Insulting “Business Intelligence"

I’ve drifted, in terms of career, between business and academia, and I’ve found that sometimes academics think that businesspeople aren’t too bright. Academics at times believe that a businessperson’s pragmatism means that they’re unable to deal with “matters intellectual”.

This belief, though, goes beyond academics; there’s a general suspicion that business people won’t engage in anything more complex, in terms of thinking, than a thirty-second “elevator speech”.

This has led to a certain approach by some consulting firms — an approach that treats business professionals like children. I remember when I worked in a branding firm, and we had consultants who came in and talked about creativity with — literally — crayons in hand.

My consulting philosophy has always been different, because I know that many businesspeople, somewhere deep in their soul, have fond memories of those old college classes they took in history, philosophy, and other non-business subjects. They’d be delighted not only to revisit a bit of that, but also to see how it might relate to their current business challenges. In a consulting gig I did last year, a Wall Street broker came up to me afterwards and thanked me for not insulting the group’s intelligence. “I like how you weren’t afraid to talk about philosophy, to talk about culture, to talk about creativity,” he said. “Yes, I spend my days crunching numbers, but I know that there are deeper considerations…”

So, I play hardball with my clients; I’ve run workshops that include everything from Plato to nuclear physics. We talk about serious issues and do some serious thinking. The result is always an enlightened business environment.

That’s also why I’ve always focused on issues of culture and innovation — they’re abstract principles, but with surprisingly tangible consequences in the global business arena…