Stories are an essential part of the human condition. For millennia, people have shared stories as a way of building connections, and passing down ideas and values from one generation to the next. They give meaning to experiences in a way that abstract descriptions of emotions do not.

It’s no wonder, then, that the marketing profession has embraced story-telling as a way of going beyond promoting products and services to build emotional connections with customers. The best advertising has a strong narrative arc with a character facing a challenge and ultimately a solution (which is usually the product being advertised). Stories are memorable, evocative and even trigger the release of oxytocin, a hormone that increases trust and empathy.

Nowadays, most people see thought leadership as part of marketing, and so the same zeal for story-telling has become commonplace as part of the approach. Producers recognise that simply focusing on left-brained data and research, without the emotional connection from stories, leads to messages that wash over the audience without creating essential memories and connections. So, they build in a layer of stories to augment the core research and make the content more engaging and relatable. These stories typically take the form of examples and case studies, drawn from interviews.

This all makes sense, but there is a tension at the heart of this combination of research and stories that often gets ignored. Research implies a scientific method, at least to some extent, whereas stories are often simplifications and highly susceptible to biases. Producers often select stories to align with their research findings. As IMD Professor Phil Rosenzweig observes in his excellent book The Halo Effect: “a good anecdote can be found to support just about anything”.

Stories and case studies in thought leadership reports are highly susceptible to selection bias because they are almost always used to describe positive outcomes or the satisfactory resolution of problems. Producers include them, quite reasonably, to support a commercial agenda. Otherwise, why should they bother? Business leaders who participate in these studies as interviewees or case studies will also want to speak about success. No one wants to be highlighted in a report to talk about their failures.

Thought leadership tends to position itself as a rigorous form of marketing, with a strong foundation of research. But if it only includes positive stories and outcomes, it fails a basic test of research. By focusing only on successes, there is a problem with “survivorship bias”. We learn nothing from studying only the outliers of success. Just because a company took a certain set of actions or invested in something does not mean that this is the right approach for all. We also know nothing about other companies that may have taken the same actions but suffered negative consequences. And anyway, every company has a very specific context which makes it difficult to generalise. What may be good for one is not necessarily good for another.

Stories appeal to us because they offer simple explanations that make sense. The social psychologist Eliot Aronson observed that people are “rationalising animals”, as opposed to just rational beings. We look for justifications that fit our worldview and ignore many factors that could have influenced certain outcomes.

Let’s take an example to bring this to life. Say, for example, a thought leadership report concludes that investing in DEI is associated with stronger financial performance (however much we may want this to be true, there will almost certainly be problems with this conclusion due to a confusion between correlation and causation, but that’s another story). The typical approach is that producers will then look for stories and examples that support this conclusion and ignore others that may refute it.

Rosenzweig argues that a lot of these post hoc explanations are what he calls “halos”. We look for simple explanations of events and relationships even if the connection is illusory or back to front. It may be that companies that are high performers have the resources to invest in DEI. There may be other, far more important drivers of performance that render DEI almost irrelevant. Or maybe investing in DEI is symptomatic of good management in general. As Rosenzweig explains: “So many of the things that we commonly think contribute to company performance are often attributions based on performance.”

Stories also describe individual experiences and it is often risky to draw broader, more generalised conclusions from them. As London Business School Professor Alex Edmans explains in his book May Contain Lies: “There’s nothing wrong with telling entertaining stories if you frame them as just that – stories…The problem arises when you turn a single anecdote into a general rule.”

Thought leadership producers want to be taken seriously. The fact that they go to the trouble of conducting research and, usually, present new insights or thinking, means that they should be held to a higher standard of rigour than, say, advertising. The goal of thought leadership is usually to influence its audience. Producers often talk about “actionable insight” to suggest that companies ought to make decisions on the basis of the ideas presented in these reports. I am doubtful that many leaders do take decisions on the basis of thought leadership but, if they do, they should be very careful.

This is the tension that lies at the heart of thought leadership. On the one hand, producers go to a lot of effort to conduct rigorous research and generate new insight. Stories are then layered on top to provide examples of these findings and support conclusions. But there are problems with this approach that should not be ignored. How should producers address this? Below are a few ideas:

Do not brush over methodological issues. Your desired audience are typically very successful business leaders and they are not naive. They will see through weaknesses in methodology such as overly selective stories and simplified explanations. The business world is messy and does not normally operate according to simple cause and effect relationships between inputs and outputs. It’s important to acknowledge this and outline different potential scenarios.

Include counterexamples. If every case study example in your thought leadership is an unmitigated success, it looks too neat and tidy. Although it’s understandable that you don’t want to include outright failures, it’s sensible to highlight the challenges that sit behind these stories of success. Maybe there were pilots and false starts before success finally came. Or maybe another company didn’t quite achieve the same results but there were important lessons learned that laid the groundwork for future success. Being honest about these complexities will help to build trust with your audience. We learn from challenges just as much as we do from successes.

Acknowledge other factors. It’s easy to jump to conclusions and say that doing x led to y. But there are often many other factors that can explain an outcome - and there may also be an element of chance or luck. Stories of success are powerful but it’s risky to over-generalise. Acknowledge that other factors could have influenced that success and may not be easily replicable in other situations.

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