Nobody Wants Your Executive's Book Report

TL;DR: Executive thought leadership fails when executives publish content before forming real opinions. Most weak thought leadership isn't caused by fear of controversy—it's caused by executives who haven't done the deep thinking required to have a genuine position. The solution is building a content bench of well-formulated topics based on personal experience, not rushing half-baked ideas to market.

You've read this content a thousand times.

An executive posts about AI. Or leadership. Or market trends. They outline what's happening, pose thoughtful questions, maybe share a 10,000-foot view of the landscape.

Then you finish reading and realize they never actually said what they think.

They took up space. They performed thoughtfulness. But they gave you nothing you couldn't have gotten from three minutes on Google.

Here's what's really happening: they haven't formed an opinion yet.

Bottom line: Most executive content reads like a book report because executives are thinking out loud instead of sharing formed positions.Why Executives Don't Say What They Think

Most executives aren't afraid to say what they think.

But when they publish these types of content, it’s because they literally don't know what they think.

The pressure to feed the content beast means marketing teams bring half-baked topics to executives who haven't done the deep thinking required to have a real position. So they publish anyway.

The result is predictable:

They're workshopping in public. And calling it thought leadership.

The data backs this up. While 73% of decision-makers say thought leadership is more trustworthy than traditional marketing, only 15% rate the quality of what they actually read as excellent.

That gap? That's the cost of publishing before thinking.

Key insight: The problem isn't fear of backlash—it's that executives haven't done the deep thinking required to form real opinions before publishing.

Here's what nobody tells you about weak thought leadership: it doesn't just fail to help. It actively damages your position.

When you publish content without a real stance, you're not playing it safe. You're stealing credibility from your own brand and giving nothing in return.

Meanwhile, your competitors who actually have opinions? They're taking your customers.

Research shows that 70% of C-suite executives reconsidered their current vendor relationship after encountering a competitor's thought leadership. A quarter of them ended or significantly reduced that relationship.

Read that again.

Someone else's clear position convinced your customers to leave you.

The reality: Weak thought leadership doesn't play it safe—it actively hands your customers to competitors who have real positions.

So what separates real thought leadership from public processing?

Personal experience.

You have enough of a position to publish when you've dealt with the topic personally and can share thinking based on your own experience. That's the threshold.

Everything else is a book report.

Your audience can tell the difference instantly.

The threshold: You're ready to publish when you can connect the topic to personal experience and specific situations you've actually navigated.

Most marketing teams believe surface-level content is better than no content.

They're operating under real constraints. The content calendar demands feeding. Executives need to appear active and relevant. Half of organizations admit they're under-resourced for thought leadership.

But publishing weak positions doesn't solve the problem. It makes it worse.

The real solution is building a bench of well-formulated topics.

When you always have substantive content ready to publish, you're never forced to rush half-formed ideas into the market. While that strong content goes out, you use the breathing room to develop positions on topics you're still figuring out.

This requires getting input from people outside marketing and communications. It means pulling together the right voices before you publish, not after.

It means doing the actual thinking first.

Core strategy: Build a repository of well-formulated topics based on real experiences so you're never rushing half-baked ideas to market.

If you recognized your executive's content in this piece, here's your first step.

Audit your content bank with your team.

Do you have ready-to-go content based on real experiences? Or are you fighting fires every week, scrambling to publish something, anything, to feed the calendar?

Your executive's role isn't to get in the weeds. It's to:

Your team's role is to make sure they're never publishing before they've actually figured out what they think.

Because nobody wants another book report.

First action: Audit your content process to identify whether you have a bench of well-formulated topics or if you're constantly fighting fires.

Executive thought leadership fails because executives publish content before forming real opinions. They haven't done the deep thinking required to have a genuine position, so they produce academic-style content that poses questions without answering them.

Weak thought leadership reads like a book report. It outlines what's happening, poses thoughtful questions, and shares 10,000-foot views—but never states what the executive actually thinks. You finish reading and realize they gave you nothing you couldn't have gotten from Google.

You have enough of a position to publish when you've dealt with the topic personally and can share thinking based on your own experience. If you can't connect the topic to a specific situation you've navigated, you're writing a book report, not thought leadership.

Yes. Research shows that 70% of C-suite executives reconsidered their current vendor relationship after encountering a competitor's thought leadership. A quarter of them ended or significantly reduced that relationship. Weak content doesn't play it safe—it actively hands customers to competitors.

A content bench is a repository of well-formulated topics based on real experiences. When you always have substantive content ready to publish, you're never forced to rush half-formed ideas into the market. It gives you breathing room to develop positions on topics you're still figuring out.

Get input from people outside marketing and communications. Pull together the right voices before you publish, not after. Do the actual thinking first by connecting topics to personal experience and specific situations your executive has navigated.

Executives publish before they're ready because of pressure to feed the content beast. Marketing teams bring half-baked topics to executives, content calendars demand feeding, and half of organizations admit they're under-resourced for thought leadership.

An executive's role is to question ideas, add their experiences to the mix, edit in a timely way, and interact with audiences. Their role is not to get in the weeds. The team's role is to ensure the executive never publishes before they've figured out what they think.