You're juggling thought leadership and team responsibilities. How do you strike the perfect balance?

Balancing thought leadership with your team requires strategic planning and collaboration. Start by daily prioritizing tasks, allocating specific times for both strategic initiatives and team support. Delegate effectively, leveraging your team's strengths to free up your own time. Open communication is key – hold regular check-ins to keep everyone informed and aligned. Embrace flexibility to manage unexpected challenges while consistently assessing workloads to avoid burnout. Technology is your friend – utilize project management tools and automation to streamline processes. Finally, reflect and learn. Regularly review your approach and seek feedback to continuously improve your effectiveness as both a leader and a thought leader.

The one thing you can’t manufacture is time. Protecting time for deep thought and writing is essential to your success, but it can also be one of the most challenging tasks. Here’s how I manage my time for thought leadership: 1. **Write when you're most productive.** I’m at my best in the early hours, so I start my workday at 7 AM, free from meetings. 2. **Organize your research.** Thought leadership requires careful planning and collaboration. We have a content strategy that forecasts topics months in advance. 3. **Eliminate distractions.** When writing, I disconnect from tech—no Slacks, no Zooms, no calendar pop-ups. I color-code my calendar and use a dark grey “do not disturb” block to reinforce my focus time.

Thought leadership inherently requires flexibility. A topic that didn't exist yesterday can become the hottest issue tomorrow. Flexibility has two key elements. First, you must be prepared to go the extra mile and produce thought leadership when a critical topic emerges. This might mean dropping everything or working later hours. Second, you need a strategy that allows space for thought leadership. As the CMO, it's my responsibility to ensure the entire marketing organization maintains a balanced approach to work. I follow the 33-33-33 rule: 33% of our time is devoted to deep thinking and strategy, 33% to creating content and events based on that strategy, and the final 33% to testing, measuring, and optimizing our efforts.

Thought leadership is a broad endeavor within an organization. As the CMO, my role is to build a platform that welcomes diverse ideas and perspectives. It's vital to convey why thought leadership matters to our company. I champion its value through both emotional appeal and data-driven results. Emotionally, thought leadership is how we connect with our customers. Like Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey," a thought leader reveals the adventure, courage, and transformation our customers experience. On the data side, we use metrics like share of voice and social engagement to measure the impact of our thought leadership. This blend of narrative and numbers ensures we resonate with our audience and demonstrate tangible value.