Jimmie Minchew
Holt Martin
Brock Breedlove
Chris Nelson
Emily Applebaum
Shelby Bentley
Matt Lohr
Organizational Hurdles
 Cognitive
 Limited Resources
 Motivation
 Politics
Tipping Point
Leadership in Action
 NYPD
 Bill Bratton
“We would have marched to hell
and back for that guy.”Anonymous Patrolman
The Pivotal Lever: Disproportionate
Influence Factors
 Don’t meet hurdles with equal energy, work around
the problem
 Unlock an epidemic movement
 Key is concentration, not diffusion

Questions to ask to identify disproportionate influence:
 How to get most bang for buck?
 How to motivate key players to start an epidemic
movement?
 How to knock down political roadblocks?
Home Depot and the Pivotal Lever
 Tim Crow’s New concentration



Create sense of ownership among HD’s 330,000
associates
Attain product knowledge customers desire
Implement rewards and recognition programs to
boost employee morale
 “Success Sharing Plan”
Break Through the
Cognitive Hurdle
• Direct experience is more effective at motivating than
numbers
• Make people see and experience harsh reality first hand.
• Internally driven change allows quicker and more
thorough response
Home Depot and the Cognitive Hurdle
 “Homer Badges Program”- recognizes associates who
“live Home Depot’s values”
 “Aprons on the Floor Program”- aimed at getting more
employees onto the floors of its stores
Ride the “Electric Sewer”
 One way to tip the cognitive hurdle
 Managers need to come face to face with poor
performance
 Show worst reality to superiors to help them
realize the need for change

Undercover Boss
Meet with Disgruntled Customers
 Observing the market firsthand
 Don’t rely on market surveys
 Boston’s Police District 4
 Making a difference
 Numbers VS Reality
Home Depot
Jump the Resource Hurdle
 Reality of Limited Resources
 Trim Ambitions, Discourage Workforce
 Same mistakes
 Fight for More Resources
 Ineffective
 Multiplying the Value of Current Resources
 Successful strategy
3 Factors to Leveraging Resources
 Hot Spots
 Cold Spots
 Horse Trading
Redistribute resources to hot spots
 Increase excess resources to areas where resources are
insufficient
 Bratton’ Idea: Increments in performance achieved
through increments in resources – the same logic
many companies already use
 Differentiated by identifying the stations receiving
most crimes (hot spots)
 Crime rate decreased while the police force
remained the same size
Redirect resources from your cold spots
 Free up resources in cold spots and allocate in a more
efficient matter
 Ex: In 2007 the company sold several underperforming
subsidiaries under the name “HD Supply” for $8.3
billion.
 Helped to reestablish retail operations,
management style and customer service
Engage in Horse Trading
 In addition to refocusing, engage in horse trading –
trading resources you don’t need for those you do need
 Home Depot acquired 75% interest in “Aikenhead's
Home Improvement Warehouse” in Canada in 1994 –
bought the remaining 25% in 1998
 Established The Home Depot name internationally
Jump the Resource Hurdle
 How do you execute a strategic shift with limited
resources?
Multiply the value of resources using:
1. Hot Spots- activities that have low resource input but
high potential performance
2. Cold Spots- activities that have high resource input
but low performance impact
3. Horse Trading- trading your unit’s excess resources in
one area for another unit’s excess resources to fill
remaining resource gaps.
How New York Transit Police redistributed
resources to hot spots
 Police argued that to increase safety on the city’s subway
there needed to be an officer riding on every subway
line.
 This would increase costs greatly and was also
impossible given the current budget.
 Solution was to target “hot spots” because the majority
of crime offered at only a few stations and on a few lines.
Jump the Motivational Hurdle
• For a new strategy to become a movement, people must
not only recognize what needs to be done, but they must
also act on that insight in a sustained and meaningful way.
3 factors to motivate employees:
 1. Kingpins
 2.Fishbowl Management
 3.Atomization
Fair Process
 Fair Process- engaging all the affected people in the
process, explaining to them the basis of decisions and
setting clear expectations of what that means to
employees’ performance.
 Signals to employees that there is a level playing field
Atomize: Get the Organization
to Change Itself
 Change NYC “block by block, precinct by precinct,
borough by borough.”
Knock Over the Political Hurdle
 Angels, Devils, and a Consigliere
 Leverage Angels
 Silence Devils
 Get Consigliere in Top Management
Secure a Consigliere on Your Top
Management Team
 A top management team must have more than
functional skills such as marketing, operations, and
finance.
 Tipping point leaders engage a consigliere
 NYPD: Bratton appointed Timoney as #2
Leverage Your Angels & Silence Your
Devils
 Who are my devils? Who will fight me? Who will lose
the most by the future blue ocean strategy?
 Who are my angels? Who will naturally align with me?
Who will gain the most by the strategic shift?
 Discourage the “war” before it has a chance to start
Angels & Devils in NYPD
 Bratton’s policing strategies faced opposition from
New York City’s courts. He pointed out the upside and
the possibility of lower future crime rates.
 Bratton teamed with the mayor and the city’s leading
newspaper to isolate the courts.
 Not only did the court system give in to Bratton’s
strategy, but it also worked and crime rates decreased.
Leverage Your Angels & Silence Your
Devils
 Key to winning over your devils is knowing all their
likely angles of attack and building up
counterarguments backed by irrefutable facts.
 Bratton’s readiness to combat crime data issues
Questions a leader should ask
himself
 Do I have a consigliere in my top management team or
just a CFO?
 Do I know who will fight me and who will align with
my new strategy?
 Have I built coalitions with natural allies?
 Does my consigliere remove the biggest land mines so
I don’t have to focus on changing those who can’t or
won’t change?
Challenging Conventional Wisdom
Challenging Conventional Wisdom
 To overcome key organizational hurdles to make blue
ocean strategy happen in action, companies must
abandon perceived wisdom on effecting change.
 Don’t follow conventional wisdom
 Focus on acts of disproportionate influence—it aligns
employees’ actions with the new strategy.
Conclusion
 The Four Organizational Hurdles: Cognitive, limited resources,
motivation, politics.
 The Pivotal Lever: Disproportionate influence factors
 Breaking through the cognitive hurdle—direct experience is
more effective at motivating than numbers
 Riding the “electric sewer” is the first way to top the cognitive rule
 Meet with disgruntled customers
 Redirect resources from your cold spots—free up resources in
cold spots to allocate in a more efficient manner
 Three factors to motivate employees: Kingpins, Fishbowl
Management, Atomization
 Leverage Your Angels & Silence Your Devils
 Don’t follow conventional wisdom