Ask any CEO if s/he and her/his team know the factors of competition for their products and services and they will always tell me they do. When asked to define competitive factor, often there comes a “deer in the headlights” response. Further, when you get these same people in a room, divide them into teams and have each team come up with the competitive factors for their products and services, you may get very different answers.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and a reminder that we need to stop, take a breath, and at least once a year, count our blessings instead of whining about all the perceived imperfections in our lives.
As a poor kid growing up in Miami, I was always taught to be thankful, and to show gratitude for anything anyone did for me or gave to me. We take for granted so much in our lives. It is only when we lose something, like our health, that we realize how blessed we were when we had good health.
Dr. Sarah Layton, CEO and Managing Partner of Corporate Strategy Institute, Inc recently traveled to Dublin, Ireland, along with two other US delegates, to represent the Institute for Management Consultants – USA, at the congress held by the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes. IMC-USA is the professional association for management consultants in the US, awarding the Certified Management Consultant (CMC) to those who successfully complete the qualification requirements and pledge to adhere to the Code of Ethics for the profession. Dr. Layton served on the national board of directors until June of this year.
It takes creative thinking today and new strategy tools to move away from the competitive fray and into a blue ocean of value innovation where the revenue and profits are higher, the markets are unserved and the competition is nowhere in sight.
But what if you are a CEO raring to go with, say the Blue Ocean Strategy tools, ready to see if there is a Blue Ocean out there, or at least to make your bloody red ocean less competitive, and your team seems resistant, either actively or passively, to a move toward a new strategy that might advance the company past its current state of bloody competitive moves? Under those conditions, a CEO might be inclined to give up on innovation, feeling that maybe s/he is just too “out there” for his/her business/industry.
Reviewed by Dr. Sarah Layton
Dr. Sarah Layton (mailto:info@corporatestrategy.com; http://www.corporatestrategy.com/) is Managing Partner of Corporate Strategy Institute, Orlando, Florida. She is qualified by the Blue Ocean Strategy Initiative Center – London, in Blue Ocean Strategy concepts, tools and frameworks and specializes in helping organizations create their Blue Ocean Strategy future.
Dr. Sarah Layton , managing partner of the strategic management consulting firm Corporate Strategy Institute (www.corporatestrategy.com), has been qualified by the Blue Ocean Strategy Initiative Centre, London, in Blue Ocean Strategy concepts, tools and frameworks. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne was named the best business book of 2005 and has won many awards for its authors. Dr. Layton was invited to participate in the qualification process by the Blue Ocean Strategy Initiative Centre – London, after reviewing their book in Consulting to Management Magazine. Dr. Layton was then invited to meet with Kim and Mauborgne in Fontainebleau, France, which she did late 2006.
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