Overcome Key Organization Hurdles
Chapter 7 (BOS)
Group 6
Jessica Aragon
Raynee Bradley
John Cayo
Lawrence Griffith
Cole Naylor
Jessica Wilson
Brandy Wolfe
Introduction
• Once a company has developed a blue ocean
strategy with a profitable business model, it must
execute it.
• Companies, like individuals, often have a tough time
translating thought into action whether in red or
blue oceans.
• Compared with red ocean strategy, blue ocean
strategy represents a significant departure from the
status quo.
• It hinges on a shift from convergence to divergence
in value curves at lower costs.
Organizational hurdles
• There are four organizational hurdles companies face when
implementing a strategic shift to a blue ocean:
1.
Break through the cognitive hurdle
Waking employees up to the need for a strategic shift.
2.
Jump the resource hurdle
The greater the shift in strategy, the greater it is assumed are the
resources needed to execute it.
3.
Jump the motivational hurdle
How can companies motivate their employees fast and at low cost?
4.
Knock over the political hurdle
As one manager put it, “In our organization you get shot down
before you stand up.”
•
Although all companies face different degrees of these
hurdles, knowing how to triumph over them is key to
attenuating organizational risk.
Tipping point leadership & conventional wisdom
• Conventional wisdom asserts that the greater the
change, the greater the resources and time you will
need to bring about results.
• To overcome key organizational hurdles and make
the blue ocean strategy happen in action, companies
must abandon perceived wisdom on effecting change
and implement tipping point leadership.
• By implementing tipping point leadership it allows
companies to overcome the four hurdles fast, and at
low cost while winning employee’s backing in
executing a break from the status quo.
Tipping Point Leadership
Allows you to quickly and cost effectively
overcome the 4 hurdles to executing blue oceans:
cognitive, limited resources, motivation and
politics
Organizational Hurdles to Strategy
Execution
Cognitive
An org. wedded to
the status quo
Resource
Limited resources
Political
Opposition from powerful
Vested interest
Motivational
Unmotivated staff
Tipping Point Leadership
• Builds on the rarely exploited corporate reality that
in every organization, there are people, acts, and
activities that exercise a disproportionate influence
on performance.
• Mounting the challenge is about conserving
resources and cutting time by focusing on identifying
and then leveraging the factors of disproportional
influence in an organization.
Key Questions
• What factors or acts exercise a
disproportionately positive influence on:
– Breaking the status quo
– Getting the maximum bang out of each buck or
resources
– Motivating key players to aggressively move
forward with change
– Knocking down political roadblocks
By focusing on points of disproportionate
influence…
• Tipping point leaders can topple the four
hurdles that limit execution of blue ocean
strategy quickly and cost effectively
Break Through the Cognitive
Hurdle
The Cognitive Hurdle
• The cognitive hurdle is the challenge of
making people AWARE of the need for a
strategic shift and to AGREE on its causes.
• This is the hardest battle to overcome.
• This section discusses the two most effective
approaches to take in order to tip the
cognitive hurdle fast.
First, What not to do…
• Pointing to numbers and insist on improvement.
• This approach seldom works.
• Its too abstract.
• It doesn’t point out the people, acts, and
activities that exercise a disproportionate
influence on the overall performance.
Tipping Point Leadership
• It relies on the act of disproportionate influence: making
people see and experience harsh reality firsthand.
• Research shows that people remember and respond most
effectively to what they see and experience: “seeing is
believing”
• Tipping point leadership builds on a touching, seeing, feeling
approach to inspire a fast change in the mindset of the
employees.
• Instead of relying on numbers to tip the cognitive hurdle, they
make people experience the need for change in two ways.
1. Make Employees Come Face-to-Face
with the Worst Operational Problems
• Numbers are disputable and uninspiring, but
making people come face-to-face with poor
performance is shocking and inescapable, but
actionable.
• Example: Ride the “Electric Sewer”
2. Meet with Disgruntled Customers
• Not only must you get managers out of the office
to see operational horror, but also get them to
listen to disgruntled customers firsthand.
• Do not rely on market surveys.
• There is no substitute for meeting and listening to
dissatisfied customers directly.
• Example: Bill Bratton
Jump the Resource Hurdle
After deciding a strategic shift will be make, leaders must
decide…Do we have the money to spend on
necessary changes??
Typical leaders do one of two things:
-Cut ambitions, also cutting work force morale
-Fight for more money, a long, politically focused process
Tipping point leaders concentrate on increasing the value of
current resources by focusing on three factors:
-Hot spots
-Cold spots
-Horse trading
Redistribute Resources to Your Hot Spots
• Hot spots are activities that have low resource
input but high potential performance gains
• NYPD ex:
-Sharpest drop in subway crime with officers
targeted at hot spots versus increasing police
force size.
-Major reallocation of staff and resources within
the narcotics unit
• By simultaneously assessing the NYPD’s cold
spots, the resources were available to do this.
Redirect Resources from Your Cold Spots
• Cold spots are activities that have high costs
but low performance impact
• NYPD subway ex:
– Processing criminals in court was costing the
department valuable time officer’s could be using
to patrol the subway
– Bratton’s creation of “Bust Buses”
• Restored buses became mini police stations and
brought processing centers to the criminals
• Cut processing time from sixteen hours to only one
Engage in Horse Trading
• Horse Trading involves trading excess
resources for another unit’s excess to fill
remaining resource gaps.
• NYPD ex: Chief of NY Transit Police Dean Esserman
played key horse trader along with Bratton
– Transit unit needed office space and had an excess of unmarked
cars, where as the NY Division of Parole was short of cars, but
had excess office space.
– Bratton refocused resources and broke out
of the red ocean and executed its blue ocean
strategy.
3 Factor Overview
• By executing these 3 factors like a Tipping Point leader, resources
are dramatically freed
• The New York Transit Police greatly enhanced officer performance
by assigning clear duties, narrowed in on crimes to focus on and
where, and freed them from administrative hassles
• To become a Tipping Point leader, you must do a number of things…
– Seek out hot spots and concentrate resources on
them
– Figure out what activities have the greatest
performance impact but lack the resources
– Find your cold spots
– Indentify resources in surplus and those that are
scarce
– Identify whether or not you have a horse trader,
and what you can trade
Jump the Motivational Hurdle
How can you motivate employees fast and at low
cost?
Vs.
• Typical Leader: Grand strategic vision that acts upon
the assumption that to create massive reactions, massive
actions are required.
– Expensive and Time-consuming.
• Tipping Point Leader: Seek massive concentration by
focusing on the three factors of disproportionate
influence in motivating employees. (Chief Bill Bratton)
1. Kingpins 2. Fishbowl Management
3. Atomization
Zoom in on Kingpins
• Kingpins = Key Influencers in the organization
that can create a ripple effect by touching and
motivating employees to embrace the new
strategy. Level 5 Leader…?
– Natural Leaders, well respected and persuasive, or
have the ability to unlock or block access to resources.
– As with kingpins in bowling, when you hit them
straight on, all the other pins come toppling down.
• NYPD ex: Kingpins = Precinct heads
– Ease from direct control of police officers.
Ex: Advertising Campaigns
Word of Mouth, Print ads, Celebrities, and Fashion Trends
Ideas, products, messages, and behaviors spread like viruses.
Place Kingpins in a Fishbowl
• Fishbowl Management: kingpins’ actions and
inaction are made as transparent to others as
are fish in a bowl of water.
– Creates an intense performance culture.
– Raises the stakes of inaction.
• Must be based on:
1. Transparency – Shine a spotlight on kingpins.
2. Inclusion – Create a community.
3. Fair process – Engage all the affected people in the
process to create a level playing field.
Place Kingpins in a Fishbowl…cont’d
• NYPD ex: Biweekly crime review meetings (Compstat)
– Review the performance of precinct commanders
in executing its new strategy. (peers and superiors)
– Clear transparency in performance assessment
and how it would tie into promotion or demotion,
and clear expectations were set for everyone.
– Performance culture: No kingpin wanted to be
shamed, and they all wanted to shine.
– Signals a level playing field and that
leaders value employees’ intellectual
and emotional worth.
Atomize to Get the
Organization to Change
• Relates to the framing of strategic challenge.
– Employees need to know that it is attainable, or
the change will not likely succeed.
• NYPD ex: To make the challenge attainable, Bratton
broke it into bite-size atoms that officers at different
levels could relate to. (Block by block, precinct by precinct, borough by borough)
– Doable challenges…No one can say “It’s beyond me.”
– Each member was only required to do his or her job.
i.e. Officers on the street: Challenge – Make his or her block safe.
Precinct Commanders: Challenge – Make his or her precinct safe.
– BOS strategy shifted from Bratton to each NYPD member.
Knock Over the Political Hurdle
• Vested interests will always exist to resist any
impending changes.
• To overcome these political forces, tipping
point leaders focus on three disproportionate
influence factors:
• Leveraging Angels
• Silencing Devils
• Getting a Consigliere
Angles, Devils, and a Consigliere
• Angels- those who have the most to gain from
the strategic shift.
• Devils- those who have the most to lose from
a strategic shift.
• Consigliere- a politically adept but highly
respected insider who knows in advance all
the land mines to be encountered by a
strategic change.
Leverage Your Angels and Silence Your
Devils
• To knock down the political hurdles, you
should also ask yourself two sets of questions:
– Who are my devils? Who will fight me? Who will
lose the most by the future blue ocean strategy?
– Who are my angels? Who will naturally align with
me? Who will gain the most by the strategic shift?
• By doing so, you will be able to discourage the
war before it has a chance to start!
Knock Over the Political Hurdle
• Do you have a consigliere in your top
management team?
• Do you know who will fight you and who will
align with you?
• Have you built coalitions with natural allies to
encircle dissidents?
• Do you have your consigliere remove the
biggest land mines?
Challenging Conventional Wisdom
• Transforming the extremes will transform the
masses
• Leveraging tipping point leadership
• Focus on acts of disproportionate influence
• Align employees’ actions with the new
strategy