The Four Steps of Visualizing Strategy: Step 1 - Visual Awakening

Blue Ocean Strategy Articles : The Four Steps of Visualizing Strategy: Step 1 - Visual Awakening

Given the positive response to our series highlighting each of the Paths in the Blue Ocean Strategy Six Paths Framework, we will continue each week to highlight helpful Blue Ocean Strategy fundamentals. The next natural topic is the Strategy Canvas and the mechanisms for its creation. The process, which builds on the Six Paths of creating Blue Oceans and involves visual stimulation to unlock new insight, has four major steps. Today we focus on the first step—Visual Awakening. This step, and each step to follow, will be made accessible through the Blue Ocean Strategy Basics archive. For our highlight of the first step, we turn to pages 84 - 85 of the book Blue Ocean Strategy (co-authored by Professor W. Chan Kim and Professor Renée Mauborgne):

Step 1 - Visual Awakening

A common mistake is to discuss changes in strategy before resolving differences of opinion about the current state of play. Another problem is that executives are often reluctant to accept the need for change; they may have a vested interest in the status quo, or they may feel that time will eventually vindicate their previous choices. Indeed, when we ask executives what prompts them to seek out blue oceans and introduce change, they usually say that it takes a highly determined leader or a serious crisis.

Fortunately, we’ve found that asking executives to draw the value curve of their company’s strategy brings home the need for change. It serves as a forceful wake-up call for companies to challenge their existing strategies. That was the experience at EFS (a European Financial Services Co.), which had been struggling for a long time with an ill-defined and poorly communicated strategy. The company was also deeply divided. The top executives of EFS’s regional subsidiaries bitterly resented what they saw as the arrogance of the corporate executives, whose philosophy, they believed, was essentially “nuts in the field, brains in the center.” That conflict made it all the more difficult for EFS to come to grips with its strategic problems. Yet before the firm could chart a new strategy, it was essential that it reach a common understanding of its current position.

Source: For more Blue Ocean Strategy articles, please visit http://blueoceanstrategy.typepad.com/creatingblueoceans/2008/03/the-four-steps.html