Do We Need Blue Ocean Leaders?

In the May edition of the Harvard Business Review W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the authors and inventors of the famous Blue Ocean Strategy (which I like a lot), write about a concept they´ve coined Blue Ocean Leadership.

When I read the title of the article for the first time momentarily two thoughts popped up: First, in the spirit of a classic line expansion approach it seems comprehensible trying to stretch a very successful idea and name via a new product into the popular and profitable leadership and training segment. Second, I wondered if Blue Ocean Leadership is old wine in new skins. Or a true, new value-adding leadership concept which would help developing better leaders?

So, before making our call let´s have a look at their main ideas and recommendations which are based on hundreds of interviews over the last 10 years:

UNDERLYING INSIGHT
According to Chan and Mauborgne, leadership can be thought of as a service that people in an organization “buy” or “don’t buy.” Every leader in that sense has customers: the bosses to whom the leader must deliver performance, and the followers who need the leader’s guidance and support to achieve. When people value your leadership practices, they in effect buy your leadership. They’re inspired to excel and act with commitment. But when employees don’t buy your leadership, they disengage, becoming non-customers of your leadership.

KEY DIFFERENCES FROM OTHER LEADERSHIP APPROACHES
Blue Ocean Leadership is supposed being distinct in at least three ways from traditional leadership approaches:

Focus On Acts And Activities
Blue ocean leadership focuses on what acts and activities leaders need to undertake to boost their teams’ motivation and business results, not on who leaders need to be. Meaning, that Blue Ocean Leadership does not put an emphasis on values, qualities, and behavioral styles. Of course, altering a leader’s activities is not a complete solution, and having the right values, qualities, and behavioral traits matters. But activities are something that any individual can change, given the right feedback and guidance.

Connect Closely To Market Realities
Blue Ocean Leadership claims that the people who face market realities are asked for their direct input on how their leaders hold them back and what those leaders could do to help them best serve customers and other key stakeholders. And when people are engaged in defining the leadership practices that will enable them to thrive, and those practices are connected to the market realities against which they need to perform.

Distribute Leadership Across All Management Levels
For Blue Ocean Leadership the key to a successful organization is having empowered leaders at every level, because outstanding organizational performance often comes down to the motivation and actions of middle and frontline leaders, who are in closer contact with the market. It calls for profiles for leaders that are tailored to the very different tasks, degrees of power, and environments you find at each level.

THE FOUR STEPS OF BLUE OCEAN LEADERSHIP
To overcome the "Here comes another change initiative” syndrome Blue Ocean Leadership has incorporated good execution into its process. The four steps to implement it are founded on the principles of engagement, explanation, and expectation clarity:

1. See Your Leadership Reality
A common mistake organizations make is to discuss changes in leadership before resolving differences of opinion over what leaders are actually doing. Without a common understanding of where leadership stands and is falling short, a forceful case for change cannot be made. The aim is to uncover how people experience current leadership and to start a company-wide conversation about what leaders do and should do at each level. The customers of leaders are asked which acts and activities—good and bad—their leaders spend most of their time on, and which are key to motivation and performance but are neglected by their leaders. It takes the form of what they call as-is Leadership Canvases, analytic visuals that show just how managers at each level invest their time and effort, as perceived by the customers of their leadership. An organization begins the process by creating a canvas for each of its three management levels.

2. Develop Alternative Leadership Profiles
At this point the subteams are usually eager to explore what effective Leadership Profiles would look like at each level. To achieve this, they go back to their interviewees with two sets of questions. The first set is aimed at pinpointing the extent to which each act and activity on the canvas is either a cold spot (absorbing leaders’ time but adding little or no value) or a hot spot (energizing employees and inspiring them to apply their talents, but currently underinvested in by leaders or not addressed at all).
The second set prompts interviewees to think beyond the bounds of the company and focus on effective leadership acts they’ve observed outside the organization, in particular those that could have a strong impact if adopted by internal leaders at their level. Here fresh ideas emerge about what leaders could be doing but aren’t. The key tool used in this step is the Blue Ocean Leadership Grid; an analytic tool that challenges people to think about which acts and activities leaders should do less of because they hold people back, and which leaders should do more of because they inspire people to give their all

3. Select To-Be Leadership Profiles
After two to three weeks of drawing and redrawing their Leadership Canvases, the subteams present them at what they call a “leadership fair.” Fair attendees include board members and top, middle, and frontline managers. The event starts with members of the original senior team behind the effort describing the process and presenting the three as-is canvases. With those three visuals, the team establishes why change is necessary, confirms that comments from interviewees at all levels were taken into account, and sets the context against which the to-be Leadership Profiles can be understood and appreciated. All levels are being presented and discussed. Armed with this information and the votes and comments of attendees, the top managers convene outside the fair room and decide which to-be Leadership Profile to move forward on at each level. Then they return and explain their decisions to the fair’s participants.

4. Institutionalize New Leadership Practices
After the fair is over, the original subteam members communicate the results to the people they interviewed who were not at the fair. Organizations then distribute the agreed-on to-be profiles to the leaders at each level. The subteam members hold meetings with leaders to walk them through their canvases, explaining what should be eliminated, reduced, raised, and created. This step reinforces the buy-in that the initiative has been building by briefing leaders throughout the organization on key findings at each step of the process and tapping many of them for input.

The leaders are then charged with passing the message along to their direct reports and explaining to them how the new Leadership Profiles will allow them to be more effective. Leaders are tasked with holding regular monthly meetings at which they gather their direct reports’ feedback on how well they’re making the transition to the new profiles. All comments must be illustrated with specific examples.

FINAL ASSESSMENT
Clearly I like the pragmatism and fairness of Blue Ocean Leadership as it aims at all levels. The rather straight-forward process makes the implementation and monitoring of changes easier acceptable than the application of top-down approaches. The notion that every leader is serving internal customers, i.e. her team, her line managers, and her colleagues is beautiful. Also its four-step-implementation process is very solid by using a comprehensive grid and putting a strong emphasis on execution.

If companies were able to really change the tasks and habits of their managers by only addressing acts and activities of its leaders – and not their values and behavioral styles – then indeed Blue Ocean Leadership initiatives would take less time and effort than many other ones. Real case studies will have to proof its sustainability and mid-term impact.

Saying that, Blue Ocean Leadership contains some potent and effective ideas and measures which could complement and/ or challenge existing leadership concepts.

Podcast (also available on iTunes):


What do you think about it? Any other leadership concept which you favor?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Andreas von der Heydt

*****

Andreas von der Heydt is the Head and Director of Kindle Content at Amazon in Germany. Before that he held various senior management positions at Amazon and L'Oréal. He's a leadership expert and management coach. He also founded Consumer Goods Club. Andreas worked and lived in Europe, Australia, the U.S. and Asia. Andreas enjoys blogging as a private person here on LinkedIn about various exciting topics. His latest book is about what makes a future leader. All statements made, opinions expressed, etc. in his articles only reflect his personal opinion.

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Other recent and popular posts by Andreas von der Heydt:
The 7 Qualities of Tomorrow´s Top Leaders
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Jenny Robinson

Women's Climate Congress - Founding member

8y

Thanks for sharing, worth a detailed consideration. Distributed leadership is a megnet for me as it builds capacity and valudates learning leadership approaches.

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Werner Piek

Executive Marketing Manager Abagold

9y

What made me think a bit more is that employees are customers of your leadership. Therefore being more customer centric throughout the organisation, including with employees will increase engagement levels. With customer centricity comes the difference of locked in vs locked on. You essentially do not want your customers including your employees to be locked in. Locked in is bound to a term and when the term expires or gets irrelevant the customers engagement disappears. With a locked on customer you have a real sustainable relationship coupled to loyalty and high engagement levels. Thank you for a good article .

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Daniel Scott

National Safety and Wellbeing Business Partner

9y

In a world of stylus metrics, measurements and top down change management strategy implementation I see blue ocean leadership providing some practicality on genuine organisational change from any level. If there is one influential person at any level that is interested in improving leadership of managers and supervisors this is available to facilitate the process. I believe this is a great strategy and will be very useful for differentiating organisations.

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Gerhard Vierthaler

Global Expansion Strategist | Business Growth Specialist | Regenerative Farming Advocate | Circular Economy Enthusiast

9y

If you haven't had your entire management team read and exemplify Blue Ocean Strategy you are falling behind in assessing where you stand, how to innovate and how to effectively compete in a "me-too" world. Obviously, buy-in from leadership down the ranks is crucial or change-initiative fatigue will quickly choke off any progress in the right direction. It takes commitment, discipline and diligent follow-through to differentiate in today's market. Follow the same path & keep doing the same thing over & over - expect to go the way of the dinosaur.

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Nataliya SENICHEVA

Business planning & Complexity management lead at The HEINEKEN Company

9y

One of Blue ocean's products examples was/is my company's car - Dacia Logan. So, from "insider's" point of view I can comment that blue ocean leadership's key approaches are implemented in new projects development teams, where acting is prevaling on behavour, leadership is spread at all levels (in project reality each team member has direct influence on results and is welcome to take intiative), there is special project manager linking all team to market reality and assuring the coordination of all project leaders. However, we do not call it blue ocean approach etc, as it is just an internal project management culture. Moreover, this type of leadership culture is neighbouring with very traditional leadership approaches at serial life. Thus, for me blue ocean leadership is not a specific leadeship direction, but a technique for projects management (where project =temporary activity aimed at the creation of a uniqe product/service)

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