ETL 26: Jonathan Dahl on Why Thought Leadership Requires Boldness

Transcript: Jonathan Dahl and Bob Buday

Bob Buday: Jonathan, your career has largely been in business journalism, and then in the last seven years at Korn Ferry, and with a year in between at a startup. How do you compare and contrast the world of business journalism with the world of thought leadership at a professional services firm?

Jonathan Dahl: Well, it’s not as much different as you might think it is. If you’re doing it well, they’re closer than most people realize. Both really require good storytelling and an eye for what people will read. Now there are barriers of areas you don’t cover when you’re working at a company. But there were barriers like that at the Wall Street Journal, sacred cows as they refer to them.

So it’s not much different. We have a big story meeting every Monday morning with the partners. In the middle of the day, every week, I’m doing a lot of the same kind of editing that I did at The Wall Street Journal. I’m editing both a digital magazine and a daily website, kind of what I was doing at The Journal. The one difference is that the pressure is not anywhere near at the same level. We had 100 million readers at The Wall Street Journal. Almost everybody’s looking for a mistake. [Here] it just doesn’t have quite that intensity. We still have to be accurate and be good at storytelling. But it’s not quite as much stress.

Advice for Journalists Making the Switch

Bob: Not nearly as much stress for former journalists or current journalists who are wondering whether to make a career shift to thought leadership. What advice would you give them about whether and how to make that shift?

Jonathan: It’s going to be a challenge. It takes a certain kind of personality change from journalism, where you’re challenging people all the time. It was fine to argue for your case pretty strongly at the Wall Street Journal. [You didn’t so much have to be] a politician and understand the business world and its inside workings.

Some journalists try working in thought leadership roles and find they don’t really like it. They don’t like having our good ideas not run because of some conflict with the business. Also, journalists often see their job as a mission. I did, too.

My father used to say I could either become a priest or a journalist, and that was it. Those were my two options in terms of helping the world. [In thought leadership], you are helping the world at your company, but it’s somewhat different. You have to keep that in mind.

I do work with and hire a lot of former journalists. But I warn them, and some of them try it but don’t work out.

The Ideal Journalist for a Thought Leadership Role

Bob: Are you able at this point to identify what kinds of journalist would be happy in thought leadership and what kinds would not before you extend a job offer?

Jonathan: Everyone’s going to say the same thing: “Oh, I have no problem with that.” I’m willing to give a lot of people tries. I have quite a diverse staff. It’s mainly former Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg journalists. I think we speak the same language, and that works really well. But I have a Hollywood script writer who never did any journalism his whole life, and that person is one of my strongest contributors. So you just don’t know where you’re going to get them from.

Bob: That’s great. A colleague of mine who does a lot of recruitment for thought leadership professionals. Sarah Noble has recruited hundreds of people for thought leadership content jobs. I asked her to give a presentation three years ago at our thought leadership conference about the backgrounds of the people who had the biggest impact in the firms they worked for — consulting firms, prestigious academic journals, etc. It turned out 56% came from business journalism, and 9% came from other journalism fields. Business journalism is a very good background for careers in thought leadership.

Jonathan: It really helps you with idea generation. What you learn in journalism is to identify your audience. If you’re working at The New York Times, that’s one kind of audience. If you’re working at The Wall Street Journal, it’s a different kind of audience.

You learn to identify the audience at Korn Ferry. It’s business clients — corporate leaders. You identify what they’re interested in and how to tell the story. The best business journalists have a knack for doing that.

But again, they’ve got to be able to mold into the fabric of a company. There’s much more collaboration in the business world [than in business journalism]. I have to work with a whole different art department, marketing, communications, and the different partners. It’s far more of us, and they’re spread out in more areas. It’s definitely more of a team sport. If you’re not a good team player, it probably doesn’t work well for you.

Be a Diplomat

Bob: My boss in my first year in thought leadership in 1987, a management consulting firm that’s not here anymore called CSC Index, pulled me over one day and said, “Bob, the consultants really appreciate your expertise and taking their ideas and putting them into articles and this and that. But your argumentative reporting style needs to end. You’re not working in a magazine anymore.” And I said, “Wow, I didn’t know that. All right. Thank you very much.”

Jonathan: Yes, you need to be much more of a diplomat in the business content world. You have to slowly bring people over to your side. The biggest challenge I had at Korn Ferry was, as in many consulting firms, that the partners generated the bulk of the content and had their bylines on it. I told them, “Hey, you’re fantastic at your job as a partner. … But you’re not professional storytellers. You’re not professional writers. Let the pros I bring in tell the story and interview you, instead of you writing it.”

That was quite as shift at Korn Ferry, and it would be at most places. We did our own study early on that showed people don’t remember bylines. Journalists hate to hear this, and parners love to have their bylines too. But if you had a great quote in the story, they remember that quite well. And that generates an audience for you and your business.

It took some doing to bring them over.

From 600,000 to 4.2 Million Page Views

Bob: When you when you came to Korn Ferry, the partners and other consultants had been the ones writing stuff. I guess they had some editing help. But the partners were writing the prose.

 Jonathan: You know, there was what I refer to as “the dreaded white paper.” Either they would write it or give you information to try to put it together. And it just wasn’t generating readership. We had something like 600,000 page views at Korn Ferry the first year I got there. We now have over 4½ million page views. That’s just for the daily website.

Bob: You convinced them “Hey, there’s a lot more people.”

Jonathan: Again, this isn’t 4.5 million who don’t fit your audience. We’re sending this to people who are in your audience sphere. When you show them that, they’re more willing to work with it — and do fewer white papers.

Bob: What was the initial reaction when you said, “Hey, folks, we need to turn the writing over to professionals. It’s still your ideas, but we need other people to communicate them for you.” I’m assuming there was some pushback.

Jonathan: You’ll never succeed by just suddenly announcing it and then doing something jarring. You have to move people over gradually. It was about a one- to two-year process [of convincing people] one by one. They’d say, “Well, here’s my piece.” And I’d say, “Well, it’s a really good piece (and it was), but here’s something better.”

My approach was: Why don’t we try to tell it that way and then show you? Gradually, over time, even the daily pieces were not bylined by partners. We’d interview them and run it just like you would at a paper.

Taking a Cue From the News

Jonathan: One of the main things I do new at Korn Ferry — which I don’t see enough thought leadership enterprises doing — is to know what’s in the news every day. Business leaders have a lot of concerns right in front of them. They’re looking for advice. But it has to be turned around pretty quickly, within a couple of days. You don’t have the time to go back and forth over a quote or whatever. Again, I showed that the audience will grow by doing it that way, by linking to what’s in the news. We’ll have to write it in our own style in the beginning.

Bob: What do you think convinced them over those one to two years?

Jonathan: I have a lot of support from my chief marketing officer Jill Wiltfong, and from the CEO, Gary Burnison. They’re very interested and like the content I produce. That was a big help. And then it was the size of the audience. People were kind of blown away; they had never seen so many clicks on a story and the attention it drew.

It also drew attention from other media.  I assume there’s a bunch that follow us. And now all of a sudden, they’re getting interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and CNBC. They appeared and were quoted there, and it spread.

Early on, I started having a weekly meeting at noon, where any partner — actually anyone from the company — can come. We tell them the stories we’re thinking about. We get their thoughts. They tell us what they think is the story. I think they really enjoy it. The partners that do it like being a part of the process instead of just being told, “This is what we’re going to do.” I think that helped bring them along as well.

A Diverse and Focused Group

Bob: Let’s talk about the people in your group: the skills they have, where they come from, and so on.

Jonathan: It always surprises people. I have seven different platforms. One is a daily website is called “This Week in Leadership,” which produces a string of stories every week. I also have a national magazine [Korn Ferry Briefings] that comes out six times a year. It’s in 300 airports, and it’s sent out digitally and on paper. I have an email newsletter, Briefings for the Boardroom. I have a career advice site. I have what we call Perspectives, which are reviews of case studies. We now have podcasts, too.

People probably think I have 20 to 30 people. I work with about a half dozen. They’ve been with me five or six years. That’s another key thing: You want someone who is staying [with you] and is largely full time. They understand the company, and you nurture them, you work with them, you show an interest in their work.

I think one of the problems at a lot of thought leadership places is they just freelance it out. I strongly disagree with that. You’re bringing somebody in who doesn’t know the company and will be out in a very short time and isn’t engaged in the career development that we try to give them.

Bob: How did you find a Hollywood script writer?

Jonathan: Whenever I have an opening, I go to my own writers and say, “Hey, who’s looking?” Somebody mentioned this person and said, “You know, he doesn’t have any background but he’s really sharp.” So I tried him.

You get it best from your network. That doesn’t mean I don’t I read LinkedIn every day. If somebody sends me a resume, I say, “Well, pitch me some ideas.” That’s how I have gotten some great people: just from the first few pitches. They have done the homework and are reading your site, and come up with stuff you haven’t done before.

This Week in Leadership

Bob: How soon after you joined Korn Ferry did your daily “This Week in Leadership” website go up?

Jonathan: It took about a year to two years. I was hired for the job of editor in chief of their magazine, Briefings. I’ve worked at a monthly magazine before. I just assumed [Briefings] was a monthly. Then I got here and realized it was only four times a year. [I said to myself] “What am I going to do every day? I’m going to be bored.”

I convinced them that there were many more opportunities, and that the role really should be chief content officer. They said, “What’s that?” And I developed it from there. The idea of the daily website was just the biggest [opportunity] I saw. I thought their thought leadership coverage was evergreen — you know, “Three ways that CEOs can get ahead” — but that it didn’t apply to the current time. The more I talked to Korn Ferry partners and leaders, I could just see that they’re following the news constantly, every day, and they wanted to know what it means to their business. I saw that as an opportunity.

I still don’t see many [other thought leadership sites] doing that.

Bob: You’re connecting Korn Ferry’s expertise to daily and weekly events, which obviously makes it a lot more relevant than it might otherwise be.

Jonathan: You’re looking for things in the news. Obviously, if war develops, that affects how people are concentrating at work. You want to talk to leaders at that time about that.

You have to be brave. Another thing that we do differently is that when we point out problems, we always offer the solution to them. We think that’s critical. Why else should they read us if we are not telling them something?

The Impact of AI

Jonathan: Artificial Intelligence right now is very big. We had a piece that got a lot of traffic. It said AI may be creating a lot of workers who have learned how to use AI and haven’t used the company training because it hasn’t been any good. But they’ve learned how to use it themselves. And now they don’t know what to do with the rest of the day because the artificial intelligence has helped them take care of half of their day. It’s not that they don’t want to work; it’s that they don’t have anything to do.

I don’t think a lot of corporate leaders have realized that, and so we’re hoping they look at that story. We hope they say, “Wow, this is a problem.” This is what our partners say they should do about it. And maybe they will come to us for business.

Bob: Was there any internal debate about whether to be the first at identifying problems and weighing in on how to address them?

Jonathan: Yes. And, again, it was a big change from both what Korn Ferry did and what others did, and what others still do. Some said, “We don’t want to be negative.” There’s a balance there and not being overly negative. But people saw early on that.

Just coming at you with “Seven ways to fix something” doesn’t work if you haven’t said what needs to be fixed. When I talk to journalists about this field, that’s what’s so interesting. When I was at The Wall Street Journal, I never realized how far removed I was from how business really operates. There’s just so many intricacies and interesting stories to tell that keep you fascinated.

A Place for Longer-Form Journalism

Bob: Let’s talk about your magazine, Briefings

Jonathan: When I got here, it wasn’t digital. Now, it’s much more of a digital product. That’s where you have to be. The cover at that time would be an interview with a CEO, and that would serve a purpose. We still run CEO interviews in most issues, because we want to show the relationships we have with companies.

But I felt we could identify unique and cool trends that people weren’t covering in depth. Interesting enough, it gets a lot of traffic. A good Briefings cover will probably be the most-read story of the year. I think people will sit down and read longer-form journalism if it’s unique and delves into something.

We just had a cover article called “Pay Attention.” Again, nobody else is pointing out a problem. The problem is that science has shown that because of a growing number of distractions, 20 years ago we used to be able to go two minutes and 40 seconds without being distracted. Now, it’s less than 45 seconds. That means your ability to innovate becomes much more difficult.

We asked the question, “Could Steve Jobs have invented the iPhone if he were always switching to different decisions or social media?” It has had a big impact on productivity, and the well-being of your employees. It’s very stressful if you’re constantly shifting and shifting. So we wanted to point out this problem, and that smart leaders will try to address it. It’s not an easy thing to address. But it’s an important problem. We probably have gotten 20,000-25,000 page views already.

The New Podcast: Beyond Talking Heads

Bob: Let’s talk about the Briefings podcast.

Jonathan: I’ve never been more excited about that. I’m a big podcast listener. I love ones like American History Storyteller, where it starts out with somebody from the 1960s or 1700s. And it does a little skit. And then it tells you the story of what happened then.

I’ve always wanted to convert that concept to business. Most of the business podcasts I see are talking heads — people talking, but no visuals. I noticed you put really good visuals in [your podcast]. I think people’s attention spans, from that story I just mentioned, requires you to give them more.

We started our podcast less than a month ago. I encourage people to watch it on YouTube, not just listen to it. We create skits. If we’re doing one about returning to work, we’ll go get in the car drive with somebody commuting to the office, sitting in traffic and saying, “Oh my God, you know, this is terrible.”

Then during the podcast, we break it up by having quotes from different experts outside of the Korn Ferry sphere and then asking a partner about that quote, about that comment. Finally, we do a new segment on “This Week in Leadership,” where we quickly review what big stories you should know about. It’s been a lot of fun.

We’ve had more than 100,000 YouTube page views the first few weeks out. That’s a great number. It’s a new platform for us. I think most companies don’t really use YouTube. But we need to get into the younger Gen Z audience. They are the future Millennials, and now make up the bulk of the workforce. We need to go to their channels.

Elevating Thought Leadership Marketing to the Next Level

Bob: What do you see as the biggest challenges in your job? And what have been the keys to addressing them?

Jonathan: There’s always a growing challenge of proving your worth. This is what hurt journalism in general. They couldn’t prove why an ad is worth $150,000 a day at The Wall Street Journal, which is what people used to pay. And they didn’t create any effort to justify it. As a result, [advertising] shrunk.

The Korn Ferry marketing department is very good at justifying what they do. If we put on a webinar, they’ll track who goes to it and follow them along the whole business stream, and justify the cost of the staffing and what they do.

Thought leadership is much harder to track and show it led to business. That leaves you very much at the mercy of a very subjective call. It’s a challenge, and it will always be a challenge.

We have to do better at tracking what it brings. You also have to talk about artificial intelligence. Many people are already saying, “Well, you don’t need people creating articles when machines will do it.” I did a funny editor in chief letter, which I asked [AI] to write. It didn’t have much of a sense of humor, but that will come along.

That will be a challenge. I think the smart firms see AI as a strong partner for creating content, not necessarily completely replacing people. It’s amazing how fast it can do very basic research.

But this was true when I first started journalism. At first, Google didn’t really provide much of anything. You had to go on LexisNexis to find out a legal case. But it’s just incredible what I can get in minutes now. Or if you know how to use ChatGPT, it’s done the seconds. But it still is just a partner. It’s not the sole producer.

Bob: Well, Jonathan, we are at the end of our time here. This has been illuminating. Is there any question I should have asked regarding thought leadership at Korn Ferry?

Jonathan: Being brave is a big thing when you’re developing thought leadership content. You’ve got to take risks and be bold. You still have to work well within your company to prove the value of it. But if you don’t constantly take risks and be brave and create new channels and look for new channels and watch your competition carefully, you’ll fail very quickly.