Thought leadership should be fun, fast, and fearless. You tap into excitement about new ideas and advocate for something better. That’s the mindset behind The Idea Sled. Projects glide forward gracefully. It’s the momentum of commitment. This newsletter shows you how.
I’ve come across more failed thought leadership projects than I care to count. Sometimes, they still see the light of day despite fundamental flaws. Other times, clients call me in desperation when they realize their expensive research and polished prose isn’t moving the needle on anything that matters.
The issue sometimes comes down to writing quality or research sophistication. But it often starts much earlier with whether the writer understands the strategic context before a single word hits the page. When someone asks the wrong questions and simply dictates the answers, the project is doomed from the start.
What’s missing is thought partnership to accompany thought leadership. Over the years, I’ve learned that entering the process earlier as a thinking partner means I can question assumptions more rigorously, propel thinking forward, and ensure that every output serves a larger strategic purpose. Writers and marketers can also learn to play this role.
I’ve seen this manifest clearly with clients in capital markets, where high stakes make the difference obvious. When I work with investment managers on emerging asset, market, or sector trends, the insights become part of their broader narrative about expertise and client value.
The firms that succeed understand what I’ve learned: every piece of thought leadership simultaneously serves as strategic communication, competitive positioning, and relationship building. The question for marketers and writers is whether you’re willing to be a true thinking partner from the outset or just execute against a fixed brief.
One: Enter Before the Assignment Solidifies
The most significant shift I’ve made in my practice occurs at the beginning of the process before the project brief becomes fixed and immutable. Traditional writer relationships begin after all the strategic decisions have been made. The writer’s job is just to ask questions and make it sound good.
Thinking partners, by contrast, integrate themselves into the conversation while these fundamental questions remain fluid. I’ve learned that the initial request almost always represents just the surface layer of what an organization needs to communicate. Now clients invite me into the conversation to help solidify their ideas.
For example, when a client asks for a piece on “market volatility and investment strategy,” I don’t immediately begin researching volatility metrics and portfolio theory or interviewing internal leaders. Instead, I probe deeper:
- What specific concerns about market conditions are keeping your investors awake at night?
- What is the evidence for your hypotheses about cause and effect?
- Which competitors are gaining ground with their messaging on this topic?
- What do you need this piece to accomplish that your previous communications haven’t achieved?
The real need might not be to explain volatility but to demonstrate sophisticated risk management capabilities. Maybe the true audience isn’t prospective investors but existing clients who need reassurance about their current allocations. Or possibly the most pressing issue isn’t market conditions at all but regulatory changes that create both challenges and opportunities for differentiation.
How to do this: relentlessly identify and question every assumption, probing into multiple levels of why and why not.
Two: Uncover Strategic Pressure
Behind every thought leadership initiative lies some form of strategic pressure. Competitive dynamics, regulatory requirements, client concerns, internal alignment issues, and market positioning challenges determine context and define what’s at stake. Surface-level briefs bypass these underlying tensions, but they’re also the most useful mechanism for translating an idea into an assignment for a typical writer.
I’ve learned to develop an instinct for detecting these hidden pressures. When a request feels unusually urgent or oddly framed, when the language mirrors what competitors are saying, when the timing seems tied to external events, or when multiple stakeholders seem invested in the outcome, these are signals to probe deeper.
In capital markets, this pressure often manifests in client-provider dynamics. For example, a PMS platform provider might request a piece about risk management platforms because they’ve developed breakthrough methodologies. But the real story is that recent market volatility exposed gaps in their current systems and clients are demanding greater transparency into risk controls.
The key is to surface these underlying motivations. I always move beyond the client’s stated topic to understand the strategic context of what’s happening in their industry, what they need to accomplish, what obstacles they’re facing, and how this particular piece fits into their broader communication strategy.
How to do this: look at the context for thought leadership from the outside-in, accounting for industry and broader ecosystem dynamics.
Three: Build Clarity Through Systematic Discovery
I use systematic discovery to transform vague objectives into precise content strategies. While traditional writers might begin with research and outlining, I start with intentional conversations designed to extract the specific points of view that will make or break the final piece.
These discovery sessions are not interviews. Instead, they engage the decision-makers who need to be influenced, understand the competitive context that shapes audience expectations, and map the internal constraints that will affect message delivery. Rather than asking rudimentary questions about goals and audiences, thinking partners probe for concrete details that reveal strategic priorities. It feels much more like a conversation than an interview.
For instance, when working on post-trade processing thought leadership, I’ve explored which settlement failures cost clients the most money, which operational inefficiencies create the greatest reputational risk, and which specific metrics matter most to compliance teams evaluating vendor relationships.
This approach uses dialogue to transform abstract strategic intentions into actionable messaging and insights by exploring insights that need to be said in a particular way to specific people at a precise moment.
How to do this: Put away generic writer or journalist questions in favor of exploratory dialogue about specific pain points, metrics, and stakeholder concerns that shape real decisions.
Four: Maintain Strategic Continuity
Writers and thinking partners also differ in their relationship to time and commitment. Writers typically engage project by project, delivering individual pieces before moving on to the next assignment or client. I take the opposite approach by making a strategic, intellectual, and emotional commitment to what matters most to my clients. The endpoint is always deferred as we pursue new ideas and lines of thinking. We work together in an ongoing thought partnership where each piece or project builds toward longer-term strategic objectives and a bigger context.
This continuity builds institutional memory. I work side by side with clients to create strategies that evolve organically over time with multiple internal and external audiences. When a new initiative arises, we work together to evaluate it on its own merits and as part of a larger sequence of communications that either reinforces or redirects the organization’s positioning.
Furthermore, when a firm expands into new markets, launches new services, or responds to industry disruption, each turn in thought leadership provides an opportunity to reinforce the new direction while maintaining credibility with existing relationships.
As a thinking partner, I help navigate these transitions by ensuring that changes in messaging feel intentional and evolutionary rather than reactive or opportunistic. This approach has led to client relationships of as many as five, seven, or ten years. I’ve even participated in many client meetings where I’m the person at the table with the longest tenure with the organization despite being an external provider.
How to do this: Treat each project as part of a more extended conversation, tracking themes and building on previous work and relationships rather than starting fresh each time.
The Strategic Impact
Instead of receiving assignments to execute, thinking partners become collaborators in strategic communication. They create materials that advance specific business objectives.
This evolution requires developing comfort with ambiguity, skill at asking probing questions, and the confidence to challenge initial assumptions. It means looking beyond “content.” Most importantly, it requires understanding that the most valuable work happens before writing begins.
Organizations that recognize and cultivate these thinking partnerships find themselves actively advancing their strategic priorities, changing their industry dynamic, and influencing how clients make decisions. In an environment where almost everyone produces mere content, that distinction makes all the difference.
For writers and marketers ready to make this shift, the opportunity lies in recognizing that your deepest value transcends execution. It lies in the strategic thinking alongside clients that shapes what gets executed and why.
Three Grace Notes
“The very liveliness of a culture is determined not by how frequently thinkers discover new continents of knowledge but by how frequently they depart to seek them.” —James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
“When we’re fully present with people, it has an impact. Not just in that moment either. The experience of feeling like the most important person in the world even for the briefest of moments can stay with us for a disproportionate time after the moment has passed.” —Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most
“But what if, as I have already said, questioning is not at all the way to essential answers? Then it seems to me that he who inquires into being, and devotes everything to working out the question of being, does not truly know to where he is under way.” —Martin Heidegger, Country Path Conversations
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