Article Review

Kim Chan, W. & Mauborgne, R. Blue Ocean Leadership. Harvard Business Review, May 2014.

Unlike the articles I had previously read on the topic of management and developing others, this one does not focus on behavioral styles, but rather on the actions that managers should take to motivate employees. I understand that adopting an effective behavioral style is a key element for success as a manager. However, this requires both time and practice and above all willingness from the managers themselves to change.
This article presents solutions that can be adapted “rapidly and at low cost” in organizations, and which can bring very effective results. It achieves this because it does not require leaders “to alter who they are”.
The article starts with an alarming statement: “Just 30% of employees are actively committed to doing a good job”. Therefore, there are in each workplace great resources of unused potential which is described as the “Blue Ocean”. One of the reasons for this lack of motivation is poor leadership. Leadership is described in the article as a product that is sold by leaders: Employees “buy” or “don’t buy”. The “Blue Ocean Leadership” approach intends to define the actions that direct reports expect their managers to take to make them “buy” their leadership.
The leaders’ actions can be categorized into four types. The ones they “need to eliminate, reduce, raise and create to convert disengaged employees into engaged ones”. This must be identified at all levels of the company including senior, middle and frontline management during monthly meetings organized with their direct reports to check the progress.
As an example, the experience of a British retail group which applied the “Blue Ocean Leadership” shows that the impact can be significant: “Employee turnover dropped from about 40% to 11% in the first year, reducing