Sustainable Business and the Power of Thought Leadership | Christopher Marquis | 662

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Chris Marquis. He's the senior professor of Chinese management at the University of Cambridge, and he's the author of Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits. Socializes Costs. He's written several other books in the B Corp space and sort of conscious capitalism. And he's passionate about how academic research can help people around the world address some of the biggest crises of our day. And then he did have a stint in financial services, most recently at, as a VP at JPMorgan. So welcome aboard, Chris.

Thanks so much, Peter. Great to be with you.

So how did, how did this happen? Not, not the academic path, because that's typically fairly logical and predictable. Sure. And linear. But this whole thought leadership, authorship stuff, if you will.

Yeah. Good question. You, you know, so many academics, and I think it's such a missed opportunity, you know, are very happy to write papers, sit in their office with a database on their computer and turn out statistics and regressions. But I, I think actually my earliest experience as a faculty member, I was at Harvard Business School, right? Of all the places that really values actually engaging with practice, taking ideas that, you know, are from research and actually working with managers, leaders to really make, to make them work. And, you know, it's a reciprocal process. I mean, I mean, I'm sure that I've learned so much more from the companies that I've talked to, the students I've had, than, you know, they've learned from me.

Yeah. So I, it's interesting because when you think about what does it take to be a successful academic, it's exactly largely exactly what you talked about, the publishing, the research and all those things. But the reach is not a KPI, if you will. Right. So a lot of times, and I find it's sad almost that the amount of energy and effort and blood, sweat, and tears that an academic puts in to a paper to make sure it's polished to the 11th decimal. And the reality is, you know, 7 people read it, or you go to this one obscure conference every year and you debate it with your, you know, your arch rival, the other academic at another place. And the academics that sort of move from traditional academia to, let's call it mainstream business lexicon usage language, not all of them are comfortable there. Now you had a stint in the, in the quote real world. Yeah.

So, so that I think gave me a little bit of a leg up on this because actually I had worked in a large corporation, you know, growing up, my grandparents, parents were sort of in business. So I did have a good sort of feel for, you know, actually engaging with business audiences. But many, as you mentioned, academics, you know, they go through just their PhD right after their undergraduate, have never worked. And like you said, I mean, it's you know, the one sort of KPI that is sort of audience-oriented is citations, but those citations are in other academic journals. And so it ends up being a very insular type of system. So, you know, I had always sort of been thinking about how I can actually take my work and, you know, get a broader audience, broader impact. And there's this amazing tenure institution at, uh, in academics. And so So really after that, I've been working very hard to sort of try to break out of the academic straitjacket. And it's, it's tough because, you know, the institutions, you know, I don't think the organization I was at the time, Cornell, was particularly, you know, interested in having me do that. The reason being that a lot of the rankings for MBA programs actually relate to those very specialist narrow journals that people publish in. So I'm actually someone who is relatively good at publishing in these academic journals. And so they wanted me to, you know, keep that crank spinning, but I, I'm really happy with the research work I did and I continue to publish in academic outlets, but it seemed to me if that was all I did in my life, it would, you know, it would not be a very fulfilling life and probably I'd burn out. So I really feel very fortunate that I've been able to You know, sort of write some books and articles in places like HBR. Lots of, you know, the thing that I've really tried to focus on is general interest op-eds. So, you know, you know, Washington Post, Guardian, Financial Times.

Where an idea gets put out matters, right? So an academic journal, as we discussed, limited reach, but highly accurate or relevant or researched or whatever we want to use there. Then you go to sort of, you know, well, I can throw something up on LinkedIn. Yeah. But you know, so can anybody, right? But then you think about an op-ed and it's interesting 'cause the world of op-eds has changed and continues to change. And what's cool about an op-ed, A, it's short, right? So it's 1,000 words, 2,000 words in most cases.

Yeah. 800 words, usually a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah. Financial Times wants it even lower, like 700 words.

Yeah. Right. So it's short, you gotta get to the point, and that audience is really, really targeted, right? So if you say to me, right, I'm gonna write an op-ed piece for New York Times, Washington Post, whatever, whatever, you kind of know what an audience is there. And I would argue that if I were to compare your best academic paper to your best op-ed paper, it's probably hard to realize if somebody changed the names that it's really both you in terms of style.

Exactly. Exactly. No, I think that's, um, that's, that's exactly right because, and it's something, you know, there's, like I mentioned, a variety of sort of institutional systems around rankings and what's actually valued in universities. That's important. But also, you know, as I've been trained, do training and written myself for 15 years in a very academic style, that is, you're always like need to be very careful and hesitant, whereas an op-ed, you know, you obviously want to be accurate, but you should be bold and make a statement and a thesis. And so it's taken me many, many years to actually— many, many rejections, many, many things I've written and sort of sitting on my computer, you know, taking up hard drive space and nothing has happened to them. But Yeah, it's, it's, it's been a good learning experience.

Now you've written 3 books, 4 books.

I've written 3 books. Yep. 3 books.

So tell me about your process of deciding what ideas are worthy of that. So to me, and then I'll be somewhat snarky piece, there are sometimes a TED Talk and you're like, I want to know more. That needs to be a book. And there's sometimes there are books that you read and said, It would've been okay if that stayed an 18-minute TED Talk, you know, like, like we needed to fill 45,000 words, which what could have been far less than that. How do you make those determinations? What I'm gonna write about and why and how and—

Yeah, I mean, I, it's, it's a good question because I'm actually, I'm trying to think through what my next book is gonna be. And I'm really struggling because, you know, the world has changed a lot in the last, you know, sort of year, number of months to year. And a lot of the things I'm focused on are sustainability, climate change. And so, you know, how to actually write a book that is, like you mentioned, you know, well, there's enough there for 200 to 300 pages.

Yeah.

People find it relevant, but also it sort of meets the moment where it, you know, it fits into the broader cultural conversation right now. And it's a very complex cultural conversation to fit into.

So if you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. Stay there a minute because the world according to me, probably not necessarily accurate, but I want to get your take on this. One of the ways that I look at anybody's thought leadership, which is what I do all day, is okay, what are the components of that? The elements of this that are going to be true regardless of who's in the White House, are we in a recession? Is the stock market up? Like these truths are true, right? So gravity doesn't care.

Totally.

You know, you throw the rock off the building, gravity's going to show you what's what. So what's evergreen versus what is more or sometimes less on point today, this moment in time, whatever, based on political factors, macroeconomic factors, cultural whims, whatever. How do you think about that? Or do you?

Yeah, I think that's, I, I really like the way you, you put that because, you know, I have sort of a real mission, a passion around business sustainability.

Yes.

I, believe it's sort of an imperative for our world. It's an imperative for businesses. It's imperative for my students and individuals. So this is something that is maybe that core, but, you know, you have to think about how to, you know, maybe what cases and examples I use to frame and flesh that out, how to actually communicate that message in a way that, you know, it resonates with broader audiences. And so, You know, I think the core is there, but really trying to find the right way to message, to craft the message and craft the cases and examples, select the cases and examples. Because I, you know, I write a number of times a month on Forbes about new sort of sustainable companies I've discovered. I've probably done over 300 to 400 of those over the past number of years. So I have a huge number of examples and cases and contexts that I've studied over these years and like, which, I don't know, 10 of those, you know, are the right ones to actually, you know, put forward.

Wait there a minute. So I would argue, or my experience has taught me that thought leaders, particularly academics, have no shortage of the next 20 things I'm going to think about, write about, do whatever. Right. They're typically not good. At being efficient. And I define that by saying, wow, if you've got this library of, would you say 300 Forbes articles?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Easily.

Yeah. If I were to say to you, we could put a moratorium. Now you probably, you wouldn't like this. You're gonna feel shackled. We're gonna put a moratorium on you writing anymore for the next year. But yeah, you're already cringing.

I, yeah.

Yeah. But I would argue that once a week, or we pick a cadence 3 times a month, something, we're gonna pull stuff from the archives and maybe give it a little nip tuck, dust it off and change a context. In order to make the point. I would argue that that's probably efficient. Now I see the cringe factor on you, Peter, and feel free to push back, you know?

No, no, no. So I, I treat it very much like in some ways a business scan that I, that I, that I'm doing to sort of get to, to sort of stay up to date. You know what, what I do actually for these, and it's not a huge time investment, I do an interview, something like we're doing here. There's easy transcription, you know, things can be transcribed very easily now, automated way. And I write a, you know, 2, 3 paragraph intro. And so this, this is helping me, you know, build and keep connections and also keep on top of like the new, you know, what's new. And so I do, I have a newsletter where actually I try to do what you're saying. I actually go back and find maybe a topic. So for instance, is this, I was just working on the ones coming out this Saturday, you know, it's going to be on sustainable vineyards. And I've done a few of these articles on sustainable vineyards. I then have a Google alert that I set and it's, you know, takes a bunch of sustainable vineyards content and I, I sort of roll that all together to sort of make a bigger, a bigger point. So, so I, I agree with you that I need to be thinking much, people should be thinking much bigger picture, not just continue to do, to do these cases. So I think that's a fair—

Yeah. And I, I think it's the, you know, sort of the curse of the creative is we want to create stuff. Which is in conflict with the curse of the CEO, which is what is the most efficient way to get from A to B. And I like the way you're bridging both of those because you're never going to stop the create. Like the day you stop that, like you're in trouble, right? For other reasons, right? Because then you, then it's just, you know, you can hire an efficiency expert to say, dude, play the role of me for the next 2 years. I'm going to go play golf or something. What would you say to an academic or academics that are out there now listening? Because there's a bunch. That are thinking about how to cross over, right? So they're, they're rock solid academics, which is not an easy task in and of itself, the whole tenure track and the publishing and all the things. But they're thinking, hey, I want to go to the other side. You know, I want to, not in a binary way, but like, how do I stay relevant to the business community and meet them where they are while still maintaining the integrity and the validity of the academia academic pursuits?

Yeah, I mean, it depends, I guess, you know, in some ways how much they've done this already. But I think it's someone that's— that maybe, you know, has graduated 7 to 10 years ago, recently got tenure. You know, I would think that actually thinking very thoughtfully to start about their classes and their executive education— most large business schools have executive education. I mean, so much of what I've learned actually is from, you know, the, you know, business students or MBAs. You know, I just was, you know, went to dinner with, with a bunch who are interested in sustainability here at Cambridge. And we were going around, you know, sort of introducing ourselves and most of them had, you know, 7 or 8 years of experience in really interesting organizations. And so I think that actually start thinking about, you know, which of your material is resonating better with this, your, your students, the exec ed audiences. Than not, how can you begin thinking about those ideas in maybe a bit broader way? You know, a lot of time, a lot of times academic articles, you know, or you'll use, use like databases and have a lot of theory in them. And really you need stories and narrative. And so through your students, you know, see what stories they have, you know, exec ed, what stories do they have that actually resonate in the press? You know, I use in my teaching a lot. You know, there's all kinds of things that are happening on a day-to-day basis. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, that sort of bring the points to life. I mean, I think that is the challenge because, you know, writing academic papers, it's about identifying what the gap is that has not been done before that you're filling.

And what are you adding to the conversation?

What is it? Right.

What is it? What's your perspective? What's your take? And then And then show your work, right?

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Rigorous.

If you go into Forbes or something like that, you could just pontificate, right? You go into HBR, there's a different level. Sure. Academia, different level.

So, yeah, exactly. So, and I think trying to really get, you know, the story sort of down, uh, the, the, what, what are the sort of key case studies, uh, examples that can really illustrate the, the point, the research points that the unique research points, because every academic, you know, has their key findings and papers that actually, and then, you know, places similar to HBR, like Stanford Social Innovation Review, California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review. Those I think are good places to maybe start. I mean, HBR is really tough to get into. I mean, uh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, and try, try writing some things, you know, to get out there, maybe think about a book as well. Op-eds, I think I found they're better after I've done a book because—

Yeah. To build on the, the—

yeah, yeah, exactly. And then you, yeah, so you're sort of, you build it up and then sort of boil it down, boil stuff down for the, you know, for the op-ed.

Well, and the op-ed is a good bridge to say, I wrote the book on X, now I'm gonna give you a short taste of that on Y.

Exactly.

Based on Z that's going on in the universe, in the world today. Great. This has been great. I, I really appreciate your insight, Chris, and, and of course sharing your experience. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending the time with me today.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it, Peter. Thank you.

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