How often do we hear someone talk about being a thought leader in their industry or get asked what we do to be thought leaders for our customers? We tweet, we blog, we speak, we read, we post … but is the industry sharing internally with its own colleagues? I mean truly sharing among its own teams? Are we driving change within our organizations on how we strategize, implement and think? Are we taking what we learn externally – what we hear at conferences, what we are reading daily – and figuring out how to apply it within our own companies and educating our teams on these ideas in a way that is relevant to them?
What got me thinking about this was a phone conversation I overheard on the plane last week. A woman next to me was very clearly from a staffing/MSP company and was having a very boisterous conversation with someone on her team about a number of issues they are having within one of the programs they have implemented. The issues they were struggling with were not new, and were actually spoken about at Staffing Industry Analysts’ CW Summit in San Diego last month. These conferences offer us great opportunities to learn from a variety of experiences about what’s happening in our industry and help us to socialize new ideas on how to solve problems.
This clearly frustrated woman got me thinking, is there enough knowledge transfer happening out there? Are onsites at MSPs hearing anecdotes about creative new ways to save programs money after their colleagues have attended these conferences? Are recruiters at branches being told about the most effective ways to use social media to recruit candidates? Are we breaking down this information into highly relevant and useful specifics and explaining why it’s relevant and how our industry is changing? Is the message being conveyed to the Buyer community being internally communicated? I know, so many questions, so I started doing some digging.
Several thought leaders have focused on a few simple keys to successfully communicating new ideas and practices throughout an organization:
1. METHOD. Have a structured way to get the information to people (site, webinars or email)
2. REFRESH. Frequently update the message with new ideas (or old ideas that are worth repeating)
3. RELEVANT. Translate the messages into relevant thoughts for your teams
4. CONSISTENCY. Be consistent in delivering these messages so that they come to expect them
Just as we strive to be seen as thought leaders within the industry as a whole, we should strive to be boundless thought leaders within our own organizations and share more internally.
