Blue Ocean Strategies

Summary

Chapter 7: Overcome Key Organizational Hurdles

After you have developed a blue ocean strategy for a business model that is profitable, then it
must implement it in order to find the challenge faced by the company in the way of
implementation, so that it could find the hurdles in between their strategy. But when compared
with red ocean strategies against the blue ocean strategies it represents a significant departure
from the status quo. The challenge is very sudden and there are typically four major hurdles that
must be addressed:

1) Cognitive: Waking employees to know the fact that a significant shift in strategy is
needed. Competing in a red ocean may not be the correct path for future growth but it
should be understandable and comfortable for most people within the organization.

2) Limited Resources: The greater the hurdles are the more resources are needed to be
required. In most business environments most of the employees are already fully
occupied in execution of the day- to-day work which is involved in running the existing
business.

3) Motivation: How do you motivate key players of your business to move fast and
persistently to carry out a break from the status quo, and this the hurdle which is faced
within the company, where employees blame company for any problem that exist within
the company, these are those employees that are working efficiently within the company,
but on the other end those employees who know that they would be targeted by the
company are always willing to switch jobs without going to solve the problem but they
focus on switching jobs.
 4) Politics: In every company there is politics involved, where people are the first one to
bring in politics in certain issues to achieve personal gains or even they might be working
on a vendetta to not give you space to work with conviction and determination.

For creating a blue ocean and for overcoming these four hurdles a company needs a leader who
has the ability to overcome these hurdles and to create a blue ocean. In the book of Blue Ocean it
is called as “Tipping point leadership”. Tipping point leader are made by the rare exploited
corporate reality that in every organization exists, in every organization there are people, acts,
and activities that influence on performance of the business. For a tipping point leader one of the
most significant challenges is to save the organizations resources and to eliminate the waste from
the organization so that it could focus on identifying the factors that has a influence on the
organizational Tipping point leadership builds on the insight that inspires a fast change in
mindset of the people that is internally driven from organization.
a) Meet with Disgruntled Customers
To root out the cognitive hurdle, you should also see operational discrepancies and this
can only happen if you pay attention outside your office that means in operations you
should more focus, and it is also important to listen to the most disgruntled customers
firsthand. Don’t rely on market surveys as they are not your eyes.

b) Jump the Resource Hurdle

After people in an organization accept the need for a strategic shift and even agree on the
new strategy, then it observed that most leaders are faced with the reality of having
limited resources.
The tipping point leaders concentrate on multiplying the value of the resources they have.
They can do that by using these approaches hot spots, cold spots, and horse trading. Hot
spots are activities that have low resource input but high potential performance gains. In
contrast, cold spots are activities that have high resource input but low performance
impact. In every organization, hot spots and cold spots typically abound. Horse trading
involves trading your unit’s excess resources in one area for another unit’s excess
resources to fill remaining resource gaps.
c) Jump the Motivational Hurdle
To reach your organization’s tipping point and execute blue ocean strategy, you must
alert employees to the need for a strategic shift and identify how it can be achieved with
limited resources. For a new strategy to become a organizations strategy, it people must
not only recognize what needs to be done, but they must also act on that insight in which
a company can achieve it in sustainable and meaningful way. There are three factors that
influence employees that are:

Zoom in on Kingpins
For strategic change to have real impact employees at every level must move in similar
direction in order to trigger an movement of positive energy or it can be also called as
synergy. Rather, you should concentrate your efforts on kingpins, the key influencers in
the organization. These are people inside the organization who are natural leaders, who
are well respected and persuasive, or who have an ability to unlock or block access to key
resources. And because in most organizations there are a relatively small number of key
influencers, who tend to share common problems and concerns, it is relatively easy for
the CEO to identify and motivate them

Place Kingpins in a Fishbowl

At the heart of motivating the kingpins in a sustained and meaningful way is to shine a
spotlight on their actions in a repeated and highly visible way. This is what we refer to as
fishbowl management, where kingpins’ actions and inaction are made as translated to
others who are fish in a bowl of water. By placing kingpins in a fishbowl in this way you
greatly raise the performance of the fish in the bowl. Light is shined on who is lagging
behind, and a fair stage is set for rapid change agents to shine. For fishbowl management
to work it must be based on transparency, inclusion, and fair process.

Atomize to Get the Organization to Change Itself

Atomization relates to the framing of the strategic challenge—one of the most effective
and sensitive tasks of the tipping point leader. People must believe that the strategic
challenge is attainable, in order to change. To make the challenge attainable, Bratton
broke it into bite-size atoms that officers at different levels could relate to.
d) Knock Over the Political Hurdle
Organizational politics is an unacceptable reality of corporate and public life. Even if an
organization has reached the tipping point of execution, the vested interests will always
resist the awaiting changes.
To overcome these political forces, tipping point leaders focus on three influence factors:
Angels, Devils, Consigliere on their top management team.
Angels are those who have the most to gain from the strategic shift. Devils are those who
have the most to lose from it. And a consigliere is a politically expert within the
organization and who is highly respected insider who knows in advance all the land
mines, including who will fight you and who will support you.