SYLLABUS: MAN 6721
APPLIED STRATEGY AND BUSINESS POLICY
________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to MAN
6721, Applied Strategy and Business Policy.
This is your capstone course, one that attempts to integrate what you
have been learning over the course of the program. Its goals are threefold: 1) to familiarize
you with the strategic analysis and planning side of running a business unit,
2) to integrate the various areas of expertise required to operate a business
unit successfully, and 3) to provide an opportunity to practice using these
tools across settings.
CLASS
PROCESS
The course is very
conversational, very interactive, very hands-on. Most weeks begin with an open conversation
about the experiences you have had in dealing with the week’s topic. From there, we move to a discussion of the
key challenges involved in understanding and managing that aspect of business
strategy. Finally, we present a set of
tools aimed at helping to guide you through both.
ACCESS
Office: BA(1)
310
Office/cell/fax: (407) 823-2932 ; (321)
287-3004; (407) 823-3725
Email: mschminke@bus.ucf.edu
Web: http://web.bus.ucf.edu/faculty/mschminke/
(“courses” then “MAN 6721”)
Office hours: Anytime immediately before or after class,
other times by appointment.
TEXTS
Main: Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter
Main: On Competition by Michael Porter
Supplemental: Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
OTHER USEFUL READING
OTHER REFERENCES:
Much of what we talk
about this semester will come from Michael Porter’s foundational work. We will look at a lot of newer ideas, too,
but the basis for much of the current thinking in strategy comes from these classics. I’ve listed some others here, and will provide
many more as we work our way through the material. Note that these are not required, but you may find them interesting and useful. More examples will follow during the
semester.
- Peter F.
Drucker (2001). The Essential
Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on
Management.
- Carl W. Stern,
Michael S.
Deimler (2006). The Boston
Consulting Group on Strategy: Classic Concepts and New Perspectives.
- W.
Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne (2005). Blue Ocean Strategy.
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF YOUR STRATEGY GRADE
Your grade is based on both individual and team performance.
I.
Points you earn on your own: 300
10-K Integration Project: 100
Industry Analysis
Project: 100
End-of-semester peer
evaluation: 100
II.
Points you earn with your team: 200
Strategic Analysis:
Case competition paper: 100
Case competition presentation/strategy 100
________
Total 500
PROJECTS
& CASES
In addition to regular class activities, you will
have the opportunity to participate in three projects during the semester. The first two (The 10-K Integration Project
and the Industry Analysis Project) are individual-level projects and involve
papers only. The third is a team-based
project involving a strategic analysis and recommendation for a specific
fim. This third project will be
presented in both paper and presentation formats, with the presentation being
the foundation for the Great EMBA Case Competition. Brief descriptions follow. Full descriptions are provided in the
appendix to this document.
Project 1: The
10-K Integration Project (an individual project)
You will have the chance to showcase your
individual research, analysis, and writing skills in the 10-K Integration
Project. This project involves selecting
a firm you are interested in learning a little more about, digging into the
business analysis section of its 10-K (the annual report required by the SEC of
all publicly traded firms), and applying what you discover there to the
industry analysis and strategic analysis frameworks developed in class.
This project is not a full-blown industry or
strategic analysis. Rather, it’s an
opportunity to take a first look at some real-world information and see how it
maps onto the industry analysis and firm analysis tools we will be using in the
course. Thus, the project allows you to
learn more about a company you’re interested in, and gives you a chance to use some
of the tools that will be critical in the subsequent case analyses. This effort
will culminate with a 10 page paper (that’s
a maximum, excluding appendices & references).
Project 2: Industry
Analysis (an individual project)
You represent a consulting firm that has been
asked to provide an analysis of a specific industry (of your choice), with
respect to its current, real-world situation.
A significant portion of class material and activities will be oriented
toward learning how to perform quality industry analyses. This effort will culminate with a 10 page (max) paper (not includuing appendices
& references).
The
Industry Analysis Paper
The goal of this project is to conduct a
competitive analysis of an industry. The
paper contains several sections (explained more fully in the project guide in
the appendix): 1) introduction, 2) industry’s dominant features, 3) issues of
concern in the broad macro-environment, 4) Porter’s Five Forces, and 5) final
analysis and final questions.
Project 3:
Strategic Analysis (of a specific company) (a team project)
Your team represents a consulting firm charged
with preparing a strategic analysis of a specific firm. This analysis will result in both a paper and
a presentation. All teams will examine
the same firm, and will address the same general strategic issue (which will be
announced later on). This effort will
culminate with a 25 page paper (maximum, excluding
appendices & references) and a 15 minute
presentation of your team’s analysis of the firm and your strategic recommendations
for it.
Your team will self-manage the process by
which the various research, writing, and analysis tasks are handled. It is not likely that everyone on the team
will have an equal hand in each section or in each task across the semester. However, it is expected that by the end of
the project, all team members will have contributed fairly equally to the
overall output.
Strategic
Analysis Paper
At a later date, I will announce the company
to be analyzed by all teams, and the particular strategic issue of
concern. Your team will conduct a
strategic analysis of that company, using current data and assessing their
current situation and strategic needs.
The paper contains several sections. It begins with an executive summary and
introduction, followed by sections that address: 1) current company mission and
strategy, 2) SWOT analysis, 3) sustainable competitive advantage and major issues
& problems, 4) strategic recommendations, and 5) fallout and summary.
Strategic
Analysis Presentation (“The Great EMBA Case Competition”)
Your team will have the opportunity to
present the core findings of your strategic analysis in The Great EMBA Case
Competition. This consists of a 15 minute
presentation to the class—and a panel of external judges, including previous
graduates of the UCF EMBA program and/or representatives from the focal
firm.
Your goal in this competition is not
simply to present your paper. (Nobody
wants to sit through several consecutive SWOT analyses of the same firm.) I will see all the details of what you did in
the paper and its appendices. I will
evaluate all of that via the paper.
Therefore, you don’t need to try to convey all of that during the relatively
short presentation.
Rather, your goal will be to quickly (i.e., less
than a minute) summarize the firm’s situation and then move directly into what
you learned from the analysis, and what strategic initiative(s) you recommend
to the top management team at the company.
For example, which aspects of the SWOT analysis present the greatest
challenges? What sustainable competitive
advantage will we build (or build upon)?
What is the most opportune strategic initiative available to us right
now? Do we have the capacity to execute
on it? How will we make it happen? Etc.
Again, the goal is not to recite your paper but to provide insights
about the firm and its strategic options.
Note: I
will evaluate the paper portion of this project. The external judges will evaluate the
presentation (The Great EMBA Case Competition) portion.
The Great EMBA Case Competition will be held the next-to-last day of
class. Gold, silver, and bronze medalist
teams will be determined by the judge’s ratings. Details to follow.
TEAMS
I asked the EDC to assign you to teams for
the semester based with two aims in mind:
1) pairing up individuals who haven’t yet had much of a chance to work
together and 2) dividing among the teams some of the various technical and
experiential skills you bring to the mix.
(Accountants are useful. But four
on one team? Not so much.)
Team A
|
Team B
|
|||||||
|
Marvin Gardner
Brian Walker
Cathy Klasne
Clarise Gilmore
|
|||||||
Team C
|
Team D
|
|||||||
|
|
End-of-semester
Peer Evaluation
At the EMBA level, most group members are
really good about managing team projects like this. But you’ll want to be sensitive to balancing
the overall workload across the project, across the semester. Note that at the end of the semester, a
for-credit peer evaluation will happen, which will allow you to assess the
relative contribution you and your teammates have made to the projects. So if your semester is a little more flexible
in the early weeks, you might contribute more on this project. If it’s more flexible later on, you might
contribute more on the firm analysis project.
But by the end of the semester, everyone should have found equivalent
ways to contribute.
GRADING
All grading is curved. Your
total points as a percent of possible total points will be calculated and
ranked against the rest of the class. My
assumption going into the semester is that everyone here is an A or B student. (And in many cases, which side of that divide
one lands in is often determined by what’s going on in life outside the class
this particular semester, rather than the capabilities of the student
him/herself.) The average grade usually
falls someplace on the border between those.
I don’t use fixed percentages for each grade; I allow the curve to emerge,
with natural breaks emerging and showing the cutoffs for each grade level. I use +/- grading. However, my goal is to give at least
as many pluses as minuses, so the net effect on overall grades is usually positive.
SOME OTHER NOTES
Because of the depth of the case analyses, I will try to allocate some
class time each session for individual and/or team-level consultations. This won’t cover all of the time you will
need to attack these projects, but it will at least give you a chance to get
organized and coordinate your efforts.
I’ll be available to consult with your and/or your teams during this
period to help clarify, streamline, and support your activities.
If you don't remember the basics from finance and accounting (how to do
NPV problems, read balance sheets, read income statements, etc.) and marketing,
you’ll want to brush up. You really do
have to know at least the basics across the various functional areas. Here are some helpful little tutorials. (Odd presentation style; good content.)
Time value of money: http://www.youtube.com/user/ExcelIsFun#p/a/57F30CEAE42ECB83/0/td4nDJ04YYo
Schedule
of Topics
|
Chapter
Readings
(CA=Competitive
Advantage) (OC=On Competition)
|
In
class activities, projects due, projects returned, comments.
|
|
Jan
6
|
Course introduction.
|
.
OC 2: What is strategy?
|
Introduction to the course, the syllabus,
and the semester.
Conversation: What’s strategy?
Exercise:
Now that’s bad strategy.
Short team meetings .
|
Jan
7
|
Mission & strategy.
OT: External analysis.
|
CA 1: Generic strategies
|
Conversation: Mission - Who are we and
what do we do?
Conversation: What’s out there and why does it matter? (Part I)
Introduce Project
1:10-K Integration
Introduce Project
2: Industry Analysis
Ind/Team meetings.
|
Jan
20
|
OT: External analysis.
SW: Internal analysis.
|
OC 1: The five forces
CA 2: The value chain
|
Conversation: What’s out there and why does it matter? (Part II)
Exercise:
The general environment.
Exercise: Current competitors & the
five forces.
Ind/Team meetings.
|
Jan
21
|
SW: Internal analysis.
|
Conversation: What makes us good?
Exercise:
Hall’s model.
Introduce Project
3: Strategic Analysis
Ind/Team meetings.
|
|
Thurs
Jan
26
Feb
3
|
Note: Not a class weekend!
Formulating strategies.
Portfolio approaches.
Porter hates portfolios.
(But a different definition)
|
CA 3: Cost leadership pp. 62-64, 97-118.
CA 4: Differentiation pp. 119-130, 150-163.
CA 9: Inter-unit relationships pp. 317-326, 350-353.
CA 10: Diversification pp. 364-368, 375-376,
380-382.
(Optional)
OC 5: Differentiation and a different definition of portfolios
|
Due: Project 1 (10-K Integration)
Email to mschminke@bus.ucf.edu
and mpriesemuth@bus.ucf.edu
Conversation: So what ARE your
strategies?
Exercise: Creative strategies.
Conversation: Strategy as a portfolio of
activities.
10-K Integration
Project returned
Ind/Team meetings.
|
Feb
4
|
Evaluating strategic options.
Strategic control.
|
(Optional)
CA 13: Uncertainty pp. 445-457.
|
Conversation: What makes a strategy good?
Exercise:
Real world bad strategies…
Conversation: How do we keep score?
Exercise:
Alternative metrics
Team meetings.
|
ThursFeb 9
Feb
17
|
Note: Not a class weekend!
Implementation: Planning and process.
|
Due: Project 2
(Industry Analysis)
Email to mschminke@bus.ucf.edu
and mpriesemuth@bus.ucf.edu
Conversation: People and processes
matter. But how?
Exercise:
Nominal groups.
Team meetings.
|
|
Feb
18
|
Implementation: Ethics .
|
Conversation: Suppose ethics mattered?
Exercise: Ethics.
Project 2 returned.
Team meetings.
|
|
Mar
2
|
Implementation: Structure.
|
Recall:
CA 1: 23-25.
CA 2: 59-61.
.
|
Conversation: But it’s more than just people, too.
Exercise:
Diagnosing structure.
Exercise:
Managing structure.
Final team meetings.
|
Mar
3
|
Implementation: International.
Implementation: Alliances
|
Conversation: It’s a big world.
Exercises: TBA
|
|
Wed Mar 14
Mar 16
|
Note: Wednesday before a class weekend!
The Great EMBA Case Competition!
|
None.
|
Due: Project 3 (Strategic Analysis)
Email to mschminke@bus.ucf.edu
and mpriesemuth@bus.ucf.edu
In-class competition.
|
Mar
17
|
The Language of Leadership
|
None.
|
Conversation: What’s next for strategy?
Final assessments.
Closing comments.
(Project 3 graded
asap.)
|
(Ap 27)
|
100% Optional
|
Undergrad Case
Competition
|
(Friday, 3:45-5:30)
|
May 3-5
|
Commencement!
|
Congratulations!
|
The Porter books
address a number of additional important topics including strategic benefits of
clusters, attacking an industry leader, and playing defense. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for all of
these. But I hope you will explore them
throughout both books.
Appendix
PROJECTS GUIDE: MAN 6721
Strategic Management
Project 1: The 10-K Integration
Project
Purpose: Explore the wonders of the 10-K
document. Learn a little about a
company. Develop some facility with an
outside research resource that will be useful throughout the semester. Get our hands dirty with some preliminary
industry analysis. And look ahead to how
all of this will fit together as part of a firm-specific strategic
analysis.
Length: 10 page maximum (not including
appendices, references, etc.).
Process: Select a publicly-traded company of
interest to you.
·
Go to http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
and find their latest 10-K (annual report to the SEC). Just enter the company name or ticker symbol
and click on “find companies.” In many
cases, multiple options will pop up. If
you are looking for Nike, you may find Nike Securities as well as Nike
Inc. Click on the specific firm you
want. Scroll down the list of filings to
the most recent 10-K. Make sure it’s
from the past year. Click on “documents.” Select the “Form 10-K” document by clicking
on the .htm file in the Document column.
·
Within the 10-K, you will find a section
near the front of the document called “Business.” It’s usually the first major section of the
10-K. Start your reading at this
section, continuing through all of Part I of the 10-K. (Part I includes the Business section, but
also additional sections with titles like “Risk Factors.” In all, Part I will usually be about 10-20
pages. And it’s FULL of interesting
strategic information.)
·
From it, select one statement that
represents each of the following concepts from the course (you’ll end up with 15
total):
o
Each of the PESTLE Forces:
1.
Political
2.
Economic
3.
Socio-cultural
4.
Technological
5.
Legal
6.
Environmental
o
o
Each of Porter’s Five Forces:
7.
Current competitors (and intensity of
rivalry among them)
8.
Threat of new entrants (and entry/exit
barriers more generally)
9.
Suppliers (and their bargaining power)
10. Buyers
(and their bargaining power)
11. Threat
of substitute products/services
o
o
Each dimension of the SWOT areas of
analysis:
12. Strengths 14. Opportunities
13. Weaknesses 15. Threats
·
For each of these 15 concepts: a)
number and label each concept, b)
reproduce the statement from the 10-K that you think represents it, c) provide
your interpretation of why you think it represents that concept, and d) explain
why you feel it is important to understanding the competitive position of the
company. (Each Part (d) answer should
take about a paragraph, so at three per page, this should be about five pages
in all..)
·
Select
one statement from the 10-K that best identifies the company's chosen
competitive strategy. Reproduce this statement, and then a) provide your
assessment of the competitive strategy it represents, and b) fully describe how
it supports the competitive position of the company. (You should be able to accomplish this in
about a page.)
·
Conclude
your analysis by writing a two page explanation that compares and contrasts the
company’s view of itself (as reflected in the 10-K) and the view of the company
presented in a major business periodical of your choice (e.g., The Wall Street Journal, Business Week,
Fortune, etc.). Be sure to provide a
complete copy of the article from the business press you are using for
comparison (and a complete reference for that article). Your analysis should be detailed and
represent your insights drawn from thinking carefully about the company’s
statements and those made by the publication you chose for contrast.
Project 2: Industry Analysis
Purpose: Your represent a consulting firm that has been
asked to provide an analysis of a specific industry. (The choice of industry is up to you. It may be your current “real world” industry,
an industry you’re thinking of making a move to, or just an industry you happen
to be interested in.) The goal of your
analysis will be to 1) identify important general issues/trends in the
macroenvironment, 2) establish the attractiveness of the industry across each
of Porter’s Five Forces of Competition, and 3) provide an overall assessment of
the attractiveness of the industry as a strategic opportunity.
Length: 10 page maximum (not including
appendices, references, etc.).
Process: Select an industry to analyze. In doing so, be sure you will be able to find
adequate information about it by consulting various industry analysis sources
(e.g., IbisWorld) at the UCF library portal for business analysis tools: http://libguides.lib.ucf.edu/business. The key is to define the industry narrowly
enough to be of interest to your clients, but broadly enough to allow you to
find adequate information. For example,
if your goal is to assess the industry attractiveness of fast food Chinese
restaurants, then defining the industry as fast food Chinese is probably too
narrow to allow you to find much information.
However, defining the industry simply as restaurants is probably too
broad, in that it would include full service restaurants of all types as well
as fast food. The appropriate middle
ground would probably be to identify the industry as the fast food industry
(NAICS code 72221).
Sources: Our library has amazing online
business research sources. Enter the
portal for business analysis tools at: http://libguides.lib.ucf.edu/business. There you will see a section running down the
left side of the page titled “About a Company.”
Links there will take you to great sources like Hoover’s Online, Value
Line, and S&P. (Some of these
provide industry information as well.)
On the right side you’ll see a section titled “About an Industry.” Clicking on “General Information” will
provide links to sources of industry information like IbisWorld. These are truly great resources, and noodling
around the various tabs and links on that portal page will take you deeper and
deeper into a terrific collection of resources.
(By the way, when you graduate your lifetime membership in the UCF
Alumni Association allows you continued access to these resources.)
Good reports convey the following:
·
Significant
secondary research
·
Integration
of course concepts, frameworks, and tools (I’ll be looking for this.)
·
Demonstrated
ability to distill broad evidence down to most critical issues
·
Precise
business writing skills; written in plain English
·
An
ability to summarize and convey what you’ve learned from the analysis.
To Do: Begin by learning as much about the industry
as you can. You will rarely find all you
need in a single source, by the way.
Starting your research:
1.
Determine
your NAICS code. This will increase the
efficiency of your research. If you
cannot identify the NAICS code, then try to identify the SIC code.
2.
Utilize
the UCF library portal for business research as a starting point.
3.
Find
additional magazine/journal/news articles or books about the industry.
4.
Use
the Internet more broadly, which can provide terrific supplements to, but not
replacements for, the previous sources.
Document your sources: As you conduct your research, carefully
document the sources of the information.
Include this information at the end of your paper. Provide precise enough information that if I
have a question about a point you make, I can easily go to the original source
material and explore it.
Outline: The following is an outline of
the types of issues you will want to address in your paper. Be sure to go beyond just describing the
industry, to describe the implications of your findings for those in—or
contemplating entering—the industry.
Note that not all issues contained within each section will apply to
every industry. However, be sure to
include all of these headings in your paper, and if one or more are not
applicable to your industry, briefly explain why and move on.
1. Introduction: In one
or two sentences, provide a brief introduction to your industry.
2. Industry’s Dominant Features (1
page): Note dominant economic features
of the industry. From what you learned
in your research, what really sticks out as especially important, different,
and/or surprising about this industry?
Such features might include
market size, scope of rivalry, growth rate and what stage of the life
cycle is the industry in, number of rivals and their relative size, prevalence
of forward/backwards integration, channels of distribution, pace of process and
product technology change, whether products are highly differentiated or very
similar, to what extent economies of scale are critical in purchasing,
distribution, and/or advertising, to what extent learning curves exist, whether
high rates of capacity utilization are important for profitability, historical
levels of profitability, whether segments exist within the industry (and if so,
what they are), how the presence of segments affects firms, strategies,
competition, and levels of profitability within each segment, and so on. Note that you can’t possibly address all of
these in a page. But if there are 2-3
that really stand out as notable, as things that really shaped your view of the
industry, this is the place to highlight them.
3. Issues of concern in the Broad Macro-Environment (2
pages). Search for information about
issues and trends in the PESTLE forces:
Political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, legal, and
environmental. (These may emerge on
local, national, and/or global fronts.)
Note: You do not need to discuss all factors in the general environment,
only those especially relevant to the industry under study. Be sure to make a strong case for whether
these factors enhance or detract from the attractiveness of the industry.
4. Porter's
Five Forces (5 pages). Your report
should describe your key findings with respect to each of Porter’s Five
Forces. (Note: This may include the finding that one or more
aren’t relevant (such as “current competitors” in a government-sanctioned
monopoly like power generation). Provide
clear headings for each. For each force,
explore the issues that determine the power of each force in shaping the
structure of the industry. Determine
whether each force renders the industry more or less attractive.
·
Threat of Substitute Products
·
Intensity of Competitive Rivalry in the
Industry (Current Competitors)
·
Threat of New Entrants
·
The Power of Buyers
·
The Power of Suppliers
5. Final analysis and final questions (2 pages).
Conclude by pulling all of this together. From what you’ve learned in this process,
answer the following questions:
·
Overall, what are the dominant forces
acting on the industry (e.g., are they within-industry forces or external-to-the-industry
forces)?
·
How do they interrelate to shape the
industry?
·
In the end, which are really the most
critical for understanding the industry?
·
What are the Key Success Factors for
operating in this industry?
·
What does the future look like for this
industry?
All
of this will then conclude by answering the final, most critical,
question: Is this an attractive industry
to be part of? (You may answer this in
terms of “how many stars” would you give this industry, on a five point scale.)
6. Appendix: Bibliography or works cited; any other
related documents you would like me to have access to, in the order in which
they are mentioned in your report.
Tips for the industry analysis:
1. Recall
that the overall goal of the industry analysis is to make an overall judgment
of the attractiveness of the industry.
This is a judgment we should be able to make without even knowing what
company is asking the question. (For
example, is it a strong player, a weak player, or even just a potential player
in that industry.) I often see comments
in these reports like, “This would be an attractive industry for this type of
company." I understand the point,
but that’s jumping ahead of the basic industry analysis. It’s jumping ahead to the strategic analysis
for a particular company. As such, it’s
a different question. It is very
possible that a specific firm might not pursue a particular industry (even if
it were generally deemed to be an attractive industry) for all sorts of reasons
(e.g., it doesn't play to our competitive advantage; we don't have the
resources to get over the barriers to entry, etc.). For our purposes, we should first be able to
make a judgment about industry attractiveness in general, and then later on
we'll make the decision about whether it would be smart for a given firm to
pursue that industry. Think about it
this way. We could probably reach a
general consensus about certain pieces of art or music or architecture or even
people as being attractive or not, right?
But that doesn't mean it would make any sense at all for each of us to
pursue the Mona Lisa or the Venus De Milo or the Chrysler Building or Brad Pitt
or Angelina Jolie. All are attractive,
but not all would be a good fit for us, personally. But that doesn't make them any less
attractive, right? The same is true for
industries; they can be attractive, independent of whether they would represent
a good fit for our firm..
2. In making
your case for attractiveness or unattractiveness of an industry, make it
piece-by-piece. You have this nice
structure of the five forces, the macro-environment factors, etc. Use those steps to summarize along the way
whether (and how) each is contributing to the overall attractiveness of the
industry. Then it's a pretty simple matter
to just sum them up at the end. Many of
you provided VERY nice assessments of the five forces, etc. But then your final conclusion didn't make it
very clear which factors weighed most heavily in that overall assessment. It doesn't matter much whether you're working
on a 5-star scale or a 10 point scale.
But have a scale and identify the value (either positive or negative)
that each of these factors adds or subtracts from the total as you go.
3. Making
that cumulative case along the way also helps you make the transition to the
next use of this industry analysis.
Remember the real value here is you're going to pull this industry
analysis process into the firm-specific analysis that comes next. So all of this is going to boil down to that
"OT" section of the SWOT analysis.
And if you check the guide on that next case, you'll notice the goal is
to identify the three biggest opportunities and threats this external analysis
revealed. Keeping score along the way as
you do the 5 forces and macro environment analyses makes it much easier to ID
those "most critical" O's and T's, so as to roll them seamlessly into
your SWOT analysis in the next stage.
Two smaller points.
First, no plastic covers needed.
Second, some of you (you know who you are) tend to be masters of the
micro-font. The goal of a 10 page paper
isn't to try to fit 20 pages of material in there. Doing so only buries the biggest, most
critical things so deeply it's tougher to identify them. And it slows down the review process
considerably. So let's go 12-point,
1" margins, and all of that, okay?
Single spaced is fine if you want to do that, but double-space between
paragraphs. Appendices are free; go nuts
there if you’d like. But for the core
text, let's play within the spirit of the 10 page rule.
Project 3: Strategic (Firm)
Analysis
Purpose: The second case study for the
course involves a full strategic analysis for a specific firm. It is more broad-ranging than the industry
analysis, examining the overall strategic situation (including, but not limited
to, its industry analysis) facing the firm.
This document outlines the structure for the paper portion of this
analysis, which we can call a STRATEGIC AUDIT.
To perform a strategic audit we’ll address five specific areas. When doing your write-ups, be sure to provide
clear headings for each of these sections.
That really helps me to follow where you are and what you’re
saying. This framework will provide the
template that we will build upon throughout the semester.
Length: 25 pages maximum (not including
appendices and references)
Process: All teams will pursue the same
company, and the same general strategic challenge. Follow previous directions for establishing
baseline material on the industry and specific firm. From there, the sky is the limit.
Below is a guide
to the main components of the paper, and relative proportions of each
section. Note: These apply to the paper only. The presentation portion of this
project involves your best effort at convincing a panel of guest judges that
your strategic proposal is sound. These
are brief presentations, so you don’t have a lot of time for all of this
background material. I will evaluate
your strategic analysis, process, and thinking via these papers. The judges will evaluate the quality of your
resulting ideas via the “pitch.”
1. MISSION
Identify the
CORPORATE MISSION. Who are these people
and what do they do in the world? A
successful CEO could tell you in one sentence what his/her organization is
about. Your company should be able to do
this, too. If you can't for your firm
(or for one you are performing a strategic audit on), how can you expect to
decide whether a new project or strategy is appropriate? So answer this question: Who are you and what do you do?
In this section
we’re citing the CURRENT corporate mission.
If it needs updating, what you think it should be is presented in
the STRATEGIES section below. (That’s
where we talk about changes and strategic initiatives.) Neither should be longer than about 25
words. To identify the mission, you need
to understand the following: (1) what
they do, (2) how and where they do it, and (3) what their basic strategic
posture is. The strategic posture is
something we will learn about later on.
It includes where they lie along three distinct strategic criteria
(growth, differentiation vs. cost, and breadth vs. focus). Of course, you really can't nail down what
the mission should be until you've completed the SWOT analysis (see
below).
Note that your
analysis of strategic should contain those things that make the company unique. (Desiring to make a profit, for example,
wouldn’t necessarily make you unique.)
Further, missions are often not clearly stated. You may have to dig to infer one. Do so, but if you do, make it clear you’ve
done that. Later, you will evaluate
whether you think this current mission is still appropriate or not, and why.
Further, don't
state this as a goal ("To be the best airline in the business" or
"To boldly grow as no airline has grown before") but rather as a
credo by which to run the company ("Opus, Inc. is Bloom County's largest,
lowest-cost producer of value-priced bow ties and apparel
accessories.") When we get there,
the section in class that deals with mission will help make more sense of this.
2. SWOT
ANALYSIS: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
Threats. This is the foundation for your
strategic audit.
Outline the key
SWOTs: Strengths and Weaknesses of the
firm; Opportunities and Threats facing the firm. Ss and Ws are internal. Os and Ts are external. Class material will provide you with some
tools to help with these analyses.
·
Provide
headings for each section.
·
Don't
just recite facts from the analysis; analyze and categorize them. The final goal is to identify the 3 most
important of each (S,W,O,T) and list them in order of importance.
·
Note
the OT side of the SWOT will emerge not just from the Five Forces model, but
will also include a more global environmental analysis as well.
·
Once
you have done the SWOT analysis, you should be able to identify SPECIFICALLY
the firm's Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA). The SCA represents a firm’s particular
distinctive competence. What do they
do better than anyone else? What do
they have that no one else has?
Identifying this SCA will drive the solutions in the next section. For example, if the SCA is not at all
consistent with the mission, the mission may have to be changed.
·
Note: Typically, a SCA is the firm's #1 strength;
but a #1 strength is not necessarily a SCA.
3. ISSUES AND
PROBLEMS
Time to summarize:
What are the biggest issues and problems
now facing the firm?
Maybe they don't
have a clear cut SCA. Then what? Say so.
If that happens, then in the STRATEGY section (below) you need to
identify what to do about that. That is,
what do they have that could become one, or how might they develop one? (If you still come up empty, they are
probably in big trouble.)
Once you have
performed the SWOT analysis and identified the SCA, you need to evaluate the
current mission in light of those. Is it
still appropriate? Does it need to be
changed? To what? Only after you have done this can you hope to
lay out specific strategies to be undertaken.
(You can’t plot a route if you don't know where you want to end
up.)
Note: The SWOT is NOT the solution. It merely gets you in position to
generate a solution.
So, what do you
know so far? What are the most important
issues to be dealt with? What are the
biggest core problems? Keep in mind that
you want to solve problems, not treat symptoms. Showing a financial loss for the quarter is
not a problem. It’s a symptom of a problem (or
problems). You should think about the
underlying causes of the symptoms you observe, and go after those. Just as you did with the SWOTs, you should
identify the three biggest issues or problems, and be able to rank order
their importance.
At this point, you should have used up only about half
of your allocated space. If you’ve used
more than about half of your overall page limit, it’s probably time for some
editing. Be sure to leave yourself
enough space to do a thoughtful and comprehensive job on the remaining
sections.
4. STRATEGIES
Given everything
that you now know from steps (1), (2), and (3), what are the appropriate
STRATEGIES to be undertaken? This is the
section of the analysis where you provide solutions. This is where you tell me specifically what
you want to do with the company. Pick
the strategic move(s) that you think they should make NOW and give me a detailed
description of how they should do it. We
need specifics here. How much will it
cost? Where will the money come from? Where will it go? How profitable will it be? Who will do what? How does this idea fare when evaluated via
the strategic initiative evaluation process (to be presented in class)? The goal is to be focused and provide some
depth here, with respect to the one or two most important strategies to
undertake NOW, rather than to be broad and shallow with respect to a dozen
strategies that will be undertaken eventually.
(My assumption is if you can do a great job on 1-2 strategies, you could
do that for the dozen or so you’d probably be dealing with if we were doing
this for real.) Be sure to consider the
following:
·
Are
current strategies still appropriate? If
not, what is needed? How will you make
them work? (Anyone can think up glitzy
solutions...but are they DO-ABLE?)
·
Focus
on your hottest prospect, or the one strategy the others would hinge on, or the
one with the biggest bottom-line impact.
I’d rather see good details on one strategy than a very shallow
look at several.
·
Be
sure to consider the tools we’ve looked at in class up to this point. Use those models, frameworks, theories. Use them to inform your thinking. I will be looking for this.
·
Strategies
are big things. Your move should have
the capacity to exert a serious impact on the bottom line of the company.
5. FALLOUT
All solutions
create problems. The key is to solve
more than you create. (As Homer Simpson
famously said, “We have beer, and we have fireworks. What could possibly go wrong?”) Well, what could go wrong? What are the problems your solutions
(strategies) may cause and why should we, the board of directors, not be overly
concerned? Why won't the terrible things
happen that seem inevitable or why aren't they so bad even if they do
happen? The people to whom you are
presenting your ideas are pretty sharp.
They will be looking for holes in your arguments, to try to head off
nifty-looking ideas that are fundamentally unsound before they cause a lot of
trouble. When reading your papers, or
listening to your presentations, I will be trying to do just that. Beat me to the punch on why I might be
worried about your solutions.
PROPORTIONS OF ALL OF THESE IN YOUR WRITEUPS
The mission
statement should be just that—a statement.
A sentence. 25 words or
less. By the halfway point, the mission,
SWOT, and PROBLEMS should be finished.
Of the 1/2 remaining, use about 2/3 to 3/4 for the strategies section
and about 1/3 to 1/4 for the fallout section.
Stick to these guidelines closely or you will end up giving too much
attention to some things and not enough to others.
That's it: MISSION, SWOT, PROBLEMS, STRATEGIES, and
FALLOUT. A few minutes in front of the
board of directors. Don't worry if you
find this to be a little troublesome at first.
The class is all about learning how to do this effectively. We’ll get plenty of practice, and we'll see
to it that you get better at it as the weeks go by.
For Premium Academic and Professional Research: jumachris85@gmail.com
For more theory and case studies on: http://expertresearchers.blogspot.com/
For more theory and case studies on: http://expertresearchers.blogspot.com/
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