Well Thought Out Tactics, oh how I love thee

Strategies for Competitive Advantage – Week 4 Weekly Summary

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how this instructor presents discussion questions.  She offers six questions, and allows students to pick any two.  This would be really great in a large class, spreading the conversation over more topics.  In this class, the headcount is down, and dwindling.  I think a lot of people took the holiday period off, and a few have dropped as the course has gone along.  The combination of a low headcount and a large spread of discussion questions results in some questions not getting much attention.  To lighten things up I took on one of the questions that had been ignored.  The comment back from the instructor was (paraphrasing here) thanks for playing, you did it wrong.  Bah humbug.

There were plenty of other topics to focus on.  The importance and effectiveness of strategy formulation and choice, concepts and analytic tools useful in developing strategic plans, the necessary steps for implementing a strategic plan, and how strategic direction information should be shared throughout an organization each were well represented. 

The summary request again included the now boilerplate text “tell me three things you learned and what you intend to do with it.”  At least it is consistent.  I kicked off my list of the “big three” for this week with communicating a strategic plan throughout an organization. I related a story of how I had shared some of the generic and grand strategies with the president of our company, along with my list of recommendations.  One of the nice things about working for a company where open discussion of corporate operations is encouraged is you can tell the president how you think he should be running the business- I didn’t really do that, it is just fun to say ;)   He responded with his list of selections and we overlapped in many areas, but the most informative comment was when he said “I’m not sure that meets the specific definition, but it is how we are thinking of things.  Now that I see it all in one spot, I’m not sure if we’ve ever communicated it this succinctly to the entire company”.  I thought this was pretty good timing considering the concept of deciding how, to whom, and when to communicate strategic intent within an organization was being discussed.

My choice for number two on the list of “what have you learned lately” was my surprise at how many people ask how big the company I work for is.  At least four times this week I related experiences from my company (something each instructor and professor has encouraged, including this one), and someone (including the instructor) has asked how big the company I work for is.  I’m not sure if this is a way of putting comments in context or more of a rationalization.  Many of the concepts we discuss in class are accompanied with examples from very large organizations, and perhaps that has slighted the average MBA student’s perception of small business.  As I’m getting a little tired of the subtext of “if you ain’t IBM you ain’t shit” I noted that based on my observations having worked for a small business for over seven years while simultaneously consulting for large businesses, these principles still apply to small business.  Many of the execution steps must be adapted to the small business environment, but the concepts are sound if applied with thought and good intent.

For my third item in this list of “what did you learn this week and how do you plan on using it” I noted the discussion in the text of short-term objectives, and in particular the concept of conflicting objectives and priorities.  This was a fun choice of a topic to highlight since the instructor had just commented that some long-term objectives I had proposed in a research paper seemed more like “well thought out tactics”.  I’ve never been so proud!  I’ll take “well thought out tactic” over generic long-term objectives any day of the week.