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. 

A space for creativity?

All that being said, one lesson I have learned over the years is to not rush to judge those parts of a firm that are ‘centres of variance’. There will always be regions, countries, offices, practice areas, industry groups, and service lines within a firm that appear to be fairly determined to go rogue—the parts of town where the blue lights of the brand police always seem to be flashing. But while a minority within all firms set out to be non-compliant for the hell of it, often variance is simply an expression of enthusiasm, creativity, and ownership.

"Some firms’ portfolios could be described as being in ‘Forrest Gump territory’—you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get."

Some partners or teams want to do a great job, to try something different, bring fresh thinking, and try approaches that go beyond the formula (which they may not always be clear on anyway). Sometimes, this manifests as someone having the idea to put a stock image of their favourite cake on a report about the bakery industry—but, more often than not, the ideas can be smart and worth listening to.

There is, therefore, a need to strike the right balance between a winning formula and a formulaic approach which extinguishes the flames of creativity.

Repeatability

A real head-scratcher for me, here, is that a firm can include a brilliant element in one thought leadership report and that element is then never to be seen again in any other output.

If firms could house all of the great elements across their portfolios together in a single system, and apply them consistently, quality scores would jump significantly. But all too often, there are simply no repeatable sets of elements that create enduring value—the aforementioned ‘Forrest Gump syndrome’. We often get asked about best practices that exist in other firms, but firms should start by codifying their own great practices and embedding these more systematically.

About 10 years or so ago, Chris Zook and James Allen of Bain & Company wrote a book called Repeatability. I loved this book, and thought the central principles squared the circle of making things work more centrally in a decentralised organisational structure. I think we can borrow a bit of this thinking in the context of thought leadership.

First, agree your well-differentiated core. What are the core elements that you want your thought leadership to contain that will create a differentiated impact in the market? What is the formula that you want to see replicated across a portfolio?

Second, define your clear non-negotiables that all parts of the firm must align around; those elements of the repeatable formula that must always be present in the outputs of all parts of the firm. These may be highly prescriptive templates or more principle-based (personally, I think only templates work). This doesn’t constrain wider creativity, but rather ensures the backbone is in place.

Third, create a process for closed-loop learning, so the repeatable formula can be challenged, tested, and adapted on an ongoing basis.

In the world of professional services thought leadership, we may not need to know exactly what we’re going to get in a box of chocolates from any given firm. But we can at least expect to broadly know what we’re going to get. And to assume the firm has included all the best flavours (not the orange one).