Strategic Managment

BUS 607 Strategic Management

Instructor:  Randy Blair

(308) 380-4566

randy.blair@doane.edu

TEXTS: 

 Essentials of Strategic Management: The Quest for Competitive Advantage, 3rd ed., John E. Gamble, Arthur A. Thompson Jr., and Margaret Peteraf, McGraw Hill/Irwin. 2011.

 ISBN:  978-0-07-802928-8

The One Thing You Need To Know, Marcus Buckingham.  Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2005.

ISBN:  0743261658

IMPORTANT NOTE:  New regulations under the Higher Education Act require us to verify the identity of a person doing work in a class if we receive assignments, etc. from that student electronically. We can comply with this regulation if our students submit things to teachers electronically from their Doane College e-mail address or through Blackboard.  For that reason, I will only accept assignments submitted to me from your Doane e-mail address.

For this course, you will be required to complete four assignments. Each completed assignment will be typed directly on the documents I send you.  Simply insert your cursor after a question, and type your answer.  When you have completed the assignment, send it to me as an attachment to an e-mail message, and I will send you the next assignment.  Write in some color OTHER THAN RED.  I will give you feedback in red.  

ASSIGNMENT #1:  Understanding the Concept of Strategy

What Is Strategic Management?

Once there were two company presidents who competed in the same industry. These two presidents decided to go on a camping trip to discuss a possible merger. They hiked deep into the woods. Suddenly, they came upon a grizzly bear that rose up on its hind legs and snarled. Instantly, the first president took off his knapsack and got out a pair of jogging shoes. The second president said, "Hey, you can't outrun that bear." The first president responded, "Maybe I can't outrun that bear, but I surely can outrun you!" This story captures the notion of strategic management, which is to achieve and maintain competitive advantage. The purpose of strategic management is to exploit and create new and different opportunities for tomorrow.  Long-range planning, in contrast, tries to optimize for tomorrow the trends of today.

                                                                                           Fred David in the book, Strategic Management   

The first thing I want you to do is watch a conversation with Jack Welch (the retired CEO of General Electric).  This is a presentation at MIT in April 2011.  It is about an hour long, and you will need Real Player installed in your computer to view it.  You can download Real Player for free from the Internet.

Go to http://video.mit.edu/watch/a-new-conversation-with-jack-welch-9702/ You can choose full screen if you like.  Be sure the sound on your computer is turned on.

Enjoy the presentation.  Jack Welch is considered one of the most successful business leaders of the twentieth century, and he has important things to say about planning for the future.

Write a few paragraphs telling me your thoughts on the things Mr. Welch had to say.

        I found the talk with Mr. Welch to be quite interesting. He has a lot of ideas on the business world and how to operate within the business that I really think could apply well to my career as a college basketball coach. At the beginning of the talk he spent some time talking about how you must be willing to come to work every single day and try to find a better way of doing whatever you job is. He mentioned that it is important to remind yourself that there is always someone doing you job better than you. I think this is especially true within the college-coaching world. Coaching is a profession where it is extremely easy to be outworked by others. If you are not willing to put in the extra hours and take all of the time necessary to build a good program, then you are likely to be unsuccessful and possibly even out of a job. He also stated that you can never allow yourself to reach a point where you think you know it all. I can relate to this point because the game of basketball is constantly changing as people become more athletic, new technology changes the way scouting is done, and the rules are altered affecting how games are played. If you are not willing to continue learning and searching out the best way to approach the situation you are presented with, it will become increasingly difficult to succeed.

        Another point that Mr. Welch made during the talk that a company’s only job is to win. There are a lot of people who believe companies have an obligation to be socially responsible. He dismissed this as being a primary function of a company and I agreed with his rationale. All companies should be in business in order to make a profit and provide a useful service to customers, or as Mr. Welch says “to win.” If a company is only focused on meeting social responsibility then the advancement of the company can get lost and the company may eventually go under. When a company focuses on winning and maintaining a dominant position within an industry, they will then have the ability to use their resources to give back to socially responsible causes. He said that giving back only comes from success and I agree with him. If you focus on making the company as profitable as possible, there is going to be a greater amount of money and resources that can be used in other ways. Ultimately, keeping a focus on the main objective allows for more possibilities to open up as time passes.

        One of the topics that was brought up during the talk was differentiation. I agreed with what Mr. Welch had to say regarding this topic as well. It does not make sense that be stop evaluating and differentiating based on performance simply because someone joins the workforce. I personally want to know where I stand with my base and I think it would help people become the best employees possible. This method also helps improve the company because employees will know where they are lacking and can make a concerted effort to fix their issues. As a basketball coach, differentiating is a huge piece of what I do in my job. We are constantly evaluating our players throughout the season to determine how much playing time people are going to get and what their role is going to be on the team. There are many instances when a player will come and ask us what they need to do in order to improve and to get more playing time. This is the same as in a business when an employee wants a raise or a promotion. By differentiating, I think it creates an environment where there is room for both personal growth and growth for the company or team. When the players on our team know where they stand with the coaching staff, they can go out and play freely without having to worry about messing up or losing their spot. He talked about paying the best people more money and not paying the bottom people at all. This is the same as dividing up playing time. It does not make any sense to reward people for doing a poor job. The only thing this will accomplish is diminishing the overall product the company or team is offering.