Three Pillars That Make or Break Your Strategy

Hi Reader,

💡 Today's Niblit: In Blue Ocean Strategy, Kim and Mauborgne identify three strategic propositions that they say must align for sustainable success. Their extensive research with organizations worldwide shows that misalignment between these critical components is what often causes promising strategies to fail, even when the core idea is brilliant.

🔑 Key Insight: The three essential propositions are value, profit, and people.

• The value proposition attracts buyers with a compelling offering.
• The profit proposition ensures the company can make money while delivering that value.
• The people proposition motivates employees and partners to execute the strategy with enthusiasm.

Consider Comic Relief's Red Nose Day, which transformed charity fundraising in the UK. Their value proposition made donating fun and accessible to everyone with their "fun-raising" approach. Their profit proposition eliminated expensive galas and grant writing, instead leveraging community fundraising and corporate partnerships that covered operating costs. Their people proposition made volunteers, celebrities, and sponsors all win through recognition and shared purpose.

This matters because even a revolutionary strategic idea will fail if any of these three pillars is weak or misaligned. Companies that struggle often hyperfocus on one proposition while neglecting the others.

🦉 Nibble of Wisdom: A strategy is only as strong as its weakest proposition.

🛠️ Practical Tip: When evaluating a new strategic initiative, systematically check all three propositions. If one is significantly weaker than the others, strengthen it before proceeding.

🚀 Quick Action: Take 15 minutes to evaluate your current strategy on a 1-10 scale across all three propositions. Identify the weakest one and brainstorm three specific ways to strengthen it.

🔍 Further Exploration:

• Explore strategic coherence and how it impacts organizational effectiveness
• Examine misalignment in your industry — which companies have brilliant ideas but poor profit models or execution challenges?
• Consider how strategic trade-offs can actually strengthen alignment when used deliberately

🎬 Wrapup: The most innovative value proposition will fail without a viable profit formula, and both will collapse without people committed to bringing them to life. Only when all three align can your strategy achieve sustainable success.

🔗 Links:

• Check out Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne on Amazon
• ​Blue Ocean Strategy on Kindle​
• ​Blue Ocean Strategy Audiobook​
• ​Read this book for FREE with a Kindle Unlimited trial

Aligning for greatness,

Tom "proposition balancer" Bernthal

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