WRITING IS THINKING
AND WHY THAT MATTERS FOR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Writing is thinking—really? How so?
This is a blog, not a work of philosophy or cognitive psychology, so I’m going to turn to the argument from authority to start. In short, let’s look at what a few famous writers have said. Here’s Stephen King: “I write to find out what I think.” And Joan Didion: “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.” Flannery O’Connor: “I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”
C’mon, you object. Those people are heroes of literature, writers of novels, stories, and essays. That’s all very fine for them, but in the world of business? That’s different. To which I reply by citing the Wharton School’s Adam Grant, author of Think Again: “Writing isn't what you do after you have an idea. It's how you develop an inkling into an insight. Turning thoughts into words sharpens reasoning. What's fuzzy in your head is clear on the page. ‘I'm not a writer’ shouldn't stop you from writing. Writing is a tool for thinking.”
Now turn that to (likely) personal experience. Think of a time you’ve had to articulate, on paper, something that you “know.” You know this! Have thought of it dozens of times! Had many an informal discussion. Just gotta put it down now, a little more formally. Shouldn’t take long.
And yet…you find yourself it a bit of a maze. Is this the right word—or would something else make the point more forcefully? Do my points follow, one from the other, logically, or are they jumbled? Wait, this seems to repeat what I said slightly differently here. It all seemed so clear. But now it’s all…fuzzy. After an hour or two or three, it’s finally unfuzzy again. Because you’ve spent the time thinking, thinking hard, about what you really wanted to say—and you finally got it down on the page.
Now think about how this works in corporate thought leadership. The writing is often what comes at the end. You’ve got the outline. You’ve got the research deck. You hold the call with stakeholders. Any questions? You now hand it over to “the writer.”
In this setting, writing is execution. It’s writing as getting-it-done, quickly. Can we have a draft by Tuesday? As Yoda might put it, smoothly it does not go.
Well, Mr. Finger-Wagger, what’s your solution?
A fundamental assumption on my part is that thought leadership, like all valuable thinking, is “emergent.” It’s a process of discovery—a process of finding out. What’s the real problem we’re solving; what’s truly surprising and powerful in the research; which recommendations really follow from it all. And what seems brilliant one day may look weak the next. Until publication, you’re refining. Stephen King again: “Writing is refined thinking.” So:
• Be careful of prematurely “locking in” to early documents—even those that have received the coveted “looks good” from senior people.
• Don’t let the words in an outline or in a deck—which can take on astonishing authority just by their appearance on the page—tyrannize the prose drafts.
• Work flexibly with the core team as the drafts evolve: writer, researcher, marketer. Execute—yes. But allow the thinking to develop, to sharpen, to crystallize.
Writing is thinking. I’ve had that on my mind for a decade. I knew! Informally, I could have told you. But now I see it has taken me a few hours to work my way through it all and say what I was really thinking all that time.
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