Exercise:
Telling the "Strategy Story"
Goal:
I want you to practice telling the "story of a strategy" for an organization in a brief narrative using the theories, models, and frameworks from class. No single article on any subject can ever be complete. You'll need to make assumptions and speculate as appropriate. In some cases, drawing analogies from your own experience may be helpful.
Objective:
Find an article on a current event that you believe is an example of an organization's strategy. The source of the article must be from one of the following sources: Los Angeles Ti mes (business section), New York Ti mes (business section), Wall Street Journal , The London Ti mes (busi ness section), The Economist, or Fortune magazi ne. The article must be at least 500 words in length. For this exercise, "current event" is defined as "since you have been enrolled in college."
Print out the article i n its entirety. On a separate sheet, answer the f ol I owi ng questions. Staple your answers and the article together, so that you can turn in this bundle.
01. Why did you select this article? What is its visceral appeal to you?
Q2 Identify the central organization in the article. To be clear: an organization is
larger than a single individual, but smaller than an entire society.
Q3 Briefly summarize a key strategic issue illuminated in your article. Also, is the strategic issue chiefly at the business-level ("the core business model"), the product-level ("key goods or services") or a functional-I evel ("crucial internal processes")?
Q4 Strategy is always "all-inclusive"; that is, we use all tools at our disposal. Are there any elements from our prior class study (e.g., decision-making, culture,diversity, HR, ethics/CSR, the role of managers) that you think are relevant as to how this strategic issue arose?
05. How do you know this issue is truly strategic? That is, how do you know that the issue is long-term in nature, is organization-wide in scope, and requires substantive change on the part of many individuals?
Q6 Do you think the organization is (or should be) primarily using an external approach to strategy or an internal approach to strategy? Which specific elements of external and internal strategy (textbook, H BR, supplemental readings, lectures) do you think best explains or predicts an organizational outcome associated with this strategic issue?
Q7 Do you bel i eve that somewhere in the question or the answer to the strategic issue that either the strategic vision or the strategic mission of the organization is likely to change?
08. Using the language of the Balanced Scorecard, what might be one or two
measures that the organization can use to know that any intervention to address the key strategic issue was, indeed, successful?
Length:
This essay is to be no less than one and one-half pages in length and no more than two full pages in I ength. Other relevant formatting requirements ("style guide") are I i nked from the course web page. Recall also that for all written assignments in this course, 10% is deducted from the content score for each type of error in language use.
Performance Measurement:
The maximum number of points for content on this exercise is 8.