What are expectations anyway? We’ve heard quotes like this one from Stevie Wonder: “You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations.” Or this one, from Brian Tracy: “Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event.” But the one that comes closest to the “expectation theme” that I’m thinking of today is from actress Patricia Neal: “A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.”
An expectation, according to Wikipedia, is the thing that “is considered the most likely to happen in the case of uncertainty.” It’s a belief that we hold for the future which may or may not be realistic or correct, but we hold it none the less. If everything around us happened as expected, in most cases, that would be great. If marketers did everything as expected, perhaps that too would be OK. But that’s not OK for thought leaders. Those who chose to leverage their intellectual capital and share knowledge and wisdom with their customers are not about meeting expectations, they’re about violating expectations.
Violating may sound like a harsh word. In fact, its original meaning, that is “to break or disregard” is so often overshadowed by the more malicious definitions that we often see it associated with. (see, expectations at work right there. Think of the first thing that came to mind when you way the word “violate” in the title–I bet it wasn’t pretty.) However, when thought leaders violate expectations, they simply break the mold and deliver an unexpected insight, action idea, nugget of information or the all important “Aha! moment” that resets your thinking to their frequency and puts you on a different plane.
You see, our minds are always seeking to generalize based on specific experiences and form expectations or opinions that we apply to the future. We go on in our businesses with so many assumptions about the challenges we face that we don’t often stop to think of better solutions to current problems.
The job of the thought leader is to violate those expectations you hold for the future and deliver something unexpected in the way of an idea, solution, a new way of questioning, an innovation that you didn’t know existed or something of that ilk.
Think of the interactions that you’ve had with brands in the past few weeks. Have any of them, particularly in the context of your business, violated your expectations and showed you a new path?
Tags: expectations, thought leaders, thought leadership marketing
Terrific post, Dana. You’re right about thought leaders. They break the mold. As a design consultancy principal, I love Clayton Christensen’s idea about “disruptive technology”. You know: we look at an object or a package and think of a better, easier way to design it”. In that vein, I was reading a terrific piece in Business Week citing OXO’s success.
Sam Farber founded OXO in 1990. He was watching his wife as she struggled to peel potatoes due to arthritis. It dawned on him that there had to be a better way. He redesigned the humble potato peeler–and ergonomics were born. Now that’s thought leadership, isn’t it? And it illustrates the point of your post perfectly.
Couldn’t agree more, Dana. In this era of consumer marketing savvy, jadedness and fiscal fears, there is little reason to invest money in support of your brand unless the results shakes up and defy consumer expectations.
Hey, Dana. Thanks for the insightful post.
In my own point of view, we should not hesitate to “violate” the usual norms if we plan to propel a brand as prominently as we could.
Although the risk of failure is quite high, the promise of sweet success pushes us to do our best.