Those who subscribe to our White Space quality ratings will be well aware that IBM, Deloitte, BCG and Capgemini Consulting are yet again in our top five¹. In our recent report we mused on what it is that enables these firms to create great thought leadership. Here’s a taster:

Surveying senior executives in global companies is not easy – or cheap. So when all that lovely data arrives back it is rather tempting to make really good use of every single number, to show and tell the reader exactly what you paid for. Sadly, however, this seldom leads to interesting or insightful thought leadership. But what does? Here are our top tips based on the best reports we’ve seen underpinned by survey data:

We know from our conversations with firms and our recent survey¹ (see chart), that many consultants are being incentivised to produce thought leadership, albeit often implicitly rather than explicitly. On the surface it’s not a bad idea. After all, “what you measure is what you get,” is a widely recognised adage for good reason, and consultants are busy people who have demanding managers and clients to keep happy.

Readers, even business readers, are intrigued by the personal. Take a look at April’s ten best-selling business books (according to The New York Times): every single one of them hones in on the personal.

Oscar Wilde may have been right to describe consistency as “the hallmark of the unimaginative”, as may Aldous Huxley when he argued – somewhat more forcefully – that it is “contrary to nature and contrary to life”. But neither, to the best of our knowledge, spent their spare time advising consulting firms about the effectiveness of their thought leadership. Had they done so we suspect they’d have softened their stance a bit because consistency, or more specifically the lack of it, is one of the biggest issues with the output of many firms.