Blue Ocean Strategy Competition is fierce in most industriesright now. Blue Ocean Strategy: How tocreate uncontested market space and makethe competition irrelevant, a new bookfrom Harvard Business School Press,suggests that, instead of competing for ashare in a shrinking profit pool of over-crowded industries, strategically agilecompanies have to create “blue oceans”

of uncontested market space through what the authors call“value innovation.”

Through the book, the authors explain that innovation mustexpand a company beyond the current confines of its industry.Rather than fighting for market share, companies have to cre-ate new market space. For instance, Cirque du Soleil redefinedthe concept of the circus as a combination of circus and theatre.Instead of competing with standard circuses head-on, it createda completely new market instead.

Although such a move, performed once, can create a valuable

niche for awhile, that market space, too, will be invaded, so ablue ocean strategy requires that a company continually searchfor new ways to break away from the crowd.

By W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. Published by Harvard Business School Press. Formore information visit www.HBSPress.org.

Face It Behavioural profiling is a useful aid fordescribing kinds of people — as shown inpopular books like Roberta Cava’sDealing With Difficult People. Art Horndefines behavioural profiles of six types ofbusiness people who have hidden fears inhis book Face It: Recognizing and conquer -ing the hidden fear that drives all conflict atw o r k. These personality types are worrier,controller, fake, attention-seeker, victim,and prisoner. This book includes exam-

ples of individuals of each business type who the author helpedbreak out of endless loops of behaviour that were driven byanxiety and fear and were causing unnecessary conflict. Theexamples are excerpts from case studies that the author record-ed in his work as an executive coach in Toronto.

Horn’s method of coaching includes helping people tracetheir fears back to their childhood origins and experiencing thesefears again. Though not all would agree that such therapy is nec-essary, there is a valid argument that suggests business people canbe inhibited by hidden fears. Face Itrecommends actions forovercoming such problems. For example, a victim makes up toomany excuses for calamities rather than working on preventingthem. Horn recommends that victims choose to completely owntheir present challenges. The worrier experiences fear when pro-jecting current problems into the future. Horn recommends thatworriers focus on issues that they can address.

The author integrates his methods for overcoming fears intoa transcendent model of personality management that recog-nizes two levels of thinking: the object-level — thoughts aboutthe facts of the world; and the meta-level — opinions about theobject level. A primary objective of transcendent coaching islearning to control the meta-level by finding an individual’strigger-response patterns to hidden fears.

By Art Horn. Published by AMACOM. For more information visit www.amanet.org/books/.

Face IT reviewed by Patrick Buckley, CMA, PhD. Patrick is a systems analyst based inOttawa.

me d ia b i t e s

Business re c o n s i d e red C h a ng i ng people and growth stra t e g ies

CMA MANAGEMENT 6 March 2005

Winning With People The single quality that leaders universallyidentify as critical to their success is theirability to work with people. In his newestbook, Winning With People: Discover thepeople principles that work for you everyt i m e, John C. Maxwell translates his manyyears of business experience into 25 peopleprinciples every leader needs. Theseprinciples grow from five key questions:

● Readiness: Are we prepared for relationships? ● Connection: Are we willing to focus on others? ● Trust: Can we build mutual trust? ● Investment: Are we willing to invest in others? ● Synergy: Can we create a win-win relationship?

The author believes that some people are born with thesegreat relationship skills, but most need help to develop them totheir fullest.

By John C. Maxwell. Published by Nelson Business. For more information visitwww.thomasnelson.com.

By Robert Colman and Patrick Buckley, CMA