The ancestor of innovation is thought; without thought, there could be no innovation. In management, while innovation attracts profound commentary, analysis, awe and cynicism, all at once, thought attracts less commentary. You can imagine what a business-ravaged veteran of 50 years like me thought when I was invited to a day-long workshop at an eponymous management college on the subject, “thought leadership”. My company executive image about management faculty was shattered by an engaged and lively faculty, jousting and jostling, to extract the best out of discussions on a hot day in May. It was worth my time.
The workshop was hosted by Mumbai’s S P Jain Institute of Management Research (SPJIMR). Thought leadership at SPJIMR is the brainchild of dynamic Dean Ranjan Banerjee. In the workshop, he was ably assisted by his sister-in-arms (no pun intended), Snehal Shah, an ardent yoga student with a doctorate in organisational behaviour from Carnegie Mellon University. Their credentials were serious enough for me to disguise my practising manager’s sneer, though I must confess to the subdued presence of adipose tissues of well-camouflaged cynicism.
Collectively, the faculty undertook a journey: what is thought leadership, why is it important, what are the processes involved, what does a thought leader actually do? At the end of that day, it was not that the 50 assembled people had stumbled on to a revolutionary new idea; they had only emotionally participated in a journey of self-discovery and their roles as teachers of management — a hugely worthwhile outcome with hopefully more to come.
Human connectivity with thought leadership is a no-brainer, as well-chronicled by Yuval Noah Harari in <I>Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. </I>Humans are the only species — among the 8.7 million created — that think, reflect, act and discover in a cycle of incessant learning. To do those five things is distinctively human and natural. This cycle leads to individual learning, what academics call implicit learning. It has to be converted into explicit learning.
You convert implicit into explicit learning through articulation. This is what teachers and managers do all the time, though managers and teachers do it differently, but both efforts bring their own value. Articulation can be through speaking, writing, demonstrating or through the ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation technique. Teaching through articulation is a distinctively human event. Management teachers are in the business of converting implicit business knowledge into explicit, teachable learning. Teachers who don’t think that thought leadership is their core business are in danger of being considered lazy or indolent. Thought is distinctively human: even intelligent animals like dogs don’t conduct day-long seminars on thought leadership — only humans do such things in companies, universities and institutions.
I reflected on the origin of the expression, thought leadership. It was used for the first time in 1887 to describe Henry Ward Beecher, an American clergyman, social thinker and opponent of slavery. I encountered this expression in marketing literature of the 1980s when I was a marketer at Unilever. But it was the obituary notice about the premature death of Joel Allen Kurtzman in April this year that brought the expression back into my consciousness. Kurtzman edited <I>The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review </I>and latterly <I>Strategy+Business. </I>It was at S+B that he was credited with coining the expression and of giving it literary visibility.
I have observed time-challenged faculty at management institutes debate about what they should aim for —thought leadership or teaching. Institutions need to emphasise that teaching and thought leadership are not a zero-sum game; both are essential —just like you have two eyes, and while one may be stronger or weaker, the optician has to fit you with eye glasses that allows maximum usage of both eyes, singly and collectively. The same is true of operating managers; that is why GE runs Crotonville, Unilever runs Four Acres and Gulita and Tata runs Tata Management Training Centre.
More strength to thought leadership and kudos to SPJIMR. I hope many more management institutes, indeed even operating companies, join this fray of thought leadership — without it, no institute can innovate.
The author is a writer and corporate advisor; rgopal@themindworks.me
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
