Zero to thought leader; zombie Agatha Christie; Harvard U Press scandal: Newsletter 7 May 2025

Newsletter 93. How to think before you write and lead. Plus, three questions for all writers, writing advice from a dead mystery writer, a university press in crisis, plus three people to follow and three books to read.

Thought leadership from a standing start

With the churn now taking place in corporate boardrooms, countless smart people and senior executives are considering making the switch from corporate contributor to famous freelance thinker. “I want to be a thought leader,” they say, with dreams of making money from public speaking, writing books, publishing on substack, and consulting.

Can you even do this if you have little visibility as a thinker in your area of expertise?

Yes. But the first question you should be asking is not, “Where should I build an audience?”

Ask instead, “What do I have to say?”

Thinkers observe. They gather information. They apply their experience in unique ways. And they write. (Or, I suppose, podcast or make videos, but you need to write what you’re going to say in those spaces, too.)

No one wants to read what you write if it’s the same as what they are reading already.

No one wants to read your advice to measure what matters, hire and support good people, embrace change, be confident, and be prepared to use AI (or, alternatively, resist using AI). We’ve read all this stuff before. Repeating it does not qualify as thought leadership. (I supposed you could call it thought followership, but that doesn’t make for very interesting reading.)

All of that goes to a more basic point: How do you have an original thought?

Here are some suggestions:

• Read the news with a critical eye. What is happening in your space, and what is your unique perspective on what it means (as opposed to what everybody already thinks it means).
• Combine ideas. Lots of people are expert at digital marketing. Lots of people are knowledgeable about the pharmaceutical industry. But what is unique about digital marketing in pharma? That’s where new insights may come out. Replace those two concepts with any other two or three, and you’ll be generating novel insights.
• Apply trends to practical problems. AI is coming. (Duh.) But what does it mean for what students should study in universities? What does it mean for the future shape of our devices? What does it mean for people who make their living writing? Pull together evidence and make recommendations. Trend-watching is commonplace. But creating practical advice based on evolving trends is an ongoing activity that will always require new insights.
• Derive lessons from your experience. What have you learned from work with clients, from your own growth, from your and others’ setbacks and triumphs? Those are new experiences, and can generate new insights, provided you’re analytical in your approach to your experience.

A thought leader needs to generate a regular output of things worth thinking about and talking about. Unless you develop the habit of constantly learning, thinking, analyzing, and writing, you cannot lead. It’s work. And it never stops.

Oh, and back to your original question. If you have no blog, podcast, following on TikTok or Instagram or Threads or BlueSky, public speaking visibility, or regular column in a news site, where should you start?

Start with LinkedIn. You already have connections here, and your newsletter will therefore have a built-in audience.

But don’t even bother unless you have something to say first. Because sharing trite and vacuous insights won’t make you a leader, regardless of where you do it.

News for writers and other who think

Smart writer Mark Sheehy suggests three magic questions you must ask before writing for public consumption: Who are you talking to, what do you want them to do, and why should they care? Pretty basic, and yet so much terrible writing fails to answer these questions.

A federal judge issued an injunction blocking the Trump administrations’ plan to stop funding the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, an important source of library funding.

The BBC mined Agatha Christie’s advice on writing to create a series of AI-generated teaching videos featuring simulations of the long-dead mystery writer.

Authors got duped into paying for a lame, mostly-fake book festival in Baltimore. No matter what you write, be very skeptical of paid services. People are always trying to sell useless things to authors.

The Harvard Crimson student newspaper published an exposé of abusive management and negative growth at the academic institution’s imprint, Harvard University Press (not to be confused with Harvard Business Press, which remains quite successful). The timing is terrible given the Trump administration’s moves to block Harvard’s funding and strip its nonprofit status. (Disclaimer: I never went to Harvard, despite ChatGPT’s hallucinations to the contrary.)

Three people to follow

Barak Kassar , creative marketing wizard for hire.

Sebastian Mayeres , pioneering back-end systems to make publishers efficient.

Kimi Yoshino , editor-in-chief of the Baltimore Banner, a groundbreaking local news venture that just won a Pulitzer.

Three books to read

Pioneers: 8 Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs by Neri Karra Sillaman, Ph.D. (Wiley, 2025). Immigrants innovate. This book explains how and why.

Generation AI: Why Generation Alpha and the Age of AI Will Change Everything by Matt Britton (Wiley, 2025). Millennials were digital natives. How will a new generation of AI natives change the world?

The Generalist Advantage: Proven Framework to Explore the Potential of 4 Types of Generalists at Work by Dr. Mansoor Soomro (Wiley, 2025). Four different ways to know everything that matters at work.