Strategic Coach Resources

Perhaps you’ve seen the poster with the flock of sheep all moving in the same direction toward the edge of a cliff. In their midst is one sheep going the opposite way, saying “excusez-moi” as he pushes through the crowd. The flock looks like wallpaper. The one focal point is the lone sheep who dares to be different. Looking at that lone sheep, there are two things that come to mind. One is that he seems to have a perspective that the others don’t have. The other is that he seems to have the courage, or the gumption, to do something with that knowledge so that he can create a bigger future for himself.

The abyss for entrepreneurs.

In the case of entrepreneurs, the cliff is commoditization. In many industries, entrepreneurs are finding it more difficult to differentiate themselves from a host of competitors with seemingly similar offerings. The effect over time is that they end up increasingly having to compete on the basis of price, often giving more away for free and working harder to get less in return.

The “flock” is made up of those entrepreneurs who are working so hard from day to day to keep things going that they have little time to think about the bigger picture. While entrepreneurs are anything but sheep, there are many who see their businesses and their offerings being turned into commodities, and either don’t recognize that it’s happening or don’t know what to do about it. Knowingly or unknowingly, they’re heading toward a future that will be increasingly unsatisfying, and they feel, for a number of reasons, that it’s out of their control.

The opportunity to be different.

Similar to the lone sheep, however, there are some entrepreneurs who are making the choice to do things differently, even if it means pushing against the crowd.

Often it’s because they’ve seen what’s coming and realize that the long-term suffering of continuing along the same path is worse than the short-term suffering associated with shifting directions now.

While others are fighting it out for increasingly smaller margins, a few smart entrepreneurs are finding ways to break into markets where there is effectively no competition. Authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne call such places “blue ocean” in their excellent book, Blue Ocean Strategy, in contrast to oceans that are red with the blood of competitors fighting to the death, which is where most companies are. The dilemma is that it can seem very risky to venture into new territory when you’ve been used to doing business a particular way for a long time, even if you are beginning to see that that way doesn’t work as well as it used to.

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