Taking a Blue Ocean Strategy to Leverage Humanness in a Healing Ecosystem

If you have been reading Gary Oftedahl’s blogs on the healing ecosystem - and if you have not, I highly recommend them – you are familiar with the Care Collaboratory’s belief that being within an ecosystem committed to healing is the way forward for our organizations, communities, and relationships. And, you have learned about Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game and the criticality of working for a “Just Cause” as the means for movement toward a healing ecosystem.

I am taking a somewhat different tack to talk about a strategic approach to building a healing ecosystem within your own environment. My muse is the Blue Ocean work of W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne of INSEAD; which is one of the world’s top graduate business schools. As professors of business strategy at INSEAD their primary focus is on guiding business organizations on new paths for market creation and growth. But their concepts go far beyond this point - and that is the focus of this blog.

First, you need a basic understanding of their foundational learning: that most organizations are swimming in what they have deemed a Red Ocean - a space driven by competition, one-upmanship, and a zero-sum-game mindset. Organizations captured by Red Ocean mindset operate in a constant, never-ending battlefield. Instead, Kim & Mauborgne argue that there are plenty of Blue Ocean opportunities - but that today’s organizations not only fail to capitalize on them but are fearful of even putting a toe in the water. Why? Because Blue Ocean challenges the ingrained, accepted as “truth,” assumptions underlying the way an organization operates and what it must do to succeed. A Blue Ocean strategy moves beyond competition to creating a different lens through which to see opportunity and possibility that can capture the imagination and commitment of the organization. This is very consistent with Sinek’s Infinite Game “Just Cause.”

While the authors are focused on business strategy - their approach is equally resonant for organizational transformation. Shifting to a “healing ecosystem” mindset is, in fact, a substantive business strategy and the methods and tools of Blue Ocean are equally valid. A core building block of this strategic approach is the powerful leverage of “humanness” - of deeply understanding and appreciating that all the players within the organization are, first and foremost, human beings: fallible, but afraid of making a mistake; desirous of recognition, but nervous about being singled out; wanting to be valued, respected and treated with dignity. Organizations, departments, communities, and relationships founded on humanness build creativity, capacity, and commitment - and can achieve great, new things.

Without humanness as the foundation, successfully establishing a “Just Cause” is not possible, because it will not engage all members of the organization in achieving its purpose. An ecosystem that truly heals must exist for all its constituents. And such an ecosystem engenders the loyalty, commitment, and excellence every organization needs to excel. With a Blue Ocean mindset, leaders build an understanding of humanness in their planning and development work, engaging their people through authentic empathy and understanding.