The tyranny of the new

Here’s a little-known fact: the largest 25 consulting firms in the world collectively publish, on average, 445 new pieces of thought each month. That’s just under 18 articles per firm, although in practice the distribution is skewed. Firms such as McKinsey and Booz, both of which have regular publications to feed, tend to write much more, as does Accenture.

All of which makes me wonder whether there’s a “right” amount to publish.

The firms that generate a lot of material certainly give the impression of having a lot to say. Perhaps more importantly, they’re obviously more likely to be dealing with topical issues than a competitor who, say, publishes just a couple of new reports each month. Clients, we know, want thought leadership that’s touching on a specific issue or opportunity they’re facing: a topical article has a higher chance of being relevant.

Publishing a large amount of material externally also creates pressure internally. A factory that makes a million products a day needs more raw materials than one which only make a thousand. A consulting firm that knows it has to produce a set amount of thought leadership each month is more likely to have a disciplined process for doing so, a culture and set of incentives that reward the writing of thought leadership, and a group of people (the hidden gurus) who are regular, high-quality contributors.

But the relentless production of thought leadership has its drawbacks. It takes extraordinary control (and quite a lot of money) to ensure that the material produced reaches a consistent standard.

Our research shows that most leading firms are capable of writing exceptional thought leadership, but very few can do so day in, day out. In the rush to make a noise, quality may well fall. A bigger problem is that producing a lot of material encourages people to think that they always need to have something new to say. It requires much greater intellectual effort to take one subject and write about it intelligently and interestingly on a regular basis, than it does to flit from one topic to another. It leads to an assumption that clients, too, have limited span of attention: they do, but only for subjects that don't matter to them.

I think this goes some way to explaining why so few consulting firms are succeeding with blogs and why so many which publish blogs, have multiple contributors to them.

The new is crowding out the genuinely thoughtful.

3rd July 2010