Link Between Literature and Practice of Making Strategy
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Link Between Literature and Practice of Making Strategy
Hi, great response so far on Assignment 2, which is great to see. With this assignment we are challenging you to make a link between the literature on strategy and the practice of making strategy. We’ve asked you to identify TWO factors and discuss how they impact upon the practice of making strategy.
As there are TWO factors, there will be TWO arguments and therefore TWO thesis statements. You may want to split the essay in TWO parts to structure this. However, if your TWO factors are similar, you may want to combine your arguments to some extent.
With regards to choosing your factors and how they affect practice, I would encourage you to be more specific rather than more generic. This is simply because it will be easier for you to answer the question. For example, answering the question “How does culture affect the practice of making strategy?” will be more difficult than “How does working in groups affect the rich picture stage of a strategy project?” or “How does the concept of value proposition affect the practice of business modelling?”.
So I would encourage you to follow your interests and be specific. Once you have some factors you find interesting, you can use your tutor to help you define your essay question in the tutorial next week.
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Hi, great response so far on Assignment 2, which is great to see. With this assignment we are challenging you to make a link between the literature on strategy and the practice of making strategy. We’ve asked you to identify TWO factors and discuss how they impact upon the practice of making strategy.
As there are TWO factors, there will be TWO arguments and therefore TWO thesis statements. You may want to split the essay in TWO parts to structure this. However, if your TWO factors are similar, you may want to combine your arguments to some extent.
With regards to choosing your factors and how they affect practice, I would encourage you to be more specific rather than more generic. This is simply because it will be easier for you to answer the question. For example, answering the question “How does culture affect the practice of making strategy?” will be more difficult than “How does working in groups affect the rich picture stage of a strategy project?” or “How does the concept of value proposition affect the practice of business modelling?”.
So I would encourage you to follow your interests and be specific. Once you have some factors you find interesting, you can use your tutor to help you define your essay question in the tutorial next week.
3I know it’s a bit early, but when you’re thinking about the structure of the assignment, I suggest you think of it as 2 essays – one for each factor. Hence, you will have 2 arguments (thesis statements). One argument for how factor 1 affects the practice of making strategy and another argument for how factor 2 affects the practice of making strategy. There’s no need to combine the two factors into a single argument, but you can if you wanted to.
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I’ve had a number of discussions and emails from students and I’m starting to see where you find this assignment challenging. The problems are exactly as we expected, so don’t worry. It’s really about getting your head around what you are being asked to do. My experience though is this is a common issue and when the penny drops, you’ll see it’s more straightforward than you think.
If I ask you a question. You’ll give me an answer. For example, my question – “what is the best brand of car for a student to buy?”. Your answer – “VW is the best brand of car for a student to buy because they are reliable and hold their value”. In this this case your thesis statement is “VW is the best brand of car for students because they are reliable and hold their value”. The TS is simply your answer to the question (in summary). In an essay you would be expected to give evidence to support your opinion (your TS).
So, you choose two factors which affect the practice of making strategy. Then you think about how they might affect the practice of strategy (strategy projects or the implementation of strategy or the actual business strategies). Then you express this as a question. The you answer the question. Boom.
Some examples:
Factor: Culture
Question: How does culture affect the implementation of strategies?
Factor: Complexity of situations
Question: How does the complexity of situations affect the initial stages of a strategy project?
Factor: Economy
Question: How does the economy affect business strategies?
Factor: Value proposition
Question: How does changing the value proposition affect strategy projects?
Factor: Participation
Question: How does the need to increase participation affect how we design a strategy project.
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How are we going to assess your Assignment 2? Assignments 2 is a standard academic essay, so we will assess it in the normal way for essays. The rubric contains the following sections:
Description of the 2 factors and their link to the practice of making strategy [10%] This section evaluates whether you have clearly identified TWO factors which affect the practice of making strategy and have clearly presented them to the reader of the essay.
Critical discussion of affect of factors on the practice of making strategy [30%] This section evaluates the quality of your discussion. Have you provided a clear answer to the questions you have selected? Is there a clear Thesis Statement for each factor and clearly presented arguments?
Use of evidence from the literature [30%] This section evaluates whether you have provided high quality evidence from the literature for your arguments. High quality means theory and research findings presented in reliable peer reviewed journals or books. It is not sufficient to provide evidence from websites or the internet which is not regarded as reliable. Make sure your references are up to date too. Research findings from 2004 may not now be relevant to your factor in 2019.
Referencing [10%] This section evaluates whether you have presented a good range of references in the correct format.
Presentation, essay structure and clarity of argument [20%] This section evaluates whether your essay is clearly presented and the argument easy to understand. The assignment includes TWO factors, so you must be careful to use a clear structure to the assignment, so the reader understands how to follow your two arguments.
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I’ve received emails about the assignment and I thought I say a little more about the choice of factors.
First, remember this module and therefor this assignment is about the practice of making strategy. By that we mean how manager and consultants go about making strategy – how do we do it? So this assignment is first and foremost an opportunity for you to think about how we go about making strategy.
We have given you to opportunity to choose TWO factors and think about how they affect the practice of making strategy. How we do projects (our methodology), how we implement strategy and how we design the business strategies themselves.
So what factors might you choose? There a wide range of options:
You can think about features of strategic situations – for example, the external environment and the internal nature of the business.
You can think about your methodology – for example, mapping situations, assessing stakeholders, designing business models.
You can also think about the social science and psychology of making strategy – for example, how pictures help us to understand complex situation or how cognitive maps help us.
There are lots of factors which affect how we go about doing strategy projects. I still think a good way to choose the factors is by looking through the literature and seeing what you find interesting.
This announcement is closed for comments
7This module and this assignment is about the practice of making strategy. So let’s reflect upon that for minute. What do we now know about the practice of making strategy?
Making strategy is something which is normally done in projects by a group of people. The first thing we need to do is try to gain some kind of understanding of a complex situation. We do this using Problem Structuring Methods like rich pictures. This enables people to look at the situation as a whole and identify issues.
Next we want to do some more formal analysis – we look at the environment of the business (external) and we look at the business itself (internal). This is because success is about finding a good fit between the business and the environment it operates in.
Next we think about our competitive performance. How competitive are we ? We do this by reflecting on what we know so far and also using tools like the strategy canvas. This helps us understand the key factors which our customers think about when choosing a product.
Once we have done all this analysis we are in a good position to generate ideas. We try to develop a range of ideas from improvements to existing operations to creative new ideas. This a creative process in which we look forwards and think about the extent to which we want to change the business – do we want incremental change or radical change? We may also need to think about our values. What is important to us? Is it profit? Is it providing high quality employment? Is it operating in a sustainable manner? Our values directly affect our strategy.
Once we have a set of ideas we like, we need to think about implementing them. First we need action plans to put the ideas into practice. The will also need a group of people and so we use tools like causal mapping to enable people of participate. And then we need to go ahead and deliver the action plans. How can we manage this change process?
It’s important to recognise making strategy is not an exact science. We can’t know for sure that our action plans will deliver the outcomes we wanted. Hence, we need to adopt an experiential learning approach. We review our strategy plans and if they are not delivering the outcomes we wanted, we need to make further changes. In fact, the process of making strategy is a never ending process. The world and our business keeps changing constantly, so we will need to keep constantly making strategy. It’s the same in business as in life. We constantly face complexity, it keeps changing, and our strategy needs to keep changing too. Sometimes we think really hard about something and create what we think is a great strategy and it just doesn’t go to plan! That’s the way it goes. The world is complex and our analysis can never fully capture all that complexity.
So that’s the practice of making strategy. So when you identify factors which you find interesting, think about about how they affect the process above. Which bit do they affect? Which bit do you want to talk about? For example, I personally like Problem Structuring Methods and also business model innovation. Which bits do you like?
8I’ve received lots of questions about assignment 2, which is great to see. Many of you are trying to get your questions sorted. I’ve got a few comments in general:
- Many of you are exploring how factors affect business strategies. For example, how does social media affect business strategies in retail. Or, how does competition between firms affect business strategies in supermarkets. This is absolutely fine.However, you can also explore how a factor affects strategy making methodology. For example, how does complexity affect strategy making methodology? Or, how do multiple perspectives in our team affect how we conduct a rich picture workshop? As a strategy academic I actually spend my time thinking about this second type of question – i.e. how to improve strategy making methodology. SO this second type of question is perfectly acceptable and might be more straightforward in some cases.
- An essay doesn’t have numbered sections, but you can include a few figures if you want to.
- It’s OK to include a case study in your essay to support your argument. However, it should only be one of your sources of evidence. It shouldn’t be the main focus of your argument otherwise the essay is not trying to answer the question in a scholarly way.
- Remember, an essay is an argument which gives your answer to a question. The common weakness with essays is they don’t give a clear answer to the question. A student may be too scared to confused to give a clear answer. You can check this by getting a friend to ask you , “So, what is your answer to the the question?” If you can’t give a summary of your answer in a few sentences, it’s probably not clear. Remember, we don’t mark your essay based upon whether we agree with you. Just the clarity of your answer and the quality of the evidence and narrative.
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For those of you who have not decided upon your factors and questions. I thought I’d give a few more examples below:
Factor in the environment:
Factor – complexity and change.
Possible Questions:
How does complexity and change in our environment affect how we do strategy projects?
How does complexity and change in our environment affect the first step in our strategy project?
How does complexity and change in our environment affect our business strategies?
Factor about the business:
Factor – resources.
Possible Questions:
How do we evaluate resources in a strategy project?
How does a focus on resources affect our business strategies?
What resources might give us a competitive advantage in the clothes retail industry?
Factor about the project ream:
Factor – process of negotiation.
Possible Questions:
How does the process of negotiation affect a strategy project?
How does the process of negotiation affect how we run a strategy workshop?
How do different approaches to negotiation affect how we design a strategy project?
Factor about the analyst:
Factor – how we understand situations.
Possible Questions:
How does our cognitive makeup affect how we understand complex situations?
How does cognitive psychology affect the tools we use in Problem Structuring?
How does working in groups affect how we understand strategic situations?
Those are a few examples of the types of questions you could develop for your essay