In Search of Excellent Thought Leaders

In Search of Excellence was published when I was six years old, but as an enthusiastic student of business history and a lover of marketing classics, I felt compelled to re-read it this summer and in doing so, drew some interesting parallels between Excellence’s eight basic principles and the principles of great thought leaders. And before you ask, the ironic link between McKinsey and Company (one of the best at plying the trade of though leadership marketing) and thought leadership marketing isn’t lost on me. In fact, one could argue that for McKinsey, as well as for Tom Peters and Bob Waterman, this book was an outstanding piece of thought leadership in and of itself. In fact, it’s just one in a long line of thought leading missives penned by current and former McKinseyites.

The deep similarities that exist between thought leaders and the leading companies (of their time) profiled in In Search of Excellence should not be overlooked either. Detractors of thought leadership marketing point to its buzzword compliant status as a reason to invalidate it (though you’ll find its mentions in Google to be a mere fraction of how often the words “social media” are found). They miss the point, which is that thought leadership marketing is a competence based marketing approach (from an academic perspective) and requires the thought leading company to “live” their message, much the same way that the companies in In Search of Excellence embody the eight basic principles. Thought leadership goes well beyond the tactical channels that we often see, such as speaking, articles and books.

There are a few new things that current or would-be thought leaders can glean from the lessons distilled from In Search of Excellence. Let’s look at what the eight basic principles mean for thought leaders.

1. A bias for action: First and foremost, thought leaders are idea generators and excel at sharing those ideas with the customers from whom they’ve derived the problems to think about. Thought leaders are also “doers”. Superior thought leadership stems from tangible activity in the market and with live customers.
2. Close to the customer: Thought leaders are inherently customer centric. This is best illustrated throughout In Search of Excellence when the authors detail the meetings, studies, presentations and conversations had with hundreds of people at dozens of companies. Thought leaders are what I like to call “embedded innovators” and “embedded marketers”. They live in the marketplace that they serve and their thought leading is borne of the questions and issues from the marketplace.
3. Autonomy & entrepreneurship: Thought leading companies expand the role of thought leadership well beyond the corner office holders to the staff and line professionals charged with actually solving the customer problems. Admittedly, this has become easier with the advent of social media, but it’s the corporate ethos that’s one of inclusion and empowerment that really makes this possible. You’ll notice that the best thought leading companies publish content from throughout the organization, and those small companies that are thought leaders go well beyond their four walls to engage luminaries throughout the industry.
4. Productivity through people: This principle was best captured by Mark Shepherd of Texas Instruments when he said every worker should be “seen as a source of ideas, not just acting as a pair of hands.” Thought leaders allow their people to leverage their intellectual capital to make a difference in the company and in the industry while getting slightly famous in the process.
5. Hands-on, value driven: Thought leaders are doers, not just thinkers. The best thought leading organizations are the best practitioners and have the most practical experience to bring to bear on a client situation.
6. Stick to the knitting: Just as excellent companies stay reasonably close to the businesses they know, exemplary thought leaders work on issues that they have intimate knowledge of, deep experience in and for which they’ve developed a point of view. This doesn’t mean that they can’t pursue “prediction opportunities” where they help point other toward actionable ideas for change, it does mean that a company that works in metal plating isn’t likely to produce thought leadership material related to lampshade manufacturing.
7. Simple form, lean staff: High leverage is a hallmark of excellent companies where it’s commonplace to find a handful of people running a multi-million dollar business. Thought leading companies don’t fill their ranks with hoards of researchers, but rather they hire and cultivate a handful of luminaries that can carry the intellectual weight of a thought leader in the industry.
8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties: Excellent companies have often been classified as “barely organized chaos surrounding its product champions.” Companies that embody a thought leadership marketing approach, especially those that “social media enable” their employees are no different in that they’re fanatical about their values, philosophy and core competency while simultaneously affording autonomy at the line level allowing their thought leaders and employees to engage customers in a meaningful dialogue without violating any company values.

If 1982 phoned in today, it would tell us that there are still many relevant lessons that can be applied to today’s organizations. The simple fact is that before a company can seek to attain the status of a thought leader, it needs to be a highly-functional and effective organization with extraordinary competence in their market. That’s why following the eight basic principles from In Search of Excellence and further adapting them to their thought leadership initiatives is so critical. Choosing this approach will ensure that any would-be thought leading company will be on the right path.

Copyright 2009. The MarketingSavant Group. All rights reserved