Why Is Most Thought Leadership So Bad?
Thought leadership should be one of the most powerful tools in a business’s arsenal. Done right, it can spark commercial conversations, reposition an organization in a competitive landscape, and even justify premium pricing. So why is so much of it bland, generic, and forgettable?
The 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report confirms what many have suspected: most thought leadership content is ineffective because it fails to challenge its audience, lacks specificity, and often reads like repackaged marketing fluff. Great thought leadership should help buyers rethink their challenges, yet too much of it simply restates conventional wisdom.
If thought leadership is supposed to teach and inspire, why does so much of it fail to do either?
The Curse of Content That Says Nothing
Most thought leadership fails because it is too broad, too cautious, and too obvious. Rather than challenging the reader’s perspective, much of today’s thought leadership feels like it was written to avoid offense rather than to spark insight.
The Edelman-LinkedIn report confirms this problem: only 15% of B2B decision-makers say the thought leadership they read is “very good” or “excellent.” The rest? Just noise.
The worst offenders include:
Summaries of well-known trends: If your audience has already read about a trend in mainstream business media, simply repeating it isn’t leadership.
Overloaded content: Trying to address too many issues at once results in content that lacks depth.
Self-promotional fluff: Content that reads like a thinly-veiled sales pitch rather than a genuine attempt to educate.
The Fear of Challenging Customers
The best thought leadership challenges its audience’s assumptions—a key tenet of the Challenger Sales Model, which argues that organizations must teach, tailor, and take control of conversations with buyers. Yet, most B2B content shies away from doing this.
Instead of making readers uncomfortable (in a good way), many businesses opt for safe, inoffensive, and ultimately forgettable material. But the Edelman-LinkedIn report finds that thought leadership works precisely because it forces decision-makers to rethink their current assumptions:
54% of decision-makers say thought leadership has led them to research a product or service they hadn’t considered before.
29% realized their organization was missing a major opportunity due to something they read.
25% of decision-makers ended or significantly reduced a relationship with a provider after encountering compelling thought leadership from a competitor.
The data is clear: If your content isn’t actively reshaping how customers think about their problems, it’s wasting an opportunity.
How to Make Thought Leadership Actually Work
The good news? There are many ways to make thought leadership more effective. Here are three.:
1. Be Specific: Focus on 1-2 Issues Per Piece
One of the biggest mistakes in thought leadership is trying to cover too much ground. The more topics you address in a single article, the less likely your audience is to remember any of them.
A more effective strategy is to focus intensely on one or two specific challenges per piece. Consider:
A case study that dives deep into how a single company solved a unique challenge.
An analysis of one counterintuitive insight that flips conventional wisdom on its head.
A discussion of one market shift that most competitors aren’t seeing yet.
Gary Burnison’s Korn Ferry weekly newsletter does this well. His pieces don’t just state what’s happening in leadership; they tell stories about how executives succeed or fail. His specificity and storytelling skills make his content consistently engaging and memorable and his content can be easily repurposed across social media platforms.
Bottom Line: If your audience can’t summarize your main idea in one sentence, your content is too broad.
2. Build an Ecosystem for Original Research
Many companies already have access to valuable customer data, industry insights, and internal analytics—yet few leverage them for thought leadership. Instead, they regurgitate publicly available trends that add little new value.
The best thought leaders create original research ecosystems by:
Analyzing customer behavior: What are the unspoken pain points your clients frequently encounter?
Collecting internal case studies: What unique solutions have worked within your own organization?
Conducting data-driven experiments: How do different strategies affect real-world outcomes?
The Edelman-LinkedIn report highlights that strong research and data are one of the most critical elements of effective thought leadership. But it’s not just about having data—it’s about telling a compelling story with it.
3. End by Guiding the Reader Toward a New Solution
The best thought leadership doesn’t just educate—it moves the audience toward an unexpected conclusion.
Many pieces fail because they ask rhetorical questions but offer no answers. A strong thought leadership article should:
Identify a challenge or misconception.
Provide evidence that challenges the reader’s existing assumptions.
Offer a path forward that the audience may not have considered.
For example, a logistics company could write:
Bad Thought Leadership: "The supply chain is evolving. Companies must adapt."
Great Thought Leadership: "Most companies wrongly assume their biggest supply chain risk is external. Our research shows that internal decision-making bottlenecks are the real problem. Here’s how you can fix them."
The difference? The second approach challenges assumptions and provides a tangible next step.
Final Thoughts: The Competitive Advantage of Great Thought Leadership
Great thought leadership isn’t just about brand awareness—it’s about influencing decision-making. The Edelman-LinkedIn report makes it clear: companies that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership are more likely to attract clients, secure RFPs, and even command premium pricing.
Yet, most organizations underfund and underprioritize thought leadership. This is a missed opportunity.
Executives and decision-makers actively seek insights that make them rethink their business challenges. If you’re not providing those insights, your competitors will—and they’ll use them to poach your customers.
So the next time you create a thought leadership piece, ask yourself:
Am I saying something new?
Am I challenging assumptions?
Am I providing real guidance?
If the answer isn’t a clear yes, it might be time to rethink your strategy.