How to Build Real Authority in 2026
THE MANIFESTO by Steven Sonsino
PART I: Why Authorship Matters
My father arrived in Britain on a Red Cross ship from Alexandria after the bombing of Egypt in 1956. He carried three things: a small photo of himself at the Sphinx, a $20 bill, and Ella Fitzgerald singing in his head.
There was one particular song he loved and Ella just sparkled in it. So my father – immigrant, survivor, jazz-lover – carried the lyric into his new life:
It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.
That line burns in me. Because it is the purest definition of authorship I know. Hear me out.
The End of Authority 1.0
I remember Jacqueline Moore, my wife and business partner, shaking me awake with the 3am edition of the Financial Times where she worked on the front page. ‘Enron’s collapsed,’ she said. Only yesterday it had been the darling of the business world, lauded in case studies, admired in boardrooms. Today it was rubble.
Enron wasn’t alone. Do you remember the 2000s? WorldCom. Parmalat. Arthur Andersen. Royal Bank of Scotland. Lehman Brothers. Institutions that once seemed untouchable, now reduced to cautionary tales in FT headlines.
There was something else happening, too. In my doctoral research at the London School of Economics, studying leadership and organisational failure, I kept finding the same pattern: ‘great’ leaders, wearing the badge of office, blind to the silences and risks building up around them.
For decades, we believed high-rise office blocks, corner offices, directorships, even professorships were the badges of authority. Until suddenly they weren’t. And the very model of heroic, top-down, command-and-control leadership that promised stability often created blind spots, silences, and institutional risks that proved fatal.
But now? Now we can see that authority doesn’t come from institutions or titles anymore. If it ever truly did. Authority 1.0 was positional. But position, it turns out, is brittle.
And you find yourself asking, where does authority come from?
Authority 1.5: Visibility
Early in 2024 I posted a carefully argued article on LinkedIn. Hours of research. Tight writing. Result? A dozen likes.
That same day, a neon carousel appeared: 10 Hacks to Crush 2024. Shallow, borderline nonsense. Result? Fifty thousand views. Hundreds of comments.
That’s when it hit me, with super-sized digital institutions squabbling over us, visibility had become the new badge of authority. It wasn’t your title that mattered; it was simply whether you were visible. Impressions. Viewer counts. Twitter followers. Mentions.
But visibility is a hollow crown isn’t it? And the influencers are like sequins – dazzling in a ring-light, but meaningless in daylight.
Here’s the reality nobody wants to admit:
- Followers are being bought.
- Noise can be manufactured.
- And – with generative AI – visibility is easier than ever. (‘A thousand posts before breakfast, ma’am? No problem.’)
When I saw it, I finally understood what ‘blood boiling’ means. Because here was the injustice in plain sight: brilliant experts — people like you with wisdom worth sharing — being ignored, actively cut from the feed, while 19-year-old nothings learned how to play the algorithm. Famous for being famous.
And the platforms? They know this. They choke your reach on purpose, feeding the echo chamber, then forcing you to pay to play.
And that’s why my blood boils on your behalf. You’re the one with the experience. You’re the one people should be hearing. But the system strategically crowns the loudest shouter.
Repeat after me: visibility ≠ authority. Not now. Not ever.
The Authority Paradox
And so we’ve arrived at this strange paradox. Not long ago I met a founder who’d spent twenty years in a complex industry. She has insights that could save her peers years of pain. But she can’t get anyone to listen.
Meanwhile, the shallow influencer — no real expertise, no real skin in the game — is dominating the algorithm, dispensing half-truths as if they were gospel.
That’s the Authority Paradox: the wrong people are treated as authoritative, while the right people are kept invisible.
And the cost isn’t just personal. It’s societal. Because when noise wins, substance dies.
It’s not your fault.
Authority 2.0: Authorship
Which brings us here.
If authority doesn’t come from institutions, titles or vanilla visibility anymore, where does it come from?
I used to teach media law to my journalistic staff at VNU and then to newcomers at the Journalism Training Centre. And the word ‘author’ always made their eyebrows rise. In law, an author isn’t just a novelist. It’s anyone who originates a work. Composers. Choreographers. Coders. Creators. So whether you write in prose or Python, in choreography or in chords, you are an author.
And that’s the point. Authority doesn’t come from institutions or titles or socials. It comes from serious authorship. From the things you create that others lean on, learn from, and trust.
Factoid for you here: there’s no copyright in an idea. Only in how you present it. You can’t own the concept of a detective story, for example. But you can own Murder on the Orient Express. You can’t copyright the idea of a lullaby. But you can copyright Summertime.
It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.
This is what it means to be an author. To author is to originate, to give shape, to create something others can lean on. An authority is someone whose opinion we trust. So in 2025, authored work is what makes you authoritative.
By the way, notice where these words – author and authority – sit. You author something, but I’m the one who decides you’re an authority. Conclusion? If you want to influence someone in 2025, if you want people to understand you, if you want people to trust you, be an author.
PART II: Why Books Matter
The entrepreneur Daniel Priestley once told me, ‘My books are the best salespeople I’ve ever hired. They work 24/7 and never ask for commission.’
My former colleague Professor Lynda Gratton’s books shape debates at the highest levels of government, even earning her a seat on the Japanese Prime Minister’s advisory council. She shows us your book can influence governments.
Alok Sinha, former CEO of Capita in India, used his book to reinvent himself from corporate executive to global thought leader. Your book can help shape your career to come.
And Penny Power OBE told her readers: ‘You are not alone.’ And they believed her, because her book sat with them in their loneliest moments. Your book can really matter.
So make no mistake, books are more than words on paper. They are companions, sounding boards and mentors. While blog posts and tweets skim the surface then sink beneath the waves, a book will carry your voice in someone’s head for hours, days, or even years.
This is why I keep coming back to books. Not because they’re nice-to-have, but because of all the forms of authorship, a book is the most powerful trust-building device we know.
The Transformation to Authorhood
I still remember finishing my first manuscript at 3 am. Exhausted but alive. I realised the end product wasn’t the book at all. It was me. I had become an author.
Peter Lorange, Emeritus Dean of IMD, once told me: ‘I write to think.’ I understood him now.
So when you write your book, something unexpected will happen to you, too. Yes, you’ll clarify your thinking. Yes, you’ll codify your frameworks. You’ll create a real business asset. And through this asset new things will become possible. Speaking engagements, for example. Consulting projects. Partnerships. Influence. Any one of these may be the book’s initial purpose in your mind.
But more important than any of these is the fact that becoming an author rewrites you. That’s the transformation most people miss. Becoming someone new as you grow into authorhood.
Seth Godin once said ‘The book isn’t the product. The book is the souvenir.’ I adore that. The idea that your book is a record of your journey, of the deep changes within you. This is the biggest secret: that becoming an author rewrites you. It forces clarity from you. It demands courage from you. But it leaves you standing as someone others can trust.
Join us on the journey
This is one of the reasons I have shifted from professor to publisher, from inherited authority to authored authority. Together with Jacqueline Moore, my wife and business partner, we’ve built the Publishing Channel – to help leaders step into this same transformation.
So here’s my invitation. Tell me your book idea. I’ll tell you if it has legs. And I’ll be honest. There’s no point otherwise.
And your first step is to join our email list – off-platform, beyond the chokehold of algorithms. Visit the rest of the bookstore where the Legacy Journal and You Should Write a Book sit alongside the work of other remarkable authors we’ve helped.
Above all remember this. Authority doesn’t come from institutions or titles or visibility. It comes from authors. And the fastest, most powerful way to build enduring authority?
You should write a book.
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