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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP & Building Your Brand with Roger Martin (ep.150)

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP & Building Your Brand with Roger Martin (ep.150)

Talk About Talk - Executive & Leadership Communication Skills

February 5, 202457m 47s

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Show Notes

Are you a thought leader? Andrea interviews prolific thought leader Roger Martin, professor emeritus and past Dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. Learn the distinction between private and public thought leadership, why you should consider your cadence in publishing, and three objective criteria to use when evaluating your brand promise, whether it’s for an advertising campaign or for your own personal brand.

 

CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK

RESOURCES

  • Roger Martin
    • https://rogerlmartin.com/
  • HBR – Harvard Business Review –
  • Roger’s Favorite Thought Leaders –
  • Roger’s favorite podcasts –
    • Farnham Street Knowledge Project podcast – https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/
    • Tiffany Bova’s What’s Next! podcast – https://www.tiffanibova.com/whats-next-podcast/

TRANSCRIPT

Well, hello there and welcome to talk about Talk Podcast Episode #150. I am so excited about this episode. Today we’re tackling the topic of thought leadership and building your brand.

 

Just over a month ago, I was sitting in the waiting room of my eye doctor scrolling through emails on my phone when I saw an e-mail from HBR – Harvard Business Review. The e-mail was titled “HBR’s best of 2023.” Interesting. So I opened up the e-mail and I started scrolling. … I paused because I couldn’t believe my eyes, and then I gasped out loud. Someone asked me. Are you OK? I had a huge smile on my face. Yes, I’m definitely OK, thank you.

 

What I saw on my phone was the announcement that my HBR article entitled, “A Simple Framework to Introduce Yourself”, was one of the top 3 most read articles in HBR in 2023. Wow, I couldn’t believe my eyes. 

 

I kept scrolling through the email and I saw a face that looked very familiar. It was the face of Roger Martin, my old boss, the former Dean at the Rotman School of Management. The e-mail said that Rogers’ video, entitled “A Plan Is Not a Strategy,” won the award for being the most downloaded video on HBR in 2023.

 

So – I went home and I promptly wrote Roger a congratulations e-mail. I also asked him if I could interview him for the Talk About Talk podcast. And here we are.

 

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast episode number 150, where we’re talking thought leadership and building your brand.

 

In case we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!  I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you to elevate your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you’ll get noticed and you can accomplish your career goals.

 

If you go to the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, some amazing bootcamps that I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week. 

 

Alright let’s get into this.

 

For this episode, as I said, you’re going to hear my interview with my old boss from when I was on the faculty at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. I’m going to interview my boss, the former Dean, Roger Martin. 

 

Roger is undeniably a PROLIFIC thought leader, with 33 HBR articles, 13 books, and more. And let me tell you, if you’re interested in thought leadership and building your brand, this interview is full of gold.

 

Here’s how this episode is going to go. First, I’m going to briefly introduce Roger and then we’re going to get right into the interview. And then at the end, I’m going to summarize with three, yes, of course, three of the main thoughts or themes that I want to reinforce for us.

 

As I said, this interview is full of gold. But you really don’t need to take notes. The transcript of the entire interview is included in the show notes which you can find if you go to thetalkabouttalk.com website. And also, as I said, I will summarize the main points at the end. 

 

I’m really proud of this episode now. But I have to tell you, this was not an easy episode to produce. First of all, I was suffering from a bad cold when I conducted the interview with Roger, and I had a terrible coughing fit at the very beginning of the interview. So if you’re watching on YouTube, you’re going to see me turn my microphone on mute and cough – a LOT. Then about 20 minutes later, the battery in Rogers computer died. And we lost our connection, so we had to start again after he plugged his computer in and we reconnected.

 

Aye aye aye, It’s never easy, right! Anyway, I’m really pleased with how this episode turned out.

 

OK -let’s do this.  Let me introduce Roger and then we’ll get into the interview.

 

Roger Martin received his BA from Harvard College, then in 1981 he earned his MBA from the Harvard Business School. 

 

Roger then spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You’ll hear Roger talk about how his thought leadership started there with the internal memos he used to write.

 

Roger’s now a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto where he served as Dean from 1998-2013, That’s where we crossed paths.

 

Today Roger is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego, Ford, BHP and Verizon.

 

Roger’s newest book is A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Managerial Effectiveness. His previous twelve books include When More is Not Better , Creating Great Choices. Getting Beyond Better and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley, which won the award for Best Book of 2012-13 by the Thinkers50.

 

As of January 2024, Roger has written 33 Harvard Business Review articles.

 

In 2010, Roger was named one of the 27 most influential designers in the world by Business Week. In 2007 he was named a Business Week ‘B-School All-Star’ for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. Business Week also named him one of seven ‘Innovation Gurus’ in 2005.

 

And in 2017, Roger was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers.

 

Clearly, Roger is a thought leader.

 

 

ANDREA:

Thank you Roger, so much for being here to talk about building your brand.

ROGER (00:44):

It is great to be here, and as you know, we go way back. And so I always love interacting with the professors I work with in the good old days at Rotman School of Management, so thank you.

ANDREA (00:57):

Me too. So as we were discussing before we press record, your name came across my screen when I got the email about HBR’s most downloaded podcast, most downloaded articles and most downloaded video. You had the most downloaded video of 2023. Congratulations.

ROGER (01:24):

Thank you. Thank you. You can never tell Andrea if you would’ve said, oh, this one is going to do 3.4 million views at last count. I would’ve said, oh, come on, really? But it just hit some vein in people’s thinking that seemed to resonate. And same I’m sure with your article where you probably didn’t necessarily know that it was going to strike. But in the modern world, when something sort of hits an important vein like that, it just goes and there’s no end to it going.

ANDREA (01:59):

So how many downloads? You told me when we were emailing, how many downloads approximately did it get?

ROGER (02:05):

It said 3.4 million views and counting. Okay. And so it’s by now by $400,000, a 400,000 view margin, the most viewed video in the history of Harvard Business Review videos. And it is moving away from the pack. Mike Porter, my beloved, my beloved colleague, Mike Porter’s, 15-year-old one explaining the five forces was always number one at now 3 million.

ANDREA (02:43):

I remember reading that one too. I will leave a link in the show notes so that the listeners can also watch. It’s called A plan is not a Strategy, right?

ROGER (02:52):

That is correct. That is correct.

ANDREA (02:53):

Very compelling title by the way. I’m sure that that also contributed to the number, but then they don’t count views unless they keep viewing. Right? So

ROGER (03:01):

Yep. No, no. And I would give HBR and I know you publish a lot there too. I’d give them great credit. The difference between HBR now and 30 years ago when I did my first article is there, it was just content. The covers of the magazine were bland and boring. There was no artwork associated with them. No production values.

ANDREA (03:25):

I remember that.

ROGER (03:26):

Yeah. But now the magazine, the website, these videos are very, in my view, high production values. So they did a great job of graphics and the like in the video. So I give them great credit for taking whatever content. I guess my content was interesting enough, but they took that and made the most of it rather than 30 years ago. They would’ve made the least of it, honestly. And so I give them credit and hopefully you’ve had a good experience on that front too.

ANDREA (03:56):

Very good. It is been great. People contact me because of the article. So you said, I guess it was good enough. You’re being very humbled. So for those people who don’t know Roger Martin, he is in fact a prolific thought leader. Roger, just in January, 2024, published his 33rd article in HBR. He also does keynotes. He’s published elsewhere. He’s published how many books?

ROGER (04:26):

13.

ANDREA (04:28):

13. Lucky number 13 books. So do you have some advice when I’m speaking with executives, coaching them on their personal brand, establishing their professional identity, I sometimes get questions about thought leadership and is it required as a part of being an effective leader? Do you have any advice for those executives out there who are seeking to, as we say, establish thought leadership?

ROGER (04:57):

Yeah. Well, I guess I would say the answer to your question is actually yes. But that answer might not be what people think it is because I think there’s a difference between a public thought leader and a private thought leader. And I know that difference because I was a private thought leader until 1998. What does that mean? Well, I was at one of the leaders of a firm called Monitor Company. It was a firm that was built essentially around Mike Porter. And I liked to communicate with my clients, my CEO clients, often with memos because I sort of hate PowerPoint and it’s just not the same as gathering your thoughts to put together a coherent memo. And so I would write memos to CEOs on all sorts of interesting topics that they had on their minds, and I became known within Monitor for that. And people would just email me all the time and say, Roger, have you written anything on overhead costs?

(06:09):

Have you written anything on Industry Evolution? Have you written anything on whatever one after another? So much so that I put together a file on my computer desktop called Greatest Hits, and they were just ones that other monitor people asked for because I hated searching through client files to find, oh, I did write something on that one time. But that was highly private thought leader. Nobody outside Monitor knew it was only other monitor consultants knew that the guy within Monitor to ask to email was me, because I probably had done something in a similar way. I think to be an effective leader, you have to have thought leadership within your organization. They need to know what you stand for, what do you care about and how do you think about what you think about and why? And so my longtime friend and co-author Ag Laffy was that way within Proctor before he became more famous outside there were Agism, the consumer is boss.

(07:21):

We have to win the first moment of truth, which is when the consumer does or does not pick your product off the shelves before we win the second movement of truth, which is when she puts our lay on her face or the guy shampoos his hair with head and shoulders or whatever. So he was a thought leader. He took the time to be able to communicate in a clear and compelling way what was on his mind and what he thought was important. And I think if you can’t do that, if they say, yeah, Andrea or Roger’s, my CEO, but they run the place, but I don’t really know what they think, I don’t think you’re going to be nearly as effective as if you are that kind of thought leader. But it is a completely different thing to be a public thought leader, which I only became actually only when I figured out it was my job when I got to be dean of Rotman school. As you know, I hired you in 1998 and it just sort of occurred to me I shouldn’t, especially at a University of Toronto as a public university, at a public university, you should be writing for more people than this private little group. And so I just started, I literally did similar things, summarized my thought as in what was hopefully a useful way and projected it to the outside world, but that’s different form of thought leadership in my view.

ANDREA (08:59):

So I was going to ask you a question about The topic that you become a thought leader on, so it could be functional expertise, discipline, expertise. You’re saying it could be your strategy, it could be an element of something that your customer cares about. So in terms of what the topic is, people think there’s put your stake in the ground and you decide you’re a thought leader in a certain area and you’re like, well, if you think about it in terms of public and private thought leadership, suddenly the types of topics expand.

ROGER (09:43):

I think that’s true. And I think you have to, products and services sort of have to stand for something. And I think people, similarly, if you’re sort of all over the place on what you applying on, people are not going to be able to sort of say, oh, here’s what I can expect from Roger. Here’s what I can expect from Andrea. And it turns out though that I would say be careful of putting yourself in a box. Yes, people think about me as having things to say about strategy. That would be one thing that they would know me for. But I think more generally, and I think this is reflected in my last book, a new way to think, I think people expect me to kind of go back to first principles on management and help people find more powerful, productive ways to think about whatever management subject is on their mind.

ANDREA (11:38):

So Roger, you’re speaking my language. You’re really talking about Roger’s personal brand, your personal brand, your professional identity is someone who brings in business fundamentals and teaches or coaches, people how to think about things in a different way so that they can create a strategy, not just a plan to accomplish their goals. You could call it a recipe, you could call it, but it’s your brand. You now have a reputation for doing this.

ROGER (12:05):

I think so. I think so. And another piece of it is it’s enabling. So I don’t just say you should do the following thing. I say, here’s why. Here’s the reasoning behind why, so that you can really internalize it and understand. That’s why, and I do that in part to protect the person on the receiving end of the advice because virtually all of my views are minority views. So at least 85, if not 90% of all things that are called strategy in the world aren’t planning. And I say, don’t do that. Do this other thing. And the person who listens to me and does this other thing is going to have a whole bunch of people saying, why are you doing that? Do it our way, the way we’ve

ANDREA (12:58):

Always

ROGER (12:58):

Done it. I have to equip them with the logic that says, so I have to explain why sensible people, totally sensible. People are planning and thinking it’s strategy and here’s why it’s sensible and here’s how they got there and here’s the history how they got there, but it’s not working. Here would be another way of doing it and here’s why. And if there’s anything I think I’m known for, it’s that it’s helping people be able to think differently, not just giving people different answers

ANDREA (13:39):

And not accusing them of making irreparable fatal mistakes in what they’re doing. So the analogy for me in terms of coaching people on their personal brand is I ask people, what do you think the most common mistake is that people make with their personal brand? There are many mistakes that people make, but one of the most common is copying others. Yes. And then I see this look and I say, listen, we are social learners. We look around, we see other people that are successful around us and we emulate them. And I say, that’s a fantastic strategy early in your career, if you want to knock it out of the park later in your career, double down on your unique passions and expertise and then you will be your happiest and most successful self. So I’m not saying you’re an idiot for copying other people. I explain why people do that. It’s very common. In fact, we’re wired to do that. Here’s this insight that I can provide you with, so I think we’re kind of doing the same thing, Roger.

ROGER (14:38):

No, no, I think so. And there’s one of my most beloved mentors, if not other than my parents most beloved mentor is a guy that late great Chris arduous. One of the things he explained to me, Andrea, way back when is he said, if when you’re seeing somebody doing something that you think is not, doesn’t make a bunch of sense, they shouldn’t be doing that. If you best and only explanation is either they’re stupid or evil, good luck to you in ever getting something to change. Right? And I hear you saying something similar. You are saying, no, no, no, no, no, you’re sensible. You’re being sensible, but the sensible thing you’re doing isn’t getting you the results you want. So you have to empathize with them. Most people who try to change other people literally think that person is either stupid or evil and I’ve got to fix them, and they have no success because the person on the receiving end of that thought in your mind, you don’t express it or anything. They know that you’re essentially judging them as stupid or evil and they want to listen to you. They want to cut off the right arm last person.

(16:03):

That’s

ANDREA (16:03):

Why I’m ask you a question.

ROGER (16:04):

We’re very similar in that respect from the sounds of it.

ANDREA (16:06):

Yeah. I want to ask you a question that’s a little bit more specific to thought leadership for executives today, right? So as you said, we knew each other a long time ago when books were really the way that it was sort of like the pinnacle of thought leadership was to write a book and if you became a bestseller, even better. Now we’ve got Ted Talks. You’re talking about you yourself evolving from writing internal memos to now having the most downloaded video at HBR and also having, as I said, prolific books and so on. How can CEOs really think about media? I would love to hear just any general or specific comments that you have about, is it good to double down on one kind of media or should we go broad with the same message? How can we think about leveraging media?

ROGER (17:07):

It is a good question, and the question on books is Apropo one for me. I’ve written 13 of them and I’m feeling less like writing books than I used to. The thing that I write most, as you may know, is my medium column. I’ve got a column on Medium. I started it three and a half years ago called the Playing to Win Practitioner Insights series. I’ve just, on Monday, I drop a new piece every Monday and have for the past 170 odd weeks, but just started the fourth year of the series. And I love that more than I love writing books. As it turns out, I like the quick turnaround. I think about something, it can be out next Monday. Sometimes it’s out a few Mondays later, I percolating on it, but if I really want it out, it can be out. They’re designed to be six to eight minute reads. So 1500 to 2000 words is what it turns out. That medium says they’ll medium will judge how many versions of that. So that’s six to eight minutes, and I’ve gone up from zero followers to Atlas Count 213,000, which is now on the edge of the top 10 of medium followership as it turns out. I like that and people seem to seem like it a lot. I’ve had just under a million and a half views of my medium pieces. So

ANDREA (18:55):

To your question, the analogy for me is my podcast. So what can we learn from that? Is it the fact that you have a regular cadence of publication and that’s what works for you? I’m sure it varies by person in terms of what’s going to work.

ROGER (19:10):

No, but there are some rules. I think people are habit driven. People have habits of doing things right. This is why movie sequels, that’s the whole business is movie sequels. I have a habit of watching every equalizer movie when it comes out. And so if it was the same plot, but they called it something else, I might watch it and I might not, even if it was Denzel Washington, I might or might not watch it, but if it’s equalizer four, I will watch it because I’ve developed a habit of doing that and people are all habit driven. And so what if you want to be a thought leader of consequence, you need to have a bunch of people adopting you as a habit. You’ve got to make that easier for them rather than harder for them. And so if Andrea, you did a podcast and then disappear for a while and then wrote some books and did a podcast the seven months later, and then it was three months after that, so it’s not even a regular interval. People would find it hard to have an Andrea habit, but instead they say, you know what? I just check and I know Andrea’s got a series and she comes out every two weeks with one

ANDREA (20:43):

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