By definition you are a thought-leader if you work with solution-strategies. This article shines a light onto some of the requirements and challenges of the thought-leadership role.
What is a thought-leader?
A thought leader is a leader who, well, thinks. Sometimes it is important to state the obvious. All leaders think, right? Well, not necessarily so. At least not the way I am talking about here. I will refer to leaders who own the problem as sponsors. Sponsors are typically focused on results, not the mechanism by which you accomplish the results. They want to know what time it is, not how the watch is built. By making the choice to select, recommend, and implement solution-strategies to your sponsors, you are providing a mode of thinking in a way that may appear strange. Your job is to make your approach to solution-strategies seem familiar. Ideally, your sponsors outsource thinking about solution-strategies to you.
Why, your sponsor may wonder, under the pressure of unsolved problems, are you spending time thinking about how to solve the problem? Solving problems is about creating results. Why don’t you do something? Why not just jump in and start doing things to solve the problem? How do you justify the added time up front thinking about the problem? How do you make considering different solution strategies acceptable to your sponsors? How do you justify the disruption of the critical path? How do you handle the implicit suggestion that your solution-strategy is better than the solution-strategy of your sponsor?
These can be tricky issues and require skill to handle correctly. There is nothing new about the kind of skills required. Leadership skills are required. Thought-leadership skills. Solution-strategies are thoughts. So if you want to be an effective problem-solver, you have to understand and accept your role as a thought-leader.
So, back to the original and obvious statement that a thought leader is a leader who thinks. We can provide qualification.
A thought leader is a leader in the realm of thinking about how best to solve problems.
As a thought leader, you should
- Have confidence in and be comfortable with your role as a thinker
- Recognize that critical thinking is central to your role
- Make choices that lead to the desired result
- Make choices dispassionately
- Consider social, physical, technical, interpersonal dimensions of the problem
- Maintain the confidence of your sponsors
- Act without personal agendas
Key to your success as a thought-leader is that you know how to follow. Those who choose to lead must follow. Being a thought leader does not mean that you are the source of every idea, but that you facilitate bringing good ideas out of your team.
You are successful as a thought-leader of a team if
- You are adept at identifying good ideas
- Promote or share ideas based on the value of the ideas
- Continue to learn new solution-strategies
- Value the participation of every member of the team
- Foster team cohesion
- Give credit to the team, not just yourself
Thought-Leadership is leadership with a twist of thought!
©2009, Chris Fillebrown, All Rights Reserved
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- Solution-Strategies In The Classroom
- Genrich Altshuller Teaches TRIZ
- More Than One Solution-Strategy
- Psychological Inertia – An Introduction
- TRIZ – An Introduction
- Can the Scientific Method Solve Business Problems?
- Always Look For Bigger Problems To Solve
- Ray Bender – Leadership on the Fly