The repeatability principle: What Forrest Gump can teach us about thought leadership

Most people of a certain age will immediately recognise the character who uttered these immortal lines. What they might not anticipate, however, is the extent to which Forrest Gump’s maxim holds water when it comes to professional services thought leadership.

Across the Source team, we review several hundreds of pieces of thought leadership a year, drawn from all the major firms. Some firms’ portfolios could be described as being in ‘Forrest Gump territory’—you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. From hugely variable landing pages, unpredictable application of visual identity and brand templates, and very different approaches to research, analysis, and recommendations, we’ve seen it all.

For others, quality, standardisation and consistent application of methods and templates are clearly central to their approach. And guess what? It works. We see a strong correlation between the degree of centralisation of the thought leadership function and quality scoring. The more decentralised the approach, the more variance exists, and the lower the average quality scores.

Back to the box of chocolates.

Centralisation drives quality

So, the answer appears to be greater centralisation. Easy to say, incredibly difficult to pull off in large, matrix-based and partner-empowered organisations with a natural aversion to ‘central functions’. Establishing an effective approach to governance and consequence management in a firm of any size can feel as multiplex as delivering world peace.

“We see a strong correlation between the degree of centralisation of the thought leadership function and quality scoring.” 

It certainly can be done, and firms have done it—but notably these firms tend to operate in a corporate way more generally; the principles of centralisation and consistency are already well established, and approaching brand and thought leadership in a similar way simply goes with the grain of the organisational structure and culture. 

Member firm structures present a particular challenge in this industry, even to the most sophisticated firms. If you have 150+ member firms operating in countries around the world, each with their own leadership, partnerships, and marketing teams, there is huge scope for variance and quality problems. Guidance can only go so far, try as CMOs might. 

Common technology platforms are significant enablers of a more consistent approach. Running a common content management system and marketing automation platform with common digital templates creates far better conditions for consistency and quality across all entities operating under a single brand. A spaghetti approach to technology shows up very quickly when reviewing a thought leadership portfolio.