Business Strategy Introduction Class PDF
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Uploaded by FeistyDiction7942
Dublin Business School
Juan Pablo Fravega
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Summary
This document is a class introduction for a business strategy course. It covers learning objectives, scope, the lecturer, and introduction, plus other concepts including reflection, critical thinking, and work to be done..
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Business Strategy Introduction Class Class: By Juan Pablo Fravega Learning Objectives ❑ To introduce the Lecturer ❑ To introduce the Module and its Objectives ❑ To introduce all the Students Scope ❑ The scope of this module will have always limitation, namely time, there will a...
Business Strategy Introduction Class Class: By Juan Pablo Fravega Learning Objectives ❑ To introduce the Lecturer ❑ To introduce the Module and its Objectives ❑ To introduce all the Students Scope ❑ The scope of this module will have always limitation, namely time, there will always be more ideas than days and pages. The Lecturer ❑ Juan Pablo Fravega [email protected] ❑ I work at DBS where I am an associate lecturer of marketing and business management. ❑ My specialist area is Marketing and Business Research ❑ I also work as a Business Consultant for PharmaSupport, in the pharmaceutical distribution industry. The Lecturer ❑ I have been lecturing for almost a decade now and I love it! I am passionate about learning and teaching. ❑ I am passionate about how people trough reflective learning can change work places making them better. ❑ I hold an MBA from TSD and a Post Grad Diploma in Social Research from University of Limerick among other academic qualifications Introduction Who Are You? Why are you here? What do you want to achieve? What is your favourite brand and why? After taking this Module ❑ Understand key concepts, theories and models of Strategic Management ❑ Be ready to apply new ways of thinking to your job ❑ Reflect on, re-evaluate your performance ❑ Realise that you knew more than you thought ❑ To appreciate how much more there is to know! Marshall Goldsmith ❑ What got you here won’t get you there! Business Schools ❑ Content is very important but creating the right place, the right conditions and context to develop managerial identity and purpose is key to a business school. Six actions for creating the right conditions 1) Keep a notebook with you (all the time) 2) Mind map (Buzan) 3) Consciously decide to become curious 4) Rate Yourself 5) Write down the three most important words or phrases in your life 6) Watch the ted talk by ‘Sir Ken Robinson’ Rate Yourself 1) My skill as a manager 2) My skill as a leader 3) My analytical skills 4) My Critical skills 5) My Self-awareness 6) My Interpersonal skills 7) My Creativity Management ❑ Management is more like orchestra conducting in a rehearsal, when everything goes wrong! (H. Mintzberg) Assessment –Group project: 50% –Individual assignment: 50% Required Text –Strategic Management () Questions for Reflection ❑ Why did you select this course? ❑ What is your management style? How a colleague describe you? Critical Practice ❑ An open mindset is the only route to insights from this course. ❑ Critical practice is doing it with your eyes wide open. Critical Thinking ❑ We have defined critical thinking as the opposite of uncritical thinking. ❑ Rather than automatically believing what you read or are told, it entails pausing and carefully evaluating what is really going on. ❑ When we think critically, we are searching for the best account we can currently offer of the way things actually are. This involves two related questions: Critical Thinking This involves two related questions: ✓…Why we should accept something as true, and......How things came to be the way they are. Critical Thinking Uncritical thinking: automatically believing what you read or are told without pausing to ask whether it is accurate, true or reasonable. Critical Thinking ❑ Metacognition: thinking about thinking itself; the higher-order skills that allow you to successfully keep on learning, improving and adapting. Critical Thinking Assertion: A statement of fact or belief, provided without support or justification. Argument: An attempt to persuade someone through reasoning that they should agree with a particular conclusion. Conclusion: The final point that someone making an argument is trying to convince you of… Critical Thinking ❑ If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. (Karl Popper). Critical Thinking ❑ Critical thinking: setting out actively to understand what is really going on by using reasoning, evaluating evidence and thinking carefully about the process of thinking itself. Thinking critically for yourself ❑ In the spirit of critical thinking, please don’t assume that everything I say is the last word on any- thing – or that you’re obliged to agree with it. ❑ Disagree, debate, enquire and question as much as you like. ❑ Just make sure you understand exactly what it is you disagree with in the first place; try to work out exactly why you disagree; and then ask what a better explanation might look like. Focus ❑ Conserve mental energy. ❑ Build habits and a working environment that help you focus. ❑ This means NOT having email or social media open in the background. ❑ Deal with email and social media in focused bursts. ❑ Don’t let others dictate your time and attention. THINK ABOUT THIS: Each class has one or two questions as a prompt for reflection. There’s no right or wrong involved. But you’ll get the most out of the module if you embrace these opportunities to pause, clear your mind and ask yourself what you think and believe. Here’s one question to start you off: what are you hoping to get out of this course– and why?............................................................................................................... ‘M’ for Management ❑ Since this course is about management, we should start for understanding this concept. ❑ Management is a relatively a new concept, about 200 years old. ❑ Mass production, Division of Labour and Positive science ‘M’ for Management Any improvement is a change! Not every change is an improvement but certainly every improvement is a change. We cannot improve something unless we change it. Anyone who has worked in an organization for even a few months knows that we cannot escape the validity of the following step: Any change is a perceived threat to security. There will always be someone who will look at the suggested change as a threat to their own security. Now the door is wide open for the unpleasant conclusion. What is the unavoidable result when you threaten somebody's security? Emotional resistance! Henri Fayol, 1916 ❑ Forecasting and Planning ❑ Organizing ❑ Commanding or directing ❑ Coordinating ❑ Developing outputs ❑ Controlling Taylorism, Production Line, TQM ❑ Management as a price science define by time and motion ❑ Ford motor company ❑ Hierarchy ❑ Supply chain ❑ Six Sigma (Motorola) Peter Drucker ❑ Knowledge worker ❑ Relationships ❑ Management and Leaders ❑ Managing by objective ❑ Outsourcing 4 key events in management history ❑ 1888 a USA court granted a legal status to corporation ❑ 1907 scientific management (Frederick Winslow Taylor) ❑ 1927 Hawthorne experiment (E. Mayo, J. Juran, E. Deming) ❑ 1950s MBAs courses took off in the USA first, France and UK after. Activity for Reflective Practice ❑ What do you think the role of management in business is? ❑ How is management defined in the organization you work for? The purpose of Management ❑ Management is a proxy activity ❑ Manager represent others ❑ Management must create value ❑ Value is traditionally measure by money Managers’ Job ❑ Make decisions (under uncertainty) ❑ Gather and analysis information ❑ Communicate effectively ❑ See the strategic connection inherent in every situation Managers’ Job ❑ First level ❑ Middle level ❑ Senior Managers (top level) First Level Managers’ Job ❑ Learning from doing ❑ Learning the ropes ❑ Taking on responsibilities and decision making Very little political involvement in these roles Middle Managers’ Job ❑ all the previous ❑ An informed curiosity ❑ Self preservation ❑ Responsibility for implementation Senior Managers’ Job ❑ Stand in place of the funder or owners ❑ Translate the vision and set the strategy ❑ Keep eyes and ears open: Context Questions for reflection: ❑ Which level of management do you work for? ❑ What tells you this? How do you know it? ❑ How do you feel within the organization? Make some notes under the headings: Long-term commitment, material reward, current emotional state, professional pride In summary: Managing Involves ❑ Acting with thoughtful purpose and intention ❑ Being the symbolic but active representative of the owners ❑ Consciously using resources to create value ❑ Setting the context Reflective Thinking: Talk to at least one or two people, who is in a senior role in your organization and ask them: ❑ How did they get into management? ❑ Generally, what type of thinking (tactical, strategic or critical) does your current job require from you? Spotlight organizing at Semco ❑ ‘Who’s in charge here? No one!’ While one might think this kind of unusual setting in an organization is a lack of organizing, it actually is the main organizing principle at the Brazilian company Semco. Organizing practices include, for instance, employees picking their own bosses and evaluating them twice a year. They also decide their working hours and wage. Meetings are voluntary, and at board meetings two seats are reserved for any member of the organization who turns up first, regular board member or not. There is no mission statement, no human resources department, or headquarter. Self-managed work teams who are in charge of all aspects of production and set their own budgets and production goals, invent and reinvent products. These autonomous work teams can even hire and fire co-workers and bosses with a democratic vote. A quarter of profits are shared with workers. There is a ‘survival manual’ that outlines some of the most basic ‘soft’ practices, like the dress code, namely, that there is NO dress code. Courtesy of the SEMCO Style Institute 44 ❑Before Ricardo Semler just 21 years old took over the company from his father in times of economic depression, SEMCO used to be organized very differently. Change started with a bang, when Ricardo fired 60% of SEMCO’S top management who didn’t want to go along. Change kept going one-by-one starting with what now seems the small step of allowing flexible working hours to beat Sao Paolo’s traffic, and then with the bigger step of having workers decide their own wages. The radical changes he made to SEMCO’s organizing structures and processes have earned Semler titles like ‘the ‘anti-CEO’ who manages from his hammock, ‘subversive’, a ‘corporate rebel’, and a ‘radical boss’. Ricardo likes to call himself a ‘maverick’. There even was a party to celebrate the successful revolution against business as usual, in the form of the tenth year anniversary since Ricardo had last have to make a decision. Semler likes to joke paradoxically, by claiming that ‘my former employees still work for me’ and at the same time expressing that they cannot be described as normal ‘employees’ anymore. 45 Courtesy of the SEMCO Style Institute Spotlight organizing at SEMCO ❑ Doesn’t this sound very much like chaos? Can you successfully manage a company that is organized like this? However, sales grew 286 percent between the years of 1990 and 1996. SEMCO’s value increased from 4 million USD to 160 million USD in 2003, and from 900 to 3000 employees. Employee turnover was minimal and they had become one of Brazil’s favourite employers. Ricardo Semler claims to have shifted the purpose of work from making money to making ‘the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.’ Employees had more free time than in most other businesses, and a genuinely happy work culture. Courtesy of the SEMCO Style Institute 46 Spotlight organizing at SEMCO ❑ No wonder that the ‘Semco Style practices’ of organizing have drawn much attention. Management at SEMCO has helped others, including managers from over 150 Fortune 500 companies to learn these organizing practices. They have even launched an institute that trains others in the over 100 ‘SEMCO style’ practices, and provides resources ‘to dig deeper’ into individual practices. Courtesy of the SEMCO Style Institute 47 Home Work ❑ Watch the Ted Talk: Benjamin zander on music and passion ❑ Watch the ted talk by ‘Sir Ken Robinson’ How schools kill creativity ❑ Watch the ted talk by ‘Ricardo Semler: Radical wisdom for a company, a school, a life’