09 Jun Question Discussion 1: Case Analysis Wi
Question
Discussion 1: Case Analysis With Discussion: What Are the Core Skills, Competencies, and Capabilities of Trader Joe’s?
Wolfe (2009, p. 63) calls on leaders at all levels of an organization to “view the organization as a living system, directing the flows of energies [passions and skills] within that body of people and transforming their collective energy [relationships and shared values] and effort into the products and services brought to the marketplace [to meet the organization’s Soulful Purpose].”
As such, it is critical to analyze what skills, competencies, and capabilities an organization actually has, and how these energies can best be tapped to ward off external threats, seize on opportunities, and navigate into new “blue oceans” of value creation. Indeed, all strategic (or not strategic!) action, and all value creation by an organization, is done through the application of skills (what individual people can do [think in terms of active verbs]), competencies (what groups of individuals can do[think organization functions]), and capabilities (what supporting plant, machinery, software, and systems/processes, etc.) can do.
Indeed, in the iterative, feedback and feed-forward five-question strategy playbook framework, one of the central questions is, which capabilities must be in place (to win)? (What skills, competencies and capabilities do you need now, and in the future?) It is to this central question that we turn to this week’s case study.
To prepare for this Discussion:
Review all required readings, including the Weekly Briefing, which provides additional guidance on how to complete the Assignment.
Review this week’s case study. You can, and should, scan it multiple times.
Retrieve and review the Value chain of activities template.
Identify and review all relevant readings from the MBA Capstone Program Bibliography.
Utilize information in the case study, and other basic industry research data you can find in the Walden Library (Hoover’s database would be a good place to start, as would Business Source Complete). Remember, you will have to search for information on the most relevant Trader Joe’s competitors, as well as Trader Joe’s to be able to make an appropriate relative ranking of resources.
By Day 3
Post a polished skills, competencies, and capabilities analysis that responds to each of the prompts below:
Use your best judgment, based on the information in the case and your research, and rate Trader Joe’s current profile of skills, competencies, and capabilities, as identified in the detailed value chain in the case supplemental document. Fill your rating in the table and explain your rating. Use the following scale to rate and state any assumptions you make:
If the skill, competency, or capability is “World Class” (clearly best in industry and could be benchmark for other industries), rate the item a 10.
If the skill, competency, or capability is “Industry Best” (clearly number 1 or 2 in the industry), rate the item an 8.
If the skill, competency, or capability is “Industry Average,” rate the item a 5.
If the skill, competency, or capability “Needs Improvement,” rate the item a 3.
If the skill, competency, or capability is a “Critical Deficiency,” rate the item a 1.
What is your average rating (which assumes that all the skills, competencies, and capabilities in the value chain were equally important)? Does this average tell you anything? What?
What three skills, competencies, or capabilities, across all categories, do you think are strategically the most important in the industry? Why?
Based on your responses above, does Trader Joe’s have the capabilities in place to win? To continue to win? Why?
What should Trader Joe’s do right now to leverage its competitive strengths and mitigate or improve upon competitive weaknesses?
Be sure to integrate concepts and quotes from this week’s readings. To obtain an exemplary assessment, you must also integrate at least one resource from the Walden MBA Program Capstone Bibliography as well.
General Guidance: Your original post, due by Day 3, will contain two elements:
Your summary response to questions 2–5 above (4 single-spaced paragraphs) that will be the body of the Discussion text area
Your completed version of the Trader Joe’s supplemental table, which you should attach to your response (make sure to rename the file and append your last name first initial to the file name)
Refer to the Week 3 Discussion 1 rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ posts.
By Day 5
Respond to two or more of your peers in one or more of the following ways:
Comment on what you learned from your colleague’s analysis that is new to you.
Offer constructive ideas for how your colleague might extend or improve his or her summary analysis.
Provide your observations about your peers’ comments based on your synthesis of several of the original posts, explaining how those posts better inform what your peer wrote.
Assignment: Individual Reflection: Blue Print for Professional and Personal Growth Part One: Executive Summary of MBA Program
As you begin this Assignment, review the broad range of topics that you have examined and what you have learned throughout the MBA program. For Part 1 of this final Individual BPPG Reflection, select concepts or topics that resonated with you the most during your program. What can you do now to integrate the experiences and insights you’ve had in the MBA program with your personal and professional development goals?
By Day 7
Submit an Executive Summary that spans the entire range of topics within your MBA program and that integrates prior learning, experiences, and insights gained throughout the MBA program, with personal and professional development goals by addressing the following questions:
Page One: The MBA and Your Goals and Contributions to Social Change
Which content, conceptual ideas, frameworks, tools, and assignments in your MBA improved your understanding and skills in ways that will enable you to achieve your professional goals?
What impact has your improved understanding had, or what impact do you anticipate your understanding will have, on the value you will bring to your role within an organization and the world at large, particularly with respect to being an agent for positive change (at the individual, organizational and communities level)? NOTE: This is a very important element of your response, please be deliberative in your response.
Page Two: The MBA Program’s Content & Your Practice of Business Administration
How have the content and assignments changed the way you think of your role within the organization and the way you will practice your profession?
How have the content and assignments shaped your goals now and how do you anticipate they will shape your goals in the future?
How has your MBA helped you appreciate the role that an individual manager or a business has in facilitating positive social change?
General Guidance on Assignment Length: Part 1 of your BPPG, your MBA program Executive Summary, should be approximately 2 single-spaced page(s).
Discussion 1: Case Analysis With Discussion: Stakeholder Analysis of Tesla Motors and the Global Automobile Industry
To develop effective strategies, a business must thoroughly understand its ecosystem, and the stakeholders within it, that can affect its success. To this end, effective businesses often analyze the political, economic, social, and technological forces (sometimes called P.E.S.T. analysis) and perform a comprehensive stakeholder analysis. Businesses can use each analysis to survey opportunities for strategic action, as well as to evaluate threats to current resource capabilities and strategies.
This week, you use a large-scale, industry-level case study to analyze critical forces and stakeholder interests and needs that shape the ecosystem of an organization and industry. You then examine the strategic implications of the critical forces and stakeholder analyses concepts as they apply to your Capstone Strategy Playbook.
Stakeholder Analysis of Tesla Motors
P.E.S.T. analysis is an important way to capture the general forces that affect industries and companies. Another way to obtain a more comprehensive perspective of the general ecosystem that a company like Tesla Motors works within, is to identify, as explicitly as possible, all the stakeholders that have an interest in a given business.
You might want to think about this from the “outside-in.” That is, given each of the major P.E.S.T. forces noted above, ask yourself, “Who are the people (stakeholders) behind each major force and how must I relate to them strategically?” So, for example, it is clear that international and national political figures may be relevant stakeholders in any given case, as would government regulators at local, regional, national, or international levels. You can’t change a local, regional, or national/international regulation directly—you have to know who to see and the action occurs among people—so a stakeholder analysis is, in many ways, a “personified” version of your P.E.S.T. analysis.
To prepare for this Discussion:
Review all required readings, including the Weekly Briefing, which provides additional guidance on how to complete the Assignment.
Review this week’s case study. You can, and should, scan it multiple times.
Identify and review all relevant readings from the MBA Program Capstone Bibliography.
Consider the elements of P.E.S.T. analysis that you learned earlier in the MBA program. These elements include:
Political (Legislative) and Legal Elements (regulatory environment, market access, technology regulation, zoning restrictions, industry specific, company specific legislation, anti-trust laws, insurance/liability requirements, safety regulations, child workforce protection laws, immigration laws, etc.)
Economic Elements (interest rate and equity market movements, capital liquidity, inflation prospects, exchange rate movements, workforce availability, discretionary income levels, etc.)
Societal Values and Ethics (risk taking propensity, family dynamics and behavior, cultural “in” behaviors, taboo activities, media focus, religious behaviors, ethical limitations on business, etc.)
Technology Elements (materials technology advances, electronics advances, communications advances, infrastructure access [communication, electricity, etc.], energy advances, etc.)
And an important and too often forgotten element:
Demographic Changes (age distribution and trend, absolute population size and trend, birth and death rates, gender proportion and trend, ethnic mix and trend, location/mobility and trends.)
Identify, as explicitly as possible, all the relevant stakeholders that have an interest in Tesla Motors, and how Tesla should manage them as part of a strategy.
Research your stakeholder list initially this way, to ensure complete coverage:
General Ecosystem Stakeholders (the ones that are behind the specific P.E.S.T. influences, includes the press, interest groups, the public at large, communities, shareholders, etc.)
Industry Level Stakeholders (direct local competitors, potential substitute companies, other competitors or potential competitors outside your current markets, lenders, alliance or potential alliance partners, trade associations, suppliers in the entire supply chain, customers and their end-users, potential customers or end users, etc.)
Internal Stakeholders (these are the people who influence the company from inside, including the board of directors, senior leadership, management, skilled employees at any level, other employees, contract workforce, outsourced workforce, potential new recruits, etc.)
Potential New Stakeholders (at any level, but which may become stakeholders as you consider new strategic actions and activities)
Then, reorder and rank the stakeholder list in order of “influence priority,” where stakeholders at the top of the prioritized list require more of Tesla Motor’s attention because they can/will influence your strategic choices for the future the most.
By Day 3
Post an assessment of the stakeholder environment for Tesla (and the U.S. automobile industry) that includes a comprehensive and prioritized list of stakeholders and explains who the key stakeholders are that Tesla Motors must pay attention to and why; and then offers specific strategies for how Tesla must seek to manage or otherwise, legally and ethically, influence these stakeholders.
General Guidance: Your original post, due by Day 3, will typically be approximately 1 single-spaced page in length (cut and pasted into the Discussion) as a general expectation/estimate. Refer to the Week 4 Discussion 1 rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ posts.
By Day 5
Respond to at least two colleagues’ analyses in one or more of the following ways:
Comment on what you learned from your colleague’s analysis that is new to you and that will help you improve your Strategy Playbook and how you will use it to do so.
Offer constructive ideas for how your peer might extend or improve his or her summary analysis.
Provide your observations about your peers’ comments based on your synthesis of several of the original posts, explaining how those posts better inform what your peer wrote.
Discussion 2: Capstone Forum: Assignment With Peer Review: Stakeholder and General Force Analysis for Your Capstone Organization
Now it is time to apply key insights learned from this week’s case analysis and Discussion about stakeholder assessment and its relationship to P.E.S.T. analysis, this week’s readings, and other resources to help you think about how you might answer the question, where will you play? (Who will you serve, and who will either help or compete against you?)
To prepare for this Discussion:
Review all required readings, including the Weekly Briefing, which provides additional guidance on how to complete the Assignment.
Review this week’s case study and peer discussion and reflect and make notes on the following: What insights did you gain, and what did you learn from this week’s resources your case analysis and peer discussion that you can apply to your Strategy Playbook for your chosen organization? What conceptual and strategic differences are important between the case example and your organization (focus on the concepts analyzed this week)? What assumptions do you need to make in order to use the strategy concepts appropriately?
Identify and review all relevant readings from the MBA Capstone Program Bibliography. Given your chosen organization, what concepts, tools, and readings from the Program Capstone Bibliography are most relevant to helping guide how you might recommend improving the company? How and why are they relevant?
Locate and maintain access to publicly available information about your organization.
By Day 5
Post a polished and synthesized entry into the discussion area, which will also be the basis for an entry into the final draft of your Strategy Playbook for Extraordinary Results. At minimum you should add the following to your discussion post and Strategy Playbook:
An evidence-based and cohesive set of specific and actionable recommendations for actions (based on application of this week’s strategy concepts), that your selected organization can take that will clearly enable your organization to achieve its strategic goals, sustain and grow its business, and remain viable and healthy.
HINT: You should provide a preliminary argument that defends your recommendations. Consider why your recommendations are SMART- specific, measurable, achievable (that is realistic and feasible, and timely (relevant and important).
A related set of metrics that will enable your selected organization to measure the effectiveness of your recommended actions.
HINT: These metrics could then be used in the comprehensive final draft of your strategy playbook diagram, which is part of your final Strategy Playbook.
General Guidance: Your original Discussion post for the Capstone Forum will typically be 1 to 1 ½ single-spaced pages, excluding references. Refer to the Week 4 Discussion 2 rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.
Note: After you receive input from your colleagues, in the next few days you should revise your original post to reflect input that you think is helpful and strengthens your position. This final revised version from this week’s Capstone Forum will become the third formal entry into your Strategy Playbook appendix. Title this section “Stakeholder Analyses for XYZ [Insert Organization Name],” and be sure to keep a version of your response in your Strategy Playbook template. As a best practice you should plan to review your playbook throughout the course as you continue to build your components. You may find that you have new ideas and items that further improve your work.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ posts.
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