Thought Leadership Best Practices and Behaviors of the Best Firms

By Jason Mlicki | June 25, 2024 | Thought Leadership

Explore our latest research on the mindsets and behaviors of the world’s best thought leaders. In short, what makes the best, “the best?”

This is a question we’ve been asking ourselves for over a decade. We’ve conducted at least 5 prior studies – the last three in partnership with Bob Buday as part of our collaboration, Profiting from Thought Leadership. Each study has built on the last to uncover the secrets of a better mousetrap.

This latest thought leadership best practices research, which we commissioned in Q1 2024, is focused exclusively on thought leadership in professional services – primarily consulting, IT services, A/E, financial services. We surveyed 233 firms in North America. We asked them to self-identify their performance along 8 dimensions of thought leadership effectiveness. We clustered a group of the top performers into a cohort we call the “leaders” so we could compare them with their peers. (See the appendix to this article for more details on the research itself).

We shoved all their answers into a tumbler, shook it all up with some Vodka, and sifted out the insights we found most interesting. In the end, what fell out were three big things:

Rigor – They bring discipline and structure to everything they do.
Culture – They create time, space, and incentives for thought leadership to take hold.
Investments – They make the critical investments in people, technology and research necessary for thought leadership to thrive.

Let’s look at each individually.

#1 – Rigor: Bringing Discipline and Structure to Thought Leadership

For the best firms, thought leadership isn’t a way of marketing. It’s a way of being. They’re more purposeful about everything that surrounds thought leadership. They set goals. They establish standards — they enforce them. In short, they do what world-class athletes do.

World-class athletes set performance goals all the time. Sure, many of those goals are in their control … shave .2 of a second off a 40-yard dash time, increase my first serve percentage, or do 200 push-ups a day. But the more meaningful goals are outcomes-based. Beat TTUN, win Wimbledon, win the Iron Man.

The best firms see thought leadership in the same light. They set goals they can control – publishing targets. And goals they can’t – revenue targets. They recognize that the simple act of goal-setting increases the chance of the firm achieving those goals; even the ones that are largely out of their control.

#2 – Culture: Creating Time, Space and Incentives for Thought Leadership to Take Hold

For years we’ve been saying the best firms cultivate a culture of thought leadership. We know senior leaders need to make thought leadership a priority for a program to succeed. But what goes into that? What are we asking them to do?

Our latest research points to four main things:

Beat the drum – senior leaders need to speak regularly, authentically, and vocally about the importance of thought leadership to the firm’s success. Including it as a line-item on a strategic plan and handing it off to the marketing team isn’t going to cut it.
Mandate participation – For certain roles, thought leadership needs to be mandatory. The best firms don’t just expect it from their practice leaders. They demand it. It’s in their job description.
Promote for it – Whether yours is a consulting, technology, financial services, investment or A/E firm, there is a lot to goes into climbing the firm ladder. There’s technical prowess. Expertise. Client relations. Revenue building. And there’s thought leadership contribution. The best firms make it critical to advancement.
Create space – Finally, a thriving thought leadership culture allocates time and resources for subject matter experts to participate. Nobody does their best thinking on nights and weekends. A portion of utilization must be allocated to thought leadership for a program to thrive.

#3 – Invest: Leveraging People, Research and Technology for Thought Leadership to Thrive.

Ultimately, the best firms make the investments needed for thought leadership to be executed as a strategic priority.

They invest in people – internally or externally – who have the unique ability and training to bring out the best thinking of their subject matter experts.
They invest in research – to discover new and better ways of solving clients most pressing problems.
They invest in technology – to make the whole process run smoother and faster.

Where to Start

I’ve always found the best place to start is with a conversation. Convene the leadership team for a brief discussion about your firm’s thought leadership program. Discuss the gap between where you are now and industry best practices.

Here’s a short and sweet discussion guide you can use to get the conversation started:

Do we have enough rigor in our program?

Do we have clear goals? Are we measuring progress? Are we measuring what matters?
Do we have standards? Are they appropriately enforced? If not, why not?

Are we doing what’s necessary for a culture of thought leadership to take hold?

If not, what are we not doing?
What should we start doing that will make the biggest impact in the short- and long-term?
Is there anything we could stop doing that’s hindering our success?

Are we making the needed investments for thought leadership to thrive?

Do we have the expert content developers we need to bring out the best thinking from our people? Do we need to hire? Could we invest in training to level up the people we already have? Would we better off outsourcing?
Do we have a clear research agenda to drive our programs? Is our research yielding compelling new insights? If not, why not?
What martech are we using to make things more effective? More efficient? What else is out there that could aid us on our journey? Do we know?

Appendix: About this Research

Our latest thought leadership research was conducted between 12/13/23 – 2/11/24. 233 professional services firms responded to a 25-question online survey.

The leaders in our study were self-identified by rating their firms’ prowess on a scale of 1-5 across eight dimensions of thought leadership effectiveness. They are those who self-identified a total score of 36 or better out of a total potential score of 40 on all 8 dimensions (the top quartile of firms by effectiveness). These firms annual revenue growth rate was 23.4%. All other firms in the sample grew at a mean rate of 17.7%, a 6% point differential.

For other parts in this research series, check out:

Jason Mlicki is Principal of Rattleback. He helps clients envision their desired future state and aligns our agency resources to enable them to realize it.

Meet Jason