Thought leadership: in need of a new leader

By Fiona Czerniawska

We were wrong.

Last year, one of our most widely-read articles likened the battle for dominance in thought leadership to the First World War in 1917.  Intellectual ammunition was being lobbed over the no mans’ land with no discernible effect, but the status quo could be challenged if firms developed new strategies, made innovative use of technology and invested more (just as the entry of the US into the War brought all of these things).

But 2013 wasn’t 1917.  It was stuck, Groundhog Day-like, in the mindset of 1916: mud, gore and a massive amount of wasted money.  The consulting industry published roughly the same amount of material as it did in 2012 (when it should have been trying to do more with less) and the top ten topics were the same with one exception (hello data analytics).  Only half the material published focused on a specific sector and less than one percent explicitly addressed the needs of different functional roles (CFO, CIO, CHRO, etc).  Clients love precisely targeted (relevant) material; consulting firms prefer saturation bombardment.

All of which begs the question why?  Everyone knows things have to change (why would so many people have read our article otherwise?), so why don’t they?

To answer that, I think we need to reach back into history again.

Field Marshal Douglas Haig commanded the British Expeditionary Force from 1915 until the end of the War and was ultimately responsible for the two million casualties sustained by the British army and countless more among its allies.  Haig’s strategy, if it can be said to deserve the name, was so predictable (all offensives had to start at 7:30am), that the Germans would safely sit through the pre-battle shelling in their bunkers, rush out to set up their machine guns at 7:25am, then mow down the hapless troops as they came over the top of their trenches.  If he’d been prepared to deviate even slightly from the set routine (start shelling again at 7:30am? Dispatch the troops at 7:45am?), the results would have been very different – but he couldn’t countenance change.  Even after the end of the war, Haig held that the bayonet was superior to the machine gun, and the horse to the tank.  At no point during the War did he ever (ever!) visit the Front or the injured soldiers in the casualty clearing stations to see for himself what was happening.

Thought leadership needs to change, but the reason why it isn’t changing is that no one’s visiting the front line.  Ammunition, in the form of reports, articles, etc, is turning up – there’s no shortage of materiel in this war – but is being thrust into the hands of partners and account managers who can’t necessarily do anything with it and aren’t convinced that it works.  Well-meaning marketing people rarely get invited into the trenches.  Hardly any firm carries out surveys of its staff or its clients, asking them how thought leadership can be used more effectively and what they thought about specific pieces.

Someone needs to find out what’s actually going on out there: the results may not be pretty, but it’s the only way things will change.