A Personal Strategic Analysis Project for Jesuit Business
School
Philip W. Glasgo
Department of Finance
(513) 745-3595
glasgo@xavier.edu
A Personal Strategic Analysis Project for Jesuit Business
School
About a decade ago
the author’s university deleted a strategic management(or Business Policy)
class from the required undergraduate curriculum. This was done at least partly due to a general unhappiness with students’
performance in the class and a
widely-held belief that since
21-year olds would probably not be making strategic decisions for many years, the significance of the class was probably not apparent to them.
In place of the
Strategic Management class, one required course in each discipline was
designated as the “Capstone” class for that major and professors teaching
it agreed to include a strategic
management component. As the primary
instructor teaching this class in the Finance Department at a Midwestern Jesuit
university, the author was a part of
this process.
Although the author
had previously taught the Strategic Management class at the graduate level, it
proved quite a challenge to select
material that was relevant for
the undergraduate students and even more of a challenge to maintain
student interest in the material.
Initially, students were required to choose a local company or a nationally or
internationally known company and conduct: an analysis of their mission
statement; a SWOT analysis; a five-forces analysis; an analysis of their
business portfolio using a Boston Consulting Group(BCG) matrix. Additional
company-specific assignments were given by the instructor based on his
knowledge of specific issues confronting
the company that each student chose.
While this exercise
met the primary goal of introducing key strategic management concepts to the
undergraduate students, the results were, frankly, pretty boring for the
instructor to read, and not very well-received by the students, according to
their comments in the course evaluation and also in exit surveys.
As a result of
attending the Jesuit Business School Conference at Santa Clara Marquette
- conduct a self-analysis including strengths and weaknesses
similar to a SWOT
- develop a personal mission statement including personal,
professional, and spiritual aspects(as appropriate)
- develop a simple “business plan” for the next five years of
their life incorporating personal, professional, and spiritual goals
They are also
invited to, on their own, perform additional analysis as suggested by Fr.
Konz’s original assignment, to
investigate specific career options.
At first, students are somewhat reluctant to analyze
themselves. However, once they are
assured that the project will be graded based on thoroughness and the quality
of the presentation rather than what
they say( a few have “tested” this promise with some pretty bizarre stuff), most of them seem to enjoy the exercise, and
often mention it as a rewarding experience in the course evaluation.
Those who have
never taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI)
are encouraged to do it through the
University’s Career Planning and Placement
Center
Occasionally it has
seemed appropriate for the instructor to share his experiences with a similar
assignment many years ago in order to
assure the students that there is no “correct” answer to the assignment. In particular, discussion of a personal tragedy in the
author’s extended family that led to a time of questioning the goodness of or
even the existence of a God seems to
make the students feel more comfortable discussing their beliefs, lack of
belief, or questioning of their spiritual values.
The first time the
assignment was given, several students were perhaps too thorough in
discussing their personal
backgrounds. The instructor is not a psychologist, psychiatrist, marriage
counselor, or substance abuse counselor,
and some of the stories told were probably better kept private, rather than
revealed in a paper. Thus, subsequent
classes have been told that if there is something they want to talk about, to
include it, but if they would rather not, they are free to say “there is
something very personal that I thought about as a result of this assignment but
would prefer not to write down”. This
option has been invoked by at least one student almost every semester.
Several student
papers will be available for
inspection(with names removed, of course) at the CJBE conference. The real purposes of the assignment are to help the student develop some
understanding of Strategic Management concepts while doing some introspection
and personal analysis. Hence, the instructor’s critique of the paper is intentionally
supportive and positive. But several common threads exist:
- a
majority of the papers fail
to recognize any weaknesses beyond superficial things(They are told: “If
you don’t think you have any, you just identified one”)
- “Being Happy” is usually one of the most important
goals
- a majority of the students are
questioning their faith, and the university experience has clearly fostered this development. A number of them “feel guilty” about this
- ethical issues and “doing the right
thing” are important to the vast
majority of the students. Since
ethics was not even mentioned in the assignment(although ethical issues
are discussed in class) this seems very genuine
- most of the students realize the
potential tradeoff between being
financially successful and having “quality of life” and are already struggling with this
Appendix 1
Personal Evaluation
and Mission Assignment
This assignment is designed to help
you perform a strategic analysis of
a very important organization: You,
Inc. For the rest of your life you
will be CEO of You, Inc. Thus, it is important that you have a mission statement, strategic
analysis, and business plan for this organization. If you choose to do this assignment, rather than the strategy
questions distributed in class, you should perform steps 1,2, and 3 below. The remaining steps go beyond the scope of
this assignment, but would be necessary if you were to do a more complete analysis including an
analysis of your chosen career in financial analysis, financial services,
sales, etc.
1.
Self-Analysis (Strengths/Weaknesses)
Aspirations
Education/Special Training/Certification
Experience
Knowledge/Skills
Values
Personality Traits
Spiritual Needs
Family Needs
Mobility
Job/Position/Company Characteristics
Preferences
Limitations
2.
Develop
a Personal Mission Statement. The best ones include aspects of your
personal, professional, and spiritual life.
3.
Develop a simple “business plan” for the next five years, but include personal and spiritual goals(as appropriate) along
with professional goals. Some of the
items on the next page may be helpful in
developing your plan, so they are included although they are not a part of this
assignment.
Thanks to Dr. Gregory Konz, S.J. ,
Marquette University
Personal Evaluation and Mission
Assignment—page 2
These steps are recommended by Fr. Konz,
who developed the assignment as a Personal Analysis and Strategic Career
Analysis. I am not asking you to do this—just giving it to you as an
interesting way to follow up the analysis for my class and convert it into a career analysis if you want to. Since I think many of you have already done
some of this, I think it is more appropriate for juniors or sophomores than for
you.
4.
Environmental Analysis
(Opportunities/Threats)
·
Occupational Analysis
1.
Occupational Options/Outlooks
2.
Level of Geographic
concentration of Jobs
3.
Educational/Knowledge/Skills/Experience
Requirements
4.
Key Desired Personality Traits
5.
Time/Travel Demands
6.
Total Compensation (Starting,
Average and Ultimate)
·
Industry Analysis (Identify the
one of interest)
1.
Define Industry SIC code
2.
Markets
3.
Size: Number of companies and
Sales over past five years
4.
Major Firms
5.
Channels of Distribution
6.
Degree of Vertical Integration
7.
Analysis of Competitive Forces
(strong, moderate, weak)
8.
Critical Success Factors
9.
Environmental Influences
10. Future Prospects (growth, decline, stagnation, et cetera)
·
Company Analysis (Select one or
two of interest)
1.
Reason for Selection
2.
Brief Description of Ethical
Standards/History/Culture
3.
Human Resource
Policies/Practices/Upward Mobility
4.
Relative Compensation
5.
SWOT Analysis
6.
Long Term Strategies
7.
Future Prospects
Personal Evaluation and Mission
Assignment—page 3
5.
Career Strategy Analysis/Choice
·
Identify Your Long-Term Objectives
·
Career Options Available
1.
Identify the strategic options that are opportunities of which you
wish to take advantage (occupation, industry, specific business or firm, job,
et cetera)
2.
Identify the options that will allow you to avoid environmental
threats
3.
Provide the pros/cons of each strategic option in terms of the
information identified in your Self-Analysis and Environmental Analysis
·
Career Strategy Choice (explain rationale for choice thoroughly)
6.
Implementation
·
Identify and prioritize self-improvement,
skill development and other tasks/activities
·
Categorize the above in terms
of time frame (short, intermediate, or long-term)
·
Identify all means that you
plan to use to build on your strengths and to reduce your weaknesses
7.
Evaluation/Control
·
Explain
how you plan to monitor your progress toward your long-term objectives
·
Indicate any contingency plans
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