blue ocean leadership

Question 1

KEY DIFFERENCES FROM CONVENTIONAL LEADERSHIP APPROACHES

Answer 1

• Focus on acts and activities:
leaders need to undertake to boost their teams motivation and business results, not on who leaders need to be -> easier to change activities than values and traits

• Connect closely to market realities:
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

• Distribute leadership across all management levels:
it calls for profiles for leaders that are tailored to the very different tasks, degrees of power, and environments you find at each level

• Pursue high impact leadership acts and activities at low cost

Question 2

STEPS OF BLUE OCEAN LEADERSHIP (1/2)

Answer 2

• See your leadership reality
- It is defining Leadership-Canvasses (charts) - analytic visuals that show how managers at each level invest their time and effort as perceived by the customers of their leadership, changing daily doings, tasks

• Develop alternative leadership profiles
- The teams/sub teams explore now what effective leadership profiles would look like at each of the three levels

Question 3

THE BLUE OCEAN LEADERSHIP GRID

Answer 3

• Four steps
• Eliminate -> have no demand from followers, create less
commitment
• Reduce -> not eliminated, just reduced
• Raise
• Create -> not existing at the moment, should exist

Question 4

STEPS OF BLUE OCEAN LEADERSHIP (2/2)

Answer 4

• After 2-3 weeks of drawing their leadership canvases, the teams present them at a leadership fair (attendees are board members, top, middle and front line managers)
• After the fair the sub-team members communicate the results to the people who were not at the fair
• Then distribute the agreed on to-be profiles to the leaders
• Leaders are then charged with passing the message along to their direct reports and explain to them how the new profiles will allow them to be more effective

Question 5

LEADERSHIP CANVASSES

Answer 5

• Analytical visual tool shows how managers at each level invest time/effort as perceived by subordinates
• Process takes a couple weeks
• Democratic process

Question 6

3 EXECUTION PRINCIPLES

Answer 6

1. Engagement: concrete visual framework in which followers can discuss targets for leader (benchmark)
2. Explanation: content of Canvas, as-it, to-be, etc.
3. Expectation clarity: transparent process that brings out to-be Canvasses