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# On gurus: reputation management and digestibility
- URL: https://www.lorcandempsey.net/on-gurus-reputation-management-and-digestibility/
- Published: 2008-05-05T22:00:13.000Z
- Updated: 2020-10-28T09:24:50.000Z
- Author: Lorcan Dempsey
- Tags: Books

Tom Davenport has created a list of the top 20 management gurus for the Wall Street Journal.

> Psychologists, journalists and celebrity chief executives crowd the top of a ranking of influential business thinkers compiled for The Wall Street Journal. The results, based on Google hits, media mentions and academic citations, ranked author and consultant Gary Hamel No. 1\. \[[New Breed of Business Gurus Rises – WSJ.com](https://online.wsj.com/article/SB120994594229666315.html?mod=todays%5Fus%5Fnonsub%5Fmarketplace&ref=lorcandempsey.net)\]

The list itself can be found at the end of [another WSJ article](https://online.wsj.com/article/SB120994652485566323.html?mod=Careers&ref=lorcandempsey.net). It repeats an exercise carried out in 2003.  
As interesting as the articles themselves is Davenport’s commentary on them in his Harvard Business Publishing blog. I thought two things were especially interesting.  
The first is the growing importance of **reputation management** in our Internet age. Davenport writes about why Jim Collins is not higher on the list (and judging by airport book stands one would expect him to be!).

> Why isn’t he higher if his ideas are so good? Unfortunately, the list is not a ranking of the quality of the ideas. A high-ranking management guru has to be a good promoter as well as a good researcher and sound thinker. Collins—like Michael Porter, who was at the top of the 2003 list but fell a bit (to #14) in the new list—doesn’t do a lot of conference speeches, doesn’t have much of a web presence, and doesn’t write much in the popular press. If you want your ideas to be really influential, you’ve got to be out hawking them all the time. \[[The New Gurus – Harvard Business Online’s Tom Davenport](https://discussionleader.hbsp.com/davenport/2008/05/the%5Fnew%5Fgurus%5F1.html?ref=lorcandempsey.net)\]

The second is the emphasis on **ease of reception** in an environment which is increasingly resource-rich but attention-scarce:

> Interestingly, none of these latter three people are traditional management experts. Friedman and Gladwell are primarily journalists, and Gardner is an educational psychologist. Why have these interlopers prospered to such a degree? I chalk it up to two factors: the increased desire to master people issues in business—we’ve finally realized they’re always the most difficult to address—and the ever-decreasing attention span of businesspeople. Many of them want few academic details and an entertaining story, which these journalists know how to provide. I don’t always agree with the quality of Gladwell’s evidence, but I am certainly impressed by his writing ability. Some of Friedman’s ideas seem quite obvious to me, but he knows how to put together a sentence. That didn’t matter much in the old days of management gurudom, but it seems much more important now. \[[The New Gurus – Harvard Business Online’s Tom Davenport](https://discussionleader.hbsp.com/davenport/2008/05/the%5Fnew%5Fgurus%5F1.html?ref=lorcandempsey.net)\]

Related entry:

- [Why business thinking is not the answer](https://blog.oclc.org/lorcand/archives/001403.html?ref=lorcandempsey.net)