What Leaders and Managers Can Learn from Blue Ocean Strategy
Assuming your team has to compete on the same terms as every other team doing similar work, rather than asking what a genuinely different approach would look like, is the specific trap Blue Ocean Strategy names, and it's an easy one to fall into when the existing rules feel fixed.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Stop competing head-to-head in a crowded market
Competing directly against other teams using the same basic approach puts your team in a fight over the same limited resources and recognition, regardless of effort.
A manager positions their team's work as simply doing the same thing as another team, but a bit better, and ends up competing for the same budget and attention rather than building a distinct case for the team's value.
Identify one way your team's work currently overlaps directly with another team's, and ask what a genuinely different contribution would look like instead.
Pursue differentiation and low cost at the same time
Finding a way for your team to be both distinctly valuable and efficient, rather than assuming you must choose one, builds a stronger case than either alone.
A manager assumes doing more distinctive work automatically requires more resources, without questioning whether some existing work could be cut to fund it.
Identify one recurring task your team does that could be eliminated entirely, and use the freed capacity to fund something genuinely more valuable.
Question what your industry has always competed on
Treating your team's usual metrics and deliverables as fixed, rather than something you could eliminate, reduce, raise, or add to, limits how differently your team could operate.
A manager accepts the standard set of deliverables as the baseline, without ever asking whether some of them actually matter to the people the team serves.
List your team's standard deliverables, and identify one that could be eliminated entirely without anyone actually missing it.
Look beyond your current customers to people you aren't serving at all
The broader group of people your team's work could serve, beyond your current stated stakeholders, is often where the most valuable new opportunities are found.
Delivering on today's stated priorities and building toward genuinely distinctive team value aren't opposites — a distinctive contribution often earns more support for today's priorities too.
Name one thing, honestly
Who could your team's work serve that it currently doesn't, even informally?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
List your team's standard deliverables, and identify one that could be eliminated entirely without anyone actually missing it.