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SPOTLIGHT ON LEADING THE FOCUSED ORGANIZATION

Spotlight

ARTWORK Mark Dorf,//_path/untitled 73 2013, archival pigment print

60 Harvard Business Review May 2014

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May 2014 Harvard Business Review 6i

SPOTLIGHT ON LEADiNG THE FOCUSED ORGANIZATION

It's a sad truth about the workplace: Just 3 O ^ of employees are actively committed to doing a good job. According to Gallup's 2013 State of the American Workplace report, 5 O ^ of employees merely put their time in, while the remaining ÄO*^** act out their discontent in counterproductive ways, negatively influencing their coworkers, missing days on the job, and driving customers away through poor service. Gallup estimates that the ÎÎO"/« group alone costs the U.S. economy around half a trillion dollars each year.
What's the reason for the widespread employee disengagement? According to Gallup, poor leadership is a key cause. Most executives—not just those in America—recognize that one of their biggest challenges is closing the vast gulf between the potential and the realized talent and energy of the people they lead. As one GEO put it, "We have a large workforce that has an appetite to do a good job up and down the ranks. If we can transform them—tap into them through effective leadership—there will be an awful lot of people out there doing an awful lot of good."
62 Harvard Business Review May 2014

Of course, managers don't intend to be poor leaders. The problem is that they lack a clear understanding of just what changes it would take to bring out the best in everyone and achieve high impact. We believe that leaders can obtain this understanding through an approach we call "blue ocean leadership." It draws on our research on blue ocean strategy, our model for creating new market space by converting noncustomers into customers, and applies its concepts and analytic frameworks to help leaders

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