The Top 30 Business Thought Leaders To Follow

In my more than 20 years in strategy and management reporting, I’ve learned that getting an organization from where it is now to where it hopes to be takes more than a good plan. Other people’s ideas can change how you approach the work, and the business thought leaders below have useful things to say about the parts of strategy that decide whether a plan gets carried out.

What makes a strategy stick

Many companies write a strategy, then tuck it away in a binder. A plan nobody hears about is almost impossible to carry out, so the second step is communicating it beyond the strategy team: what everyone is working toward and how they should get there. Communication also runs the other way. Melissa Daimler calls listening with the intent to understand a hard skill to master, and the best leaders ask employees for feedback and change the strategy when that makes it stronger.

Teams also need to be aligned with your strategic objectives and goals. Make sure people know what they need to do and have what they need to do it, and tie incentives to results so they watch the strategy daily. From there, performance management keeps the organization on track: implementing projects, tracking progress toward objectives, and holding regular performance reviews.

Top 30 business thought leaders

The 30 people below are listed alphabetically by last name. Many of them I follow myself, and each entry has a short bio and a quote on planning and executing strategy.

1. Teresa M. Amabile

Harvard Business School professor and researcher Teresa Amabile studies how routine activities inside an organization affect employee performance. Her book “The Progress Principle” teaches managers how to build morale, engagement, creativity, and productivity within a team. Website: progressprinciple.com.

“As a senior executive, you may think you know what Job Number 1 is: developing a killer strategy. In fact, this is only Job 1a. You have a second, equally important task. Call it Job 1b: enabling the ongoing engagement and everyday progress of the people in the trenches of your organization who strive to execute that strategy.”

2. Bob Burg

Bob Burg is a speaker and author who focuses on sales. His first book, “Endless Referrals,” published in 1993, is about the power of building relationships. His book series that includes “The Go-Giver,” a parable, puts giving ahead of getting. Website: burg.com.

“Collaboration is the ultimate win-win. It’s both parties getting MORE of what they do want (as opposed to compromise); it’s the ultimate one plus one equals three.”

3. Clayton Christensen

Before his death in early 2020, Clayton Christensen was regarded as one of the foremost authorities on strategy and innovation. The former Harvard Business School professor wrote and co-wrote bestselling books including “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and “The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty.” He was also the figure behind the Clayton Christensen Institute, a think tank devoted to disruptive innovation.

“In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.”

4. Lee Cockerell

As the former vice president of operations for Walt Disney World, Lee Cockerell knows service management. His 2016 books “Time Management Magic” and “Career Magic” cover making the best use of your time and handling the highs and lows of a career. Website: leecockerell.com.

“Culture eats strategy for lunch. You get the culture right, your people will help you implement any strategy you come up with. You don’t get the culture right, you’re not gonna get anywhere because they won’t help you. They’ll quit.”

5. Cheryl Snapp Conner

Public relations and communication expert Cheryl Snapp Conner has made her name by connecting communication with business strategy. She founded Snapp Conner PR and has been a regular contributor to Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. Website: snappconner.com.

“Whether you work in a new industry or a traditional market, it is vital to look beyond the way your company is succeeding today to think about how you need to position your solution and message to ensure you don’t become obsolete.”

6. Lolly Daskal

Lolly Daskal is a leadership expert hired by top executives to help them make a positive impact in their organizations. Her book “The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness” and the articles on her blog focus on how to become a better leader. Website: lollydaskal.com.

“Understand the vision of the business or project and keep it at the forefront at all times. As a leader, you need to stay focused, prioritize and keep moving toward your goals.”

7. Steve Denning

Steve Denning’s expertise lies in the parallels between storytelling and management, and he consults with companies on new management practices. If you want to rethink traditional management, read his book “The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management.” Website: stevedenning.com.

“Storytelling translates dry and abstract numbers into compelling pictures of a leader’s goals. Although good business cases are developed through the use of numbers, they are typically approved on the basis of a story—that is, a narrative that links a set of events in some kind of causal sequence.”

8. Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal is a Stanford-educated entrepreneur, researcher, consultant, and author who works on what he calls “behavioral design,” a mix of psychology, technology, and business. His 2014 book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” is a good read if you are building a product and want to make it better. Website: nirandfar.com.

“There are three ingredients required to initiate any and all behaviors: (1) the user must have sufficient motivation; (2) the user must have the ability to complete the desired action; and (3) a trigger must be present to activate the behavior.”

9. Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist who writes mainly about the environment, globalization, and foreign and domestic policy. He is not a business strategist, but his writing draws parallels between policy and international business. The New Yorker ran a profile of him. Website: thomaslfriedman.com.

“The hallmark of a truly successful organization is the willingness to abandon what made it successful and start fresh.”

10. Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is an author, speaker, and New Yorker staff writer whose books deal with cognitive and social psychology, often as they relate to business, advertising, and strategy. One of his best-known New Yorker articles is “The Talent Myth.” Website: gladwellbooks.com.

“Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”

11. Seth Godin

Seth Godin is known for his work in marketing and leadership and was inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame in 2013. His bestsellers include “Purple Cow” and “Tribes,” and he is known for very short blog posts. Website: sethgodin.com.

“Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.”

12. Vijay Govindarajan

Vijay Govindarajan, known as VG, is a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and an authority on strategy and innovation. He has worked with Fortune 500 management teams on their strategies. He writes about innovation in developing countries on his blog.

“The future is not located on some far-off horizon, and you cannot postpone the work of building it until tomorrow. To get to the future you must build it day by day.”

13. Lynda Gratton

Lynda Gratton is an expert in organizational behavior and a professor at London Business School, where she has directed its human resources program. Her books examine HR and strategy, and she has worked as an organizational consultant for large firms. Website: lyndagratton.com.

“Globalization means you can assume somebody, somewhere around the world is going to be able to make what you can make faster and cheaper. So in high-cost societies that increasingly means value can only be created through innovation.”

14. Tim Harford

Tim Harford is a Financial Times columnist and author. His first book, “The Undercover Economist,” takes an entertaining look at economic theory, and “Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives” argues against the idea that tidiness is always better. He also wrote the “Dear Economist” column. Website: timharford.com.

“Always be willing to seek help, ideally from a different person than you normally would, try unusual experiences, or work with new tools.”

15, 16. Chip and Dan Heath

Brothers Chip and Dan Heath are business strategists, authors, and speakers whose bestsellers include “Decisive,” “Switch,” and “Made To Stick.” Chip is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dan has been a senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), where he founded the Change Academy. Website: heathbrothers.com.

“To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from ‘What information do I need to convey?’ to ‘What questions do I want my audience to ask?’”

17. Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and speaker who has led a consulting firm, Hewlett Consulting Partners, and a non-profit think tank, Talent Innovation. Her book “Executive Presence” looks at how your perception of yourself shapes your advancement at work. Website: sylviaannhewlett.com.

On sponsors and protégés at work, Hewlett said:

“Successful protégés understand that sustaining sponsorship looks a lot like earning it: meeting deadlines, exceeding targets, and proving you will advance the larger mission.”

18. Ryan Holmes

Ryan Holmes founded Hootsuite and calls himself a “future enthusiast, inventor, [and] hacker.” He has been a frequent contributor to Inc. on social media, technology, and leadership. Start with a Forbes podcast interview and a LinkedIn article he wrote about running Hootsuite from his iPhone. Website: hootsuite.com.

“There are no million-dollar ideas—only million-dollar executions. Without the right talent, the right technology, and real traction, even a brilliant vision is bound to flounder.”

19. Herminia Ibarra

Herminia Ibarra is an expert in leadership and professional development who has taught leadership, learning, and organizational behavior at INSEAD and published widely in management journals. Her book “Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader” argues that leaders change by acting first and then changing how they think. Website: herminiaibarra.com.

“Knowing what we should be doing and actually doing it are two very different things.”

20. Sheena S. Iyengar

Columbia Business School professor Sheena Iyengar is a leading expert on choice. Her book “The Art of Choosing” asks whether choice is culturally constructed and how much control we really have over our choices. Website: sheenaiyengar.com.

“Choice is not about being reactive to whatever is in front of you. It's being able to be proactive about creating those choices that enable you to go from who you are today to whom you want to be tomorrow.”

21. Daniel Kahneman

The late Daniel Kahneman was a psychology and public affairs professor at Princeton University and won the Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics. His 2011 bestseller “Thinking, Fast And Slow” examines the different ways we think and how they shape our choices. You can also watch his TED talk from 2010.

“Acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.”

22. Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has chaired and directed the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. She has written or co-written many articles and case studies for Harvard Business Review, such as “Workplace Rage.” She has argued that “high-performance cultures require leaders who invest in people & improve their work conditions.” Bio: Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative.

“Leaders today need to be very flexible. … Leaders need to work around the obstacles, try a different way, if they believe that the goal is really important.”

23, 24. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

In 1992, Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed the Balanced Scorecard, a strategic performance management system that organizations use to align strategy and goals. This Harvard Business School working paper covers the Balanced Scorecard in more depth. See also Robert Kaplan’s Harvard Business School faculty bio.

“A distinguishing feature of the comprehensive management system is its explicit link between long-term strategy and daily operations.”

25. John P. Kotter

John Kotter, a Harvard professor, best-selling author, and speaker, is an expert on change and leadership. He founded Kotter International, a management consulting firm, to help organizations lead through change.

“In successful transformations, the chairman or president or division general manager, plus another 5 or 15 or 50 people, come together and develop a shared commitment to excellent performance through renewal.”

26. Steven D. Levitt

Economist Steven Levitt is known for applying economic theory to subjects economists rarely discuss. His 2005 bestseller “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything,” written with Stephen J. Dubner, covers topics such as the economics of drug dealing and the effects of larger police forces. The pair also wrote “SuperFreakonomics” and “Think Like A Freak,” and their work has drawn both praise and criticism. Website: freakonomics.com.

“Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.”

27. Rita Gunther McGrath

Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath is a speaker, consultant, and expert in business strategy. She speaks and writes about competitive strategy, handling business adversity, innovation, and organizational leadership. Website: ritamcgrath.com.

“Companies need to provide some stability in the midst of change. … Part of the skill of leadership is being able to provide both. It’s provoking change and giving people something they can count on at the same time.”

28. Daniel Pink

With a Yale Law degree and years in political policy, Daniel Pink writes about what he calls “the changing workplace.” His bestsellers include “Drive: The Surprising Truth Behind What Motivates Us,” and his work is a good place to start on how human behavior plays out at work. Website: danpink.com.

“What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.”

29. Don Tapscott

Don Tapscott writes about media innovation and the social impact of technology. His books include “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” the best-selling management book of 2007. Website: dontapscott.com.

“If you work for and eventually lead a company, understand that companies have multiple stakeholders including employees, customers, business partners and the communities within which they operate.”

30. Margie Warrell

Margie Warrell is a bestselling author and keynote speaker who has written a Forbes column and commented for ABC News and the Today Show. Her work, under the tagline “Living Bravely,” is about finding and fixing whatever holds you back. Her book “Make Your Mark: A Guidebook for the Brave Hearted” lays out seven steps toward that goal. Website: margiewarrell.com.

“While fear tends to run high in crisis, the courage to act decisively and purposefully is key. … It’s about ensuring you are investing energy and resources in identifying opportunities and positioning yourself (your team and organization) to seize them.”