Developing leadership in an arena of thought

The chairman of a major company was frustrated that they had a contribution to make to peers in an area of business transformation, but only had recognition as a leader in an unrelated area.

We worked with the chairman and conducted web, database and literature searches to understand what gaps existed in their peer's understanding of the area. We matched these against the chairman's ideas, views and experience to identify those areas with the most potential. We then worked with the chairman to develop a signatue story that used researched market data to identify the problems arising from existing gaps in knowledge and practice, adapted the chairman's ideas to more directly address these gaps, and developed aplan to project these ideas to the chairman's peers. This strategy came to life through major set piece speaking opportunities, and less formal but equally important private networking and discussion opportunities.

The result was that the Chairman's company and the chairman received more opportunities to speak on business transformation, and attracted media opportunities and coverage that built their profile and position in this arena. While we didn't conduct formal research to evaluate the results, the Chairman and company executives were pleased and anecdotal evidence showed a strong shift to seeing the chairman as a leader in business transformation.