What happens when 20 people answer the same question the same way?

Sustainable Customer Relationships – Week 3 Weekly Summary

Week 3 discussion questions were focused on reviewing surprises in the previous week’s benchmarking, a long series of questions on the current scenario, and an interesting tangent on positions the students agreed and disagreed with in the text.  The homework for the week was the problem solution paper which wraps up the scenario we’ve been using for the first three weeks of the class.

There didn’t seem to be a lot of disagreement in the discussion questions, but plenty of discussion kept the discussion moving. It was most interesting to see the responses to positions where the students agreed and disagreed with the authors.

I didn’t stick with my homework plan and everything piled up on the weekend.  Luckily I was able to power through the paper in what appears to have been record time.  The discussion questions turned a bit dull, reading the same responses over and over.  In some classes the discussion questions get a little deeper in terms of responses, so the line of responses forms some new material to discuss.  I decided that in future weeks I’d try to move to a second or third level of responses and focus my efforts there after getting a couple days into the class, just to keep my interest up.

Expansion Topics and a Moment of Inspiration = Smooth Week

Sustainable Customer Relationships – Week 2 Weekly Summary

Week two expanded on the scenario from week 1 with a focus on issues surrounding new product development.  These issues included processes for new concept development, the role various stakeholders can take in the new product development process, and risks involved in bringing new products to market.  The reading for the week elaborated on these topics and included additional material on the key elements of the marketing mix (product, price, promotion, and place) and profitability models.

The first discussion question this week also expanded on work done last week with the continuation of the problem based learning process.  This week the question included assessing possible solutions to the scenario and evaluating assumptions and constraints. The second discussion question invited commentary on aligning new product development with corporate strategy along with sub-questions that reflected the concepts highlighted in the reading for the week.

The homework this week was the first team assignment of this class.  In lieu of the usual benchmarking paper, this week’s assignment required every team member to present a problem statement as well as two benchmarking examples.  This approach worked well for dividing up the task amongst team members and allowed some good flexibility in accommodating the various schedules of the team members.

Since this class requires a weekly summary I’m able to use that content with some minor edits to create this blog post.  There isn’t a lot more to say about the week.  The homework format was a welcome treat, it was much faster to prepare than the usual benchmarking.  I also had a moment of inspiration in attempting to locate companies to benchmark and was able to identify two solid candidates quicker than expected.  That combined with the discussion questions being expansions on the previous week made for one of the smoothest weeks (in terms of getting the work done) in quite a while.

Starting a new class- with a road trip

Sustainable Customer Relationships – Week 1 Weekly Summary

Week one began with a look at building sustainable customer relationships by studying the marketplace.  The lead-off discussion questions were on the scenario posted with week 1.  That scenario involved a fictional company that produces CRM software and has recently seen slowing sales growth and scattered customer service issues.  In the scenario the company was considering adding analytical capabilities to their software.  This scenario provided a good basis for the discussion questions.  The first question focused on the current state of TeraTech and the challenges they are facing.  The second was more forward looking, examining what the ideal end-state would look like and what goals would accompany that end-state.

Each of the discussion questions and the scenario highlighted the key concepts of the week.  Those concepts, and the accompanying reading for the week, included topics such as forecasting demand, assessing current and future customer needs, and establishing long-term marketing objectives.  The homework for the week was a concept review that required some research into these and additional key concepts and relating those concepts to the scenario.

This was the first time I did work for class while traveling.  We had talked about a family trip, just for the weekend, but it fell apart due to a lack of boarding for our dog.  My wife put the pooch on the waiting list and I figured I had all weekend to do the concept worksheet.  Friday around noon the boarding place called and said there was room at the inn.  A bit of a scramble and the trip was back on!  I did some work from the hotel room, but family chatter makes that not a very productive environment.  Not my best week, but we’ll see if it shows in the grades.
 

Treadway, or Treadstone? The week wraps with a cold dark fall

Managing Enterprise Risk – Week 6 Weekly Summary

Week 6 is done, and with it another class is complete.  This one went out quietly with no required discussion questions.  Some casual questions and answers were thrown around but I think most people spent the week as I did, puzzling over the final paper.

The assignment was again a non-standard format paper.  It seems some of the classes in this program have been updated to the “new” format, others have not.  This class seems to be in the “have not” category.  The final assignment was to address something referred to as the Treadway Commission and specifically to suggest an implementation of the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Framework within either the students organization or one they are familiar with. 

I could say a lot of the puzzling came from figuring exactly what those buzz words in the previous paragraph meant.  At least, what they meant in enough detail to write a paper about how to implement them.  In reality, most of the difficulty of the week came from outside class, weird badness at work kept my mind elsewhere so it was difficult to get some concentrated time to think about the classroom subjects.  It really felt like fall, and not the brisk invigorating fall; it’s the cold dark hard fall where the sparkly freshness fades to gray.  Let’s hope she springs back from this little smack down and shines again before the snow flies!

Grades came back for week 5 and I’m holding steady at about 95%.  That leaves a buffer in case the final paper turns out to have some radical defect.  A shallow victory, just moving on towards the finish is the real achievement of the week.

Legal, but not Ethical

Managing Enterprise Risk – Week 5 Weekly Summary

This weeks discussion questions made for some interesting family discussions.  We talked about business decisions that are legal but not ethical.  This could actually be conversation starter at a group event; everyone has examples or is willing to try to come up with a couple.  The discussion in class about corporate governance was not as interesting to the family, but one of the reading assignments was interesting to me (it focused on executive pay, stockholder activism, and potential conflicting interests of boards of directors).  The third part of the week’s discussion topics involved identifying a best practice in corporate governance from two different organizations.  That last bit was best done after the homework assignment for the week, which included a requirement to compare and contrast corporate governance concepts from two companies in different industries.

The overall homework assignment was a team paper, the second of two for this course.  A few posts back I talked about the wailing and gnashing of teeth that the last team paper brought out.  OK, maybe not ‘wailing and gnashing’, but I’m thinking somewhere some teeth were bared.  This time the team paper when pretty smoothly.  I got my parts together after some difficulty finding two companies with corporate governance issues (I know, not exactly hard to find—but hard to find two that I’d care to spend multiple hours reading and writing about).  The end result was that I ended up doing more research than actually went into the final product.  I’ve held on to those unused bits to see if I can use them in Week 6.  During the work on the team paper I also kept in mind my previous encounters with some strong personalities in the group and let them run around and do their thing while calmly watching from the sidelines.  When it was time to put my pieces in, I did my bit and said “rah rah go team” a few times, then let the strong personalities go about their business. 

Week 5 also saw the return of grades for week 4, a bit ahead of schedule.  I still have a good buffer going into week 6, so if the team paper blows up I should still make it out in one piece.