Thought Leaders Conference is so unique. Where else in the world would you get to attend a program where the audience is as stimulating as the presenters? In the past the only way you could really know this was in the breaks. Those short sessions where you duck to the ‘loo’, grab a muffin, chat to some new people briefly and then almost with regret have to break up the chat to go back into the learning session. Well, what if the whole program was as good as the break? What if you just had a whole event dedicated to the mutual sharing of ideas between some truly great thinkers and subject matter experts? Would it be chaos? Three things that could go wrong : 1.The experiences have no structure and therefore achieve nothing with your valuable investment of time and money. 2.The people and issues being discussed don’t interest you. 3.You could be exposed to some truly paradigm-changing ideas and have your mind stretched so far that it never regains its original dimensions.
The Summits will be built around the phenomenally successful OPEN Spaces format. This structured approach to unstructured meetings has been used in the United Nations assembly discussions and in small regional communities in the outback. It works! Of course you have to take our word for it the first time. After a few minutes though you will come to see this as one of the most natural and effective ways for people to get together to share, learn and meet. The key principle of the meeting format is the Law of Two Feet; if you are not contributing to a discussion or getting anything out of a discussion you move on. It’s elegant in its simplicity. It breaks the old school, one-way communication mode that so many gatherings perpetuate. You can be a Butterfly or a Bumblebee as you flit from session to session or even carry ideas from one discussion to the next, crosspollinating the collective conversation at the Summit. Not only do we not apologise for the likelihood that you might just think differently when you finish the day - we hope that’s exactly what happens. Indeed, that’s the role of thought leadership. So what do you do...? Well, go to the registration site and invest $990 and get our ‘all you can meet’ special deal. That’s right, you spend $990 and can attend any and all of the advertised dates and locations. You can register by completing the attached faxable/snail mailable form or online at: www.thoughtleaderssummits.com
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Dates and Locations Sydney: Thursday 25 February 2010 Thursday 6 May 2010 Thursday 5 August 2010 Wednesday 20 October 2010 Brisbane: Wednesday 2 June 2010 Wednesday 1 September 2010 Wednesday 1 December 2010 Melbourne: Wednesday 30 June 2010 Wednesday 11 August 2010 Wednesday 27 October 2010 Auckland: Friday 21 May 2010 Friday 27 August 2010 Friday 26 November 2010