By: Andrei Gololobov, Lana Grimes, & Laura
McMannis
So You Have a Plan…
 For your strategy to work, the working plan must be
translated into action.
 Regardless of which strategy is used
 Beware: Translating a plan in a Blue Ocean Strategy is
more difficult.
 Managers face Four Hurdles
Four Hurdles to Strategy Execution
 Cognitive: Departing from the status quo.
 Limited Resources: A shift in strategy may demand
additional resources.
 Motivation: Invigorating employees and key players
to break from the status quo.
 Politics: Bureaucracy, corruption, and opposition
from key players who support the status quo.
Tipping Point Leadership
 Used by leaders to successfully jump the Four Hurdles
with the backing of employees while using limited
resources.
 Breaks the myth that the only way to bring about
greater change is to use greater resources
Tipping Point Leadership
 Key is to concentrate on specific areas of an
organization
 Time and money can be saved if the organization
focuses in on factors of disproportionate influences
 Example: Bill Bratton and the New York City Police
Department
Key Questions to Answer
 What factors exercise disproportionately positive
influence on…..
 Breaking the status quo
 Getting the maximum results from limited resources
 Motivating key players to support change
 Knocking down political roadblocks
Cognitive Hurdle
 Make people aware of a need for change
 Avoid using numbers and statistics
 They can be misleading
 People respond more effectively with personal
observation and experience
 “Seeing is beliveing”
Breaking the Status Quo
 Make employees personally face the operational
problems
 Personally meet with dissatisfied customers and
employees
 Avoid using surveys
Jump the Resource Hurdle
 Major impediment – limited resources
What can happen then?
Trim the
Ambition
Fight for more
resources
What is the Solution?
 DO NOT focus on getting more resources
 DO multiply the value of the resources you already
have
 Consider three factors that can help, on the one hand,
to free resources, and on the other to multiply
resources
Three Factors of Influence
Hot Spots – activities with currently low resource
input but high potential gains
II. Cold Spots – high resource input but low
performance impact
III. Horse Trading – exchanging one unit’s excess
resources in one area for another unit’s excess
resources to fill remaining gaps
I.
Redistribute Resources in Your
 NYPD reorganization:
1) Subway officers changed from patrolling every line
and station to just those in need of most attention
2) Narcotics unit was prioritized to appropriate time
and number of officers it really required
Redirect Resources from Your
 NYPD: The bottleneck of processing criminals in court
is replaced by using “bust buses” right outside the
subway stations, thus cutting time spent from 16 hours
to just one
Engage in
 NYPD:
Transit Department’s
surplus of vehicles
Division of Parole’s
excess office space
Four Actions Framework
High___________________________________________________________________
After Bratton’s Appointment
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Before Bratton’s
Appointment
___________________________________________________________________
Low ___________________________________________________________________
Widespread
Patrols of
Subway System
Involvement
of officers in
processing
arrests
Arrests of
warrant violators
in daytime
Issuance of desk Arrests
appearance tickets
Group Focus on
Arrests of
Use of
Arrests Quality-of-life warrant s
“bust
Crimes
during
busses”
sleeping hours
Train Sweeps
Figure 7-2 from BOS
Johnson & Johnson: Three Factors
– Recently announced plans to expand work in infectious diseases
like HIV, hepatitis C and the flu (WSJ: October 19, 2010); J&J’s purchase of Crucell
(Blumberg Business Week: October 24, 2010)
– In 2009 the world's biggest health-care products company
faced patent expirations worth $3 billion in sales along with a worldwide
economic downturn, which drove earnings down (2010 Fortune 500)
- Scientific breakthroughs, marketing insights and
manufacturing expertise transfer across the full range of businesses.
- Decentralization - delegation of decision-making to the subunits of an
organization, closer to consumer or beneficiary.
Jump the Motivational Hurdle
 Alert employees about need for a strategic shift
 Identify how it can be achieved with limited resources
 Use a reverse course and seek massive concentration
 Focus on three factors of disproportionate
influence to motivate
 Kingpins, fishbowl management, and
atomization
Zoom in on Kingpins
 Key influencers in the organization
 Natural leaders
 Have ability to unlock access to key resources
 Relatively small number
Place Kingpins in a Fishbowl
 Fishbowl management
 Actions and inactions are made transparent
 Based on transparency, inclusion, and fair process
 Intense performance culture evolves

No one wants to be a laggard
Fair Process
 Meaning
 Engaging all the affected people in the process
 Explaining basic decisions
 Explaining reasons people will be promoted or sidestepped
 Setting clear expectations of what that means to
employees’
 Signals
 Level playing field
 Leaders value employees’ intellectual & emotional worth
despite all the change that may be recquired
Atomize to Get the Organization to
Change Itself
 Framing of the strategic challenge
 Making employees think it is attainable
 Make the challenge actionable at all levels
Knock Over the Political Hurdle
 Overcome
 Internal & external negative influencers
 By utilizing three disproportionate influence factors
 Leveraging angels

Have the most to gain from the strategic shift
 Silencing devils

Have the most to lose from it
 Getting a consigliere on top management team

Insider who knows in advance all the land mines (who will
fight you and who will support you)
Leverage Your Angels & Silence
Your Devils
 Identify detractors and supporters
 Strive to create a win-win outcome for both,
quickly
 Isolate detractors by building a coalition with
angels before the battle begins
 Discourages the war from even starting
 Win over detractors/devils by
 Knowing their angles of attack
 Building up counterarguments backed by facts
and reason
Challenging Conventional Wisdom
 Conventional
 Transform the mass
 Tipping point leadership
 Reverse course

Focus on transforming the extremes
 People, acts, and activities that exercise a
disproportionate influence on performance
 Able to change the core fast & at low cost to
execute their new strategy
Conventional Wisdom Versus
Tipping Point Leadership
Takeaways
 DO NOT give up if it is impossible at the moment to
increase financial support in order to boost the
company's outputs, instead DO work on maximizing
the value of existing resources
 Critical leadership component is focusing on acts of
disproportionate influence because it aligns
employees’ actions with the new strategy
 Tipping point leadership allows you to overcome these
four hurdles fast and at low cost while winning
employees’ backing in executing a break from the
status quo