It occurs to me that a lot of the most interesting and followed thought leaders in various spaces did not achieve that by first being at the top of their fields then deciding to share.  They did so by learning in public. While this seems counterintuitive, it also feels like a pattern that emerges everywhere once you start looking for it. Here’s how it works:

A person decides that he/she has a strong interest in a given field and wants to learn. He starts writing about it frequently. The early writing is pretty superficial, and few of the insights are super compelling. But, there’s also not much filter, and that’s a very good thing. The new writer/learner lacks the hesitance that more experienced people tend to develop (“when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose…”). Because of the sheer volume of content, some of the insights are true gems. Then, more people start following, partially because the gems get signal-boosted, and the mediocre content fades into obscurity. Soon, many of the most-informed people in the field start following this person, and the conversations become more bidirectional. The person is now learning so quickly that their depth of understanding is greater, their ‘hits’ more frequent, and their expertise more recognized. Such a person then ends up being a thought leader better recognized, better informed, and more influential than people who have been in a field for decades and who occupy more traditional positions of authority and success. This is basically disruptive innovation for thought leadership.

Like many things, humans often get the direction of causality backwards. This is very true in understanding how people learn. It’s not necessarily that well-seasoned experts suddenly decide to go public with their knowledge and participate in the community. It’s more that relative newcomers develop a passion, decide they want to become experts, and by learning publicly, engaging with the community from the start, and by not being afraid to publish frequently, end up becoming the experts. 

One of my favorite colleagues at Citi around 10 years ago was a woman named Jane who ran the national commercial and business banking sales force. One thing she said that I’ll always remember was that most people want to know exactly how something will work out before they commit to doing something, but real leaders make a commitment and then work to ensure the right things take place. Again, this pattern appears everywhere once you know to look for it. Most people say things like, “once I take care of [thing1] and [thing2] and [thing3], I’ll finally be able to do [interesting thing I’ve always wanted to do]”, whereas successful people just start doing the interesting thing.

We all have aspirations that we’re putting off in the expectation of somehow, someday being more ready. We must, however, learn to identify false dependencies. In fact, the best time to learn something new is often right now.