Thought leadership now absorbs hundreds of millions of consulting firms’ hard-earned fees, but is anyone any good at it? That’s not an easy question to answer because leading-edge thinking for the goose may be stating the obvious to the gander.

There are two aspects to the success of thought leadership: being heard and being read.

Being heard
The world’s largest 40 consulting firms have more than 3,500 documents on their websites which could be classed as thought leadership: that’s leaving out the much greater volume of marketing brochures, case studies and descriptions of services which are often labelled as such. More than a third of this material is focused on strategy-related issues: planning, entering new markets, economic studies of emerging economies. Another third tackles more operational topics, such as technology, outsourcing and innovation. The remaining third is split between a variety of HR, marketing, finance and governance issues. There are over 500 documents on business processes alone. If you want to say something on applying lean production techniques to the public sector, or how to decide whether a particular function should be offshored, think again. You’ll be competing with IBM, which generates around 10 percent of the thought leadership on business processes. Got something new to say on regulatory compliance? Forget it. Thought leadership here has gone from next to nothing two years ago to become one of the most ferociously competitive areas of the market.

In sheer volume terms, McKinsey wins – if only because it is astute at taking one piece of research and analyzing its implications for several countries and industries. But Accenture, whose rate of thought leadership output has dramatically increased in the last two years, is snapping at McKinsey’s heels. Behind them we have PA Consulting, BearingPoint, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Towers Perrin.

Market share does matter here. From a client’s perspective, a consulting firm that can boast ten articles on a given subject is going to look as though it takes that subject more seriously than a consulting firm with only one article. Indeed, a firm that can focus its resources to produce ten thought pieces on the same subject probably is taking the subject more seriously. But what if the firm with just one article gets it into the Harvard Business Review: isn’t that better than 10 “white papers”? Unquestionably – and some firms, Bain is a good example, excel at doing just that. But let’s also remember that 90 percent of thought leadership is self-published by the consulting firms themselves: at worst, it’s sitting on their website waiting to be found; at most, it’s been dolled up and posted to their long-suffering clients. In this context, being able to list several articles or send clients material regularly does help a firm stand out.

Being read
But quantity is no guarantor of quality.

Clients look for three things from thought leadership:

1. For them to read beyond an article’s title there has to be something that has immediate appeal, something that makes it relevant to issues they’re facing then. Bankers want to read about people development issues in banks, not across industry as a whole; retailers want to see how other retailers have improved their technology infrastructure.

2. Clients are looking for something different, but experience and cynicism has taught them to be sceptical about consultants’ thought leadership, especially where it trumpets its own originality.

3. Whether a client buys into the idea a consulting firm is trying to put across also depends on the evidence. Clients don’t take a consultant’s word for it, but want a wealth of named companies whose experience reinforces the message the consulting firm is trying to get across.

Occasionally management ideas do capture the imagination of executives, but for the vast majority of thought leadership, it is the practical application which will attract people’s attention. They want to know what they should do, as much as what they should think. This is important, too, for consultants. A call-to-action is more likely to result in consulting work in the long-term. However, consultants have to be careful not to over-sell themselves: clients find nothing more off-putting.

Winners and losers
Different firms excel in different ways. Bain is not only astute in the way it gets its thinking into newspapers and other media, but also has a knack of picking topical issues and making them appealing. Booz Allen doesn’t produce nearly as much material as its immediate rivals, but what it does generate is more distinctive, opinionated and interesting. In an environment where a single client case study is widely regarded as sufficient evidence that an idea or approach works, IBM and McKinsey lead the way in terms of the depth of their research. Accenture is especially astute in commercializing thought leadership, for example, converting surveys into benchmarking data and self-diagnostic tools for clients.

So who’s going to win the battle for clients’ minds?

You can divide the consulting industry into four types of player, at least where thought leadership is concerned. There are experimenters: firms that produce a relatively limited volume of material, much of which is quite theoretical. Most strategy and HR consulting firms fall into this category. Then there are the architects, firms such as Bain and Bearing Point, which generate more output but steer clear of focusing on particular sectors. McKinsey, an “architect” firm, has clearly taken clients’ concerns over relevance and pragmatism to heart, and is now producing much more sector-specific thought leadership. This is taking it into another category, traditionally inhabited by firms such as IBM and Accenture: builders. As the soubriquet suggests, these firms are trying to build markets: thought leadership here is more practical, aimed at (ultimately) increasing consulting revenues. And, as a consulting firm, this is probably the space to be – using thought leadership to stimulate demand not just to look good.




Fiona Czerniawska is the author of White Space 2007, a unique research programme that evaluates the latest thought leadership published by the top global consulting firms. Fiona is also one of several keynote speakers at the forthcoming consulting seminar Using thought leadership to generate £millions in extra client fees. For more information about White Space go to www.arkimeda.com.

Fiona is the founder and managing director of Arkimeda. She is one of the world's leading authorities on the consulting industry, and the author of many management reports, books and articles on the subject.

Fiona is the Director of the Management Consultancies Association's Think Tank, where she is responsible for research the MCA carries out on trends in the consulting market and on the work that consultants undertake with their clients.

She is a Programme Director for the Centre of Management Development at London Business School, and also lectures at Kingston Business School in London and Haarlem School of Advanced Management Studies in Holland.