How to be a thought leader

In yesterday's post, Shamoon Siddiqui asked what my book that is partially shelved is about, and I said it was making fun of thought leaders. Today's doodle is a little bit of what that book is about (that book doesn't actually have doodles in it, though).

"Thought leader" is such a garbage phrase that I'm not sure how it survived long enough to become a thing. That phrase literally means, "The random electrical impulses in my brain are in front of your random electrical impulses and you should get your electrons in line behind mine."

What you mean when you say things like, "I'm a thought leader," is really, "I have untested ideas." If the ideas were tested and worked, you'd be called an expert or an entrepreneur.

This doesn't even scratch the surface of what I see as "must-follow thought leaders" on sites like this one, most of whom subsist off of repeating other people's news, because most people don't have that many interesting ideas in their whole life, much less every day, which is the minimum posting requirement for being famous online. I know I sure don't have that many interesting ideas, and very few of them come out fully-formed. They need tending.

Here's my plea: let's change from being thought leaders into idea farmers. It's what the phrase should actually mean.

Originally published on LinkedIn @ the end of March 2021.