There should be no "I" in thought leadership, according to Michael Man-kins, managing partner with Marakon Associates. Mankins's insights on the subject are worth considering: He published three articles in the Harvard Business Review in a recent 18-month stretch, and he is hard at work on another feature for the publication. Mankins also co-wrote The Value Imperative: Managing for Superior Shareholder Returns (Diane Pub. Co.) with Marakon colleagues James McTaggart and Peter Kontes in 1994. Just don't call him a guru.
Acknowledging that the term "thought leadership" is thrown around a bit loosely these days, Mankins stresses that one of his strengths is synthesizing related concepts and, especially, organizing them on the written page. His articles explore the ways management teams can transform strategy into performance through decision-making and execution — "Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance," as his January HBR article is titled.
"There seems to be this assumption in consulting that management doesn't know what to do, and this is the reason why they don't take the right action," Mankins notes. "I don't think that's true."
Mankins joined Marakon nearly 20 years ago after graduating summa cum laude from the University of Kentucky and directly entering Wharton, where he graduated with distinction and Beta Gamma Sigma honors. His only previous professional experience was an internship as a securities analyst and a stint teaching speech to high school students (a skill that still resonates in his precise enunciation and comfortable delivery).
"There is a point of view that's always at the root of what we do," says Mankins. "I don't think that I've done any more thought leadership than any other partner at Marakon. It just happens to be that I've published more. But the ideas my articles communicate have been developed by any number of my colleagues."
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