The MGRUSH technique encourages different approaches based on whether your project is seeking incremental gain or requires real breakthroughs. Blue Ocean Strategy promotes breakthrough thinking, justified by the higher profits such thinking generates among companies studied by its authors, Kim and Mauborgne.[1]
Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
The authors note the failures of companies over the past fifteen to twenty years—since the publishing of In Search of Excellence and Built to Last—including Atari, Data General, Fluor, and National Semiconductor. Therefore, the cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy is value innovation, defined as “the integrated and simultaneous pursuit of differentiation (i.e., buyer value) AND low-cost (i.e., supplier value).”
Their analytical toolset begins with a strategy canvas that identifies the principle of competitive and investment factors within your industry. With wine as an example (in brief), they might include price, distinction, marketing, aging, vineyard, complexity, and range. Their framework (called Four Actions) relies on facilitating consensual agreement around four questions. Participants’ answers suggest a new value curve that might enable your company to shift from traditional industry factors to uncontested market space. The four questions are:
1. ELIMINATE––Which factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated?
2. RAISE––Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?
3. CREATE––Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?
4. REDUCE––Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?
Illustrating Blue Ocean Strategy Four Actions Using Cirque du Soleil
For example, they suggest the success of Cirque du Soleil (compared to a traditional circus) accelerated with the following insights:
1. ELIMINATE––Star performers, animal shows, etc.
2. RAISE––Unique venue, type of concession sales, etc.
3. CREATE––Theme, artistic music, and dance, etc.
4. REDUCE––Multiple show arenas, thrill, and danger, etc.
Using the strategy canvas of Southwest Airlines they emphasized the factors of friendly service, speed, and frequent point-to-point departures. Both Cirque du Soleil and Southwest Airlines provide shared focus, divergence, and a compelling tagline. Overall, the authors’ steps for visualizing strategy draw upon group discussions and consensus—aka, excellent facilitation. They also suggest the use of a Pioneer-Migrator-Settler perceptual map that would seem to offer far less benefit than seeking consensus with answers to the Four Actions above.
Blue Ocean Strategy offers additional and valuable questions[2] that challenge each of the life-cycle steps (e.g., MGRUSH’s Plan-Acquire-Operate-Control). These questions seek to identify the biggest blocks faced by value drivers such as productivity, simplicity, convenience, risk, fun/ image, and environmental friendliness.
Blue Ocean Strategy Organizational Hurdles
The authors finish their discussion with four “organizational hurdles” including politics, motivation, resources, and groupthink (i.e., “cognitive”). However, like many academics, they complete their otherwise valuable book by discussing the importance of converting the strategy into execution—missing the importance and significance of building consensual analysis to pave the way. They jump from the WHY to the HOW without a complete understanding of WHAT is required—i.e., the consensual aspects that assure buy-in, confidence, and ownership. They talk about the importance of attitude and behavior but offer little insight into how to acquire a “fair process,”—something that MGRUSH alumni do regularly by building consensus around the analysis framework.
[1] See chart on page 7, “The Profit and Growth Consequences of Creating Blue Oceans.”
[2] See chart on page 123, “The Buyer Experience Cycle.”
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
