My Dinner With Bill

At the surface, this might sound like a modest amount of expertise, and certainly not enough to create an expert who could produce a robust article on the subject. But I wouldn't hesitate to put this consultant's insights up against those of the academic who has spent decades studying the problem from afar or an executive who sees the problem once every 5 or 10 years.

A top consultant who serves six different clients on M&A strategy in the course of a few years builds expertise that few could emulate. He or she learns by working through a set of tough client problems and feels the impact of decisions. Simultaneously, many hours are spent reanalyzing data to tease out insights and debating hypotheses with thoughtful teammates. Intense discussions with the firm's existing experts create new levels of understanding. That combination allows them to absorb a tremendous amount of insight in a short time, and connect it to other work in other domains. This process unlocks new patterns and beliefs. At the end of that journey, the writing takes care of itself, because they can now say something meaningful.

ML: But consultants are often weak researchers who are more than happy to let a quick 20-person survey pass for real research. It is really the academics like Jim Collins or Michael Porter who are good at rigorous business research, not consultants who lack the patience, resources, or research skills.

ML: But consultants are often weak researchers who are more than happy to let a quick 20-person survey pass for real research. It is really the academics like Jim Collins or Michael Porter who are good at rigorous business research, not consultants who lack the patience, resources, or research skills.

BM: Exactly, and it is those multiple experiences and perspectives that allow consultants to formulate powerful basic beliefs that are central to your value proposition to clients. Consultants are at their strongest when they are synthesizing powerful ideas and concepts. But let's step back, because there is really an entire innovation to marketing cycle that must precede any meaningful publishing activity.

You must first decide whether you are primarily in the business of solving problems or selling solutions. Selling solutions is clearly a profitable, scale business, as we can see from the growth of Accenture or IBM Global Services. But it is also a commercial undertaking. In contrast, if you are on the premium end of the market and wish to be regarded as a true professional, you are definitely selling people, and then those people need to "own" the debate around fundamental problems, not solutions.

… By the way, when it comes time for practice leaders to pull together your experience with a problem or challenge, who would you rather have in the room? Ten consultants who have seen the problem once or twice, or three who each have seen it five or six times? I know where I would place my bet. But this means that they have to be real practice leaders, real people developers, and assert some control over staffing. As Fred Gluck used to say, the job of practice leadership is growing people, not writing articles.

ML: Now, let's fast forward and assert that your practice leadership team has created the right foundation. They know which problems they want to own and they have crafted value propositions for each problem. Now you want to start sharing your thinking with prospective clients, which means developing a real marketing strategy. However, a classic trap is that firms start to see articles and books as the entire marketing strategy, when it should be only one part of the approach.

Smart firms employ a range of techniques to get their ideas in circulation. You might pull a few executives in a city together for an informal breakfast discussion, and gently steer the conversation to your new thinking on a particular managerial opportunity. I have watched firms assemble client Advisory Boards that create a rich dialogue over a period of time around a set of topics. You can create an innovation center, a physical environment where you can tangibly walk clients through your thinking. Of course, if your ideas are powerful and timely, there is also the opportunity to get quoted in a feature article in Fortune, or to write an op-ed or Manager's Journal piece for The Wall Street Journal.

BM: In the early '80s at McKinsey, Ken Ohmae walked in one day and said that he wanted to start writing about international trade. This was in the 1980s, and he had just completed an analysis that showed that Japan was actually consuming more American-made goods than the U.S. was consuming Japanese-made goods. Remember that this was at a time when the U.S. was deeply worried about the rising number of Toyota and Honda cars on the streets and Sony televisions in our living rooms. We did a piece for The Wall Street Journal that shifted the debate, and Ken went on to write 30 more pieces for the Journal's editorial page over several years. These 30 editorial pieces were more powerful than the force of 300 articles.

ML: If there is one overriding message here, I think it is that you must consider the full range of available marketing opportunities before sitting down to write an article.

BM: Yes, stop the presses! Please. Honestly, it is time that firms started to think about publications as the last resort when marketing their value proposition in today's noisy environment.

The old model used to be that you publish something, send it out, and then call and follow up with a visit to a client. The new model is the complete opposite. Now you have to visit the prospective clients first, then you have permission to call them. If they are still interested and you sense a relationship building, then can you give them a publication with the hope that they will take the time to skim its contents.

And guess what? The same rules of engagement apply inside your firm as outside. In any firm where practice development is taken seriously, the average partner receives three to four new publications per week from his or her own colleagues. This is on top of the dozens of external publications that land on the desk. You can't expect your partners to take your article to their client unless you have first personally connected with them to get them excited about your ideas. And you need to understand whether your value propositions are consultant- and client-friendly (read "perceived risk") before you can figure out the right marketing mix.

ML: I have lost count of how many partners I meet who say either "I am writing a book" or "I am going to do an article for Harvard Business Review." Since books and HBR articles seem to be the most popular publishing aspirations these days, maybe it is time that we started to dispel some of the myths surrounding their development and impact.

BM: Publishing a book tends to be a disappointing and exhausting experience for consultants. The publisher's economics are tied to playing the odds. If something hits, it hits. When you first talk with book publishers, they will tell you how yours is the greatest book idea, how it will be the lead book for the season, how much they will promote it. Everyone is excited. Then the book comes out and the author wanders into the bookstore and sees only two copies on the shelf, spine out, sitting next to 2,000 other business books. Inevitably, the author will come back and ask, "What happened? The publisher said he loved me and my book.?" Guess what? They said the exact same thing to the 50 other authors they worked with last quarter, and they are now saying the same thing to 50 more as we speak. You fell for it. Like a bank that will loan you money only when you don't really need it, publishers will promote your book only if it naturally becomes a hit title. Or if your name happens to be Bill Clinton.

ML: So the consultant's book ultimately becomes a very fancy and expensive business card that you hand to prospective clients. And make no mistake, that very act of handing a client your book is often valuable in boosting your credibility. Of course, at this point you had better hope that you have just handed them something that is truly high-quality. Just as anyone reading this article could differentiate a shallow from a thoughtful book in a few minutes by flipping through the pages, your clients possess that same skill.

BM: You mentioned Harvard Business Review articles earlier, and that is worth a quick discussion. HBR must get thousands of submissions from consultants each year and will publish only a handful of those articles. But don't think that you can set out to "write an HBR article." To get published you need to have something that is truly fresh and distinctive thinking, is timely, and is written with the authority of a real expert or based on rigorous research. If you can get the right article in at the right time, you will get attention, but the odds are stacked against you. A healthier mindset is to focus on writing a steady stream of thought pieces and getting them directly into the hands of your colleagues, clients, and the business press. That approach, wedded to some smart press relations, is a much better investment.

Mark Leiter is chairman and managing director of Leiter & Company (www.leiterco.com), a firm that specializes in accelerating the top-line growth of professional services firms. Earlier in his career, he served in practice and firm leadership roles at McKinsey & Company and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. You can contact him at mleiter@leiterco.com.