Thoughts on “Thought Leadership”
If you're anything like me, you've come to despise the concept of thought leadership.
In fact, I was initially going to call the thoughts section on this site "Thought Leadership", even though at it's core - it is really just a blog with my thoughts on being a technical program manager.
I started thinking:
- Why do I hate the term thought leadership so much?
- I've been doing this for a while, and doing it well - maybe I am gasp a sort of thought leader.
Why do I have such a visceral reaction to the concept of thought leadership?
I mean, we've probably worked with a self-proclaimed thought leader at some point, that was more worried about building their personal brand, without necessarily having any experience or expertise to back it up. Heck, you can't even open LinkedIn without their algorithm filling your feed with lunatics who claim the title of "thought leader".
It's reduced what should be deep understanding of a skill or industry to generic advice that sounds like it was written by ChatGPT, or motivational quotes that remind us of the motivational posters from our pediatrician's office.
What makes a good thought leader? Am I one of them?
I've worked with a few people throughout my career that I would personally consider thought leaders in their industries and the number one thing they all have in common, is that none of them consider themselves a thought leader, but their co-workers do.
At Heroku^, one of our core values is to be opinionated. For our product, that means we make a lot of assumptions and decisions to make development easier and faster for our customers.
Internally as one of the more senior technical program managers on our team, I'm not prescriptive to my teammates, but I am opinionated when I believe we are doing something wrong or could be doing something better; even if it requires more effort or goes against the way things have been done in the past.
So, am I thought leader? I don't really think so, but I do believe that I am good at my job and have a deep understanding technical program management, that I have gained through years experience and continuous learning.
You be the judge
So with that said, take a look around. Check out my portfolio, my career commentary, or other posts on this blog and decide for yourself.