Leveraging Thought Leadership

Our guest today is internationally renowned business leader, Doug Conant. Doug is the best-selling author of  The Blueprint , an eminently smart and practical guide to leadership that contains 6 content-rich steps to creating a richer, fuller, more elevated professional life. With more than 40 years of leadership experience at first-class companies like Campbell Soup and Nabisco, Doug now focuses...

When an issue is too important and too big for a single leader or team member to own? How can massive organizations tackle challenging issues in a manner that is beneficial to society?   Our three guests in this episode are Surya Kolluri, Jeanne de Cervens, and Brian Forbes. They join us to discuss their critically important study:  The Pandemic's Perfect Storm . This study examines COVID-19's imp...

If you've ever felt creatively "stuck in a rut," and innovation seems out of reach, this is the episode to cure your woes!    Our guest today is Dr. Chitra Anand , an award-winning Communications & Marketing executive with over 20 years in the technology industry. She's an extraordinary leader, and has spent time as the head of Communications for Microsoft Canada, Director of Marketing at TELUS Co...

Today's guest is Jim Kouzes the coauthor with Barry Posner of the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge . He's also the Dean's Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business , Santa Clara University. Jim tells us about his first meeting with Barry and how they quickly became best friends.  That friendship and their complementary skills and interests led to writin...

Tom Schwab is the Chief Evangelist Officer and Founder of Interview Valet , which helps hosts find great guests for their podcast.   He is also the author of PODCAST GUEST PROFIT which gives step-by-step systems from taking your podcast from obscure to acclaimed! With more than 2.1 million podcasts out there you are probably curious as to how to get yours heard.  Tom gives us strategies for gettin...

Our guest is Tom Kolditz , the author of Leadership Reckoning and Director of The Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University .  The Institute's two-fold mission is to create a powerful and widely available leader development experience and improve the quality of leader development in higher education everywhere. Tom shares how many universities include the development of leaders in their m...

Today's guest is Melissa Davies, Founder, and CEO of Wieseways Consulting, author of How Not to Act Like a BLEEP at Work, and founding member of the Global Institute for Thought Leadership.  Melissa is a Dynamic Facilitator, Educator & Executive Coach with a global perspective. Melissa walks us through the path she took to become a thought leader having first had a career as an educator in Canada...

Today's guest is Jim Adler Founder and Managing Director of Toyota AI Ventures , a standalone early-stage venture capital fund that invests in startups working on A.I., robotics, mobility, and more. We start the conversation with Jim describing what Toyota AI Ventures does and what its mission is.  From we get into how they help startups take their idea to scale when to introduce processes and how...

Today's guest is Jody Grunden , a visionary accountant with over 20 years of experience that has helped pioneer innovative changes to his industry.  Jody is the co-founder and CEO of Summit CPA Group , author of Digital Dollars and Cents . Jody takes us back to 2013 when he arrived at a conference to speak only to have a series of events go wrong that ended with him giving his presentation off the...

Today's guest is Sandra Smith , Founder, and President of Smith Publicity a marketing company that focuses on authors and expert promotions. Many things have changed in the last ten years and publicity is no different.  Sandra walks us through some of the big changes authors should be conscious of and why their social media presence and what they share are more imperative now than ever before. Whe...

Today's guest is Christopher Brace , a global executive successful at building highly effective integrated marketing teams across complex organizations to drive awareness and product sales. We start our conversation off by discussing how you can emotionally bond customers to a brand of consumer product and how these same techniques can be used to create an emotional connection to an idea. Christop...

Today's guest is Scott Shute , the Head of Mindfulness and Compassion Programs at Linkedin and the author of the new release book The Full Body Yes . Compassion is the #1 thing you can do to be successful in business and life.  That philosophy is something Scott shared with the CEO of Linkedin which allowed him to use his history in customer service combined with his passion for wellness to create...

Today's guest is Michael F. Schein , the author of The Hype Handbook , founder and CEO of MicroFame Media a company that turns consultants into celebrities. Very few people ever become worldwide famous, but is that really what you need to be a known entity in your field? Michael shares why micro fame is a better goal to seek when you are selling ideas. Michael and Peter discuss how hype is can be...

Today's guest is Stephen G. Pope the founder and CEO of SGP Labs a creative marketing, media, and technology company with the goal of helping others grow their business faster. Creating video is as easy as hitting the record button, but once that is done what do you do with it?  Stephen shares the importance of having a solid process in place that makes for an easy workflow for everyone involved i...

Today's guest is Justin Foster , the author of Oatmeal vs Bacon and co-author of Rooting Up .  He is a speaker consultant and co-founder of Root + River a practice that specializes in branding for defiant leaders. Justin shares his path to thought leadership and the tricks he learned along the way, including a brilliant method for how to get in front of potential clients when they won't answer the...

Today's guest is Ali Ahmed , the director of thought leadership at Fidelity . We discuss with Ali the work he is doing at Fidelity leading a team of thought leaders, two of the audiences they focus on, and the modalities used to help people along their financial journey that is often not a straight line. Ali has a strong background in experience design that he incorporates into the content they cr...

Today's guest Tendayi Viki, author of Pirates in the Navy and the Corporate Startup and associate partner at Strategyzer , the global leader in enterprise growth & innovation services. Tendayi shares how his path to thought leadership involved leaving Zimbabwe for the UK and teaching forensic psychology before transitioning to social psychology. We discuss how Alexander Osterwalder created Strateg...

Today's guest is Dr. Troy Hall Chief Strategy Officer for South Carolina Federal Credit Union, and the lead consultant for SCF Solutions, LLC . He is the best-selling author of Cohesion Culture and his newest release Fanny Rules. Troy shares the heartwarming story of his mother's leadership that makes up the lessons that in his book Fanny Rules and how these lessons are suitable for both the home...

Today's guest is Karen Leland, CEO at Sterling Marketing Group , the best-selling author of No Nonsense and The Brand Mapping Strategy , and a lifelong artist. With a lifelong commitment to the arts, before moving into thought leadership Karen shares how the skills learned in music, theater, and improv have given her the ability to handle rejection, think on her feet and be fearless in her knowled...

Today we make a small departure from our usual format of interviewing a guest.  Instead, we shed a light on the series of short videos Bill Sherman has been producing over the last year that focus on specific issues related to Organizational Thought Leadership . First, we look at the many varied paths that professionals travel to land in a thought leadership role. Second, we examine the skills tho...

Today's guest is William Arruda , a personal branding pioneer, speaker, and coach.  William is the author of Digital You and Career Distinction and creator of 360 Reach a web-based personal branding survey that has helped more than 1.8 million people! William tells us how in 2001 he went from a comfortable job at IBM to having no income for 18 months after reading Tom Peter's The Brand Called You...

Today's guest is Jeff Kavanaugh , the Global Head at Infosys Knowledge Institute , the research and thought leadership arm of Infosys diversified technology and digital firm.  Earlier this year Jeff published his second book The Live Enterprise . Jeff explains how the institute isn't just a place for people to have a platform but a place for teaching others to build communication and extend their...

Today our dueling hosts Peter Winick and Bill Sherman sit down together to give an overview of the thought leadership world. They start with the topic of Organizational Thought Leadership, which TLL has had a heavy focus on.  We examine why more and more companies are investing in dedicated thought leaders, how those companies are struggling to define what it means to them, where it falls in the c...

Over the past three years, Peter and Bill have interviewed hundreds of guests learning their stories, sharing advice, and expanding each other's understandings of the various facets of the thought leadership market.  Today we celebrate our landmark 300th episode by looking back at a few of the many great guests that we've had the pleasure of interviewing. We start with Scott Miller, Executive Vice...

Today's guest is Susan Scott, the founder of Fierce , a TedX speaker, author of best-selling books Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership . Most people understand the importance of having good conversations but most are unaware of how lousy they actually are at having them. Susan explains how her system to have fierce conversations facilitates increased productivity, problem solving, and build...