Valuable ideas begin at the edges of an organization. Capture them.

The phrase “thought leadership” makes more than a few of us cringe. But beneath this overused and let’s face it, really clunky, corporate phrase lies a crucial truth. The big thinkers in your organization aren’t necessarily wearing that badge right now.

It’s the people on the periphery who see things first.

They’re your sales team having candid conversations with customers. Your developers finding unexpected solutions. Customer success managers spotting the same issue for the tenth time that week. Slack conversations… bottlenecks being solved in real time.

This is where many new ideas begin.

We tend to equate seniority with insight. They’re not the same thing. The people closest to the work are usually the first to spot emerging patterns, recurring frustrations and unexpected opportunities.

Makes sense to me. If you wanted to understand how a city really works, would you interview someone at City Hall or spend a day riding with a taxi driver? The people at City Hall already know what they think. Find out what the taxi driver is hearing.

Great thought leadership starts with understanding what your audience actually needs. What keeps them awake? What’s becoming harder? What’s already changing before everyone else notices?

Often the strongest ideas come when you isolate topics that are just starting to percolate, in real conversations around the company about issues that haven’t also been processed aloud or in media yet. Place high value on those raw perspectives that emerge from the fringes.

A few ways to do that:

  • Meet regularly with people across the organization you’ve identified as insight sources — and follow up consistently, asking them to regularly share info.
  • Cultivate contacts outside the company too. A longtime customer can offer that same ground-level view from an angle you don’t have.
  • Send a team member to high-level meetings in your place. Fresh eyes and ears catch things you’d miss. Debrief what they heard.
  • Ask for early looks at planned programs and plans, not just what’s already public.
  • Invite outside voices into your own team’s meetings occasionally.

The goal is to widen your field of vision, spotting what’s happening outside the narrow slice of the company you’re tasked with improving every day.

These are the unfiltered opinions that come in before the feedback is polished or processed through channels. Intel founder Andy Grove knew this back in 1997 when he wrote, “Speak to, listen to, and learn from your own sales force. They encounter the bare truths of your organization first.”

The next good idea in your company is already being said out loud, it’s just not happening in a meeting you’re in.

The future belongs to those companies that can identify, listen to and amplify these authentic voices — whether from the C-suite, the front line or anywhere in between.