Welcome to the second annual Goldies awards, where we celebrate notable achievements in thought leadership publishing from professional-services firms in the past year. In last year’s inaugural Goldies post, we recognized several articles that stood out amid the content deluge. We’ll take a different approach to the awards this year since, as we all know, everything about 2020 was different.
Rather than focus on individual articles, we’ve identified broader themes that many firms addressed in their public statements and thought leadership this year. If there was an overarching theme, it would be, surprisingly, “resistance.” One wouldn’t expect such behavior from most for-profit firms, but several firms began to clearly distance themselves from the prevailing beliefs and policies of the Trump administration—including on topics such as immigration, diversity, climate change, and the coronavirus pandemic.
It was a welcome development, especially given the number of articles these firms had recently published on embracing “corporate purpose.” They seemingly began to live the values they were publicly espousing.
Let’s look at the Goldie-worthy themes and players who stepped up in 2020.
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We observed strong opposition to the Trump administration among some professional-services firms. Most recently, leaders of Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and West Monroe partners joined dozens of other business executives in an open letter demanding that the administration move ahead with the presidential transition. “Every day that an orderly presidential transition process is delayed, our democracy grows weaker in the eyes of our own citizens and the nation’s stature on the global stage is diminished,” they wrote.
Taking a stand on the presidential election
We observed strong opposition to the Trump administration among some professional-services firms. Most recently, leaders of Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and West Monroe joined dozens of other business executives in an open letter demanding that the administration move ahead with the presidential transition. “Every day that an orderly presidential transition process is delayed, our democracy grows weaker in the eyes of our own citizens and the nation’s stature on the global stage is diminished,” they wrote.
Taking a stand on the presidential election
We observed strong opposition to the Trump administration among some professional-services firms. Most recently, leaders of Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and West Monroe partners joined dozens of other business executives in an open letter demanding that the administration move ahead with the presidential transition. “Every day that an orderly presidential transition process is delayed, our democracy grows weaker in the eyes of our own citizens and the nation’s stature on the global stage is diminished,” they wrote.
Responding to the coronavirus pandemic
While the Trump administration was publicly diminishing the seriousness of the pandemic, professional-services firms took the opposite approach, pouring out a stream of articles on how governments and companies could address the situation, as well as occasionally taking direct issue with White House positions. McKinsey was exceptionally active in publishing on COVID-19, but other firms also contributed greatly, especially on topics such as remote working.
On two occasions during the year, BCG rejected the administration’s approach to the pandemic. In one, BCG joined an amicus brief in support of an injunction to stop US Immigration and Customs Enforcement from forcing foreign students to leave the United States if their academic programs went 100 percent online. (The policy was eventually withdrawn.) In another, BCG, as cochair of the Business Roundtable’s Safe Recovery initiative, called for measures to control the pandemic that the administration has had no interest in pursuing. Early in the pandemic, McKinsey distanced itself from the administration’s and Wall Street Journal’s stance on the pandemic in “Safeguarding our lives and our livelihoods: The imperative of our time.” (The expression “lives and livelihoods” subsequently became part of the pandemic conversation.)
We observed strong opposition to the Trump administration among some professional-services firms. Most recently, leaders of Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and West Monroe partners joined dozens of other business executives in an open letter demanding that the administration move ahead with the presidential transition. “Every day that an orderly presidential transition process is delayed, our democracy grows weaker in the eyes of our own citizens and the nation’s stature on the global stage is diminished,” they wrote.
Pursuing diversity and inclusion
Professional-services firms understand that their business model rests on the ability to attract and retain talented staff. So they were acting completely in their best interests this year when they ignored the Trump administration’s hostility to the Black Lives Matter movement, including its ambivalent response to George Floyd’s murder in May, and its undermining of LGBTQ+ rights.
Instead, many of them spoke out against racial injustice and announced major commitments to hiring people of color. Some, including the executive search firm Egon Zehnder, are using their platforms to encourage the hiring of LGBTQ+ employees. Booz Allen said it wants to increase its hiring of Native Americans. McKinsey announced the creation of the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility, accompanied by this report.
Events of the year also produced an outpouring of thought leadership on diversity and inclusion. McKinsey had the most aggressive thought leadership campaign on this topic throughout the year, including insightful reports on how the pandemic is affecting Black, Hispanic and Latino, and Asian Americans. Search firms such as Korn Ferry and Russell Reynolds have also weighed in on diversity and inclusion topics. In a recent article, BCG brought the issue closer to home, examining why there is a lack of diversity in management consulting.
Taking a stand on the presidential election
We observed strong opposition to the Trump administration among some professional-services firms. Most recently, leaders of Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and West Monroe partners joined dozens of other business executives in an open letter demanding that the administration move ahead with the presidential transition. “Every day that an orderly presidential transition process is delayed, our democracy grows weaker in the eyes of our own citizens and the nation’s stature on the global stage is diminished,” they wrote.
Ramping up climate change efforts
Professional-services firms uniformly contradicted the White House’s climate change denial and anti-science policies in both their public commitments to a carbon-free future and thought leadership.
Some firms, such as Accenture, Bain, BCG, KPMG, and PwC, committed to carbon neutrality by 2030 or before. McKinsey and Oliver Wyman say they are already carbon-neutral. As for thought leadership on climate change, the year was rich in substantive reports. In the past few weeks alone, we’ve seen excellent analyses from BCG, Capgemini, Deloitte, and McKinsey on topics ranging from how climate change will affect Asia to how companies should think about the Biden administration’s environmental agenda.
Taking a stand on the presidential election
And a special Goldie…
…to acknowledge the 25th anniversary of strategy+business, an influential management journal founded by the late Joel Kurtzman and published by the firm that was then called Booz-Allen Hamilton. Kurtzman is credited with coining the expression thought leadership; the journal was instrumental in popularizing its use by professional-services firms. Strategy+business is now published by PwC and Strategy&.