...ICHEC – Professor Luc Moeremans 2015/2016 Catarina Duarte 153111 Corporate Strategy Good Strategy / Bad Strategy The difference and why it matters by Richard Rumelt Part I The book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy written by the professor of business and society in the school of business and management UCLA - Richard Rumelt - clarifies the difference between good strategies and bad strategies and provides a thorough understanding of how to create and think about good strategies. It daylights a fundamental range of aspects to which has not been given much importance and where people fail when trying to manage an organization, a school or even a research. Presenting interesting and fascinating examples of contemporary businesses and from world’s history, Richard Rumelt motivates his ideas and makes the readers have a clear understanding of them. The difference between a good strategy and what people think of a “good strategy” has grown over the years. In the opinion of Richard Rumelt a strategy is not a goal or a vision but a plan to achieve that ambition. It is fundamental to find and understand what problems an organization is facing and design a way to coordinate actions and resources in order to deal with those problems. The problem is when leaders cannot define those obstacles, making impossible to create a strategy to overcome the organization’s challenges; or when leaders mistake the plan to deal with the organization’s problems with statements of desire...
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...created in large quantities for special needs. For more information, contact Premium Sales at (212) 572-2232 or e-mail specialmarkets@randomhouse.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 978-0-307-88623-1 eISBN 978-0-307-88625-5 Printed in the United States of America Book design by Robert Bull Jacket design: TK Author photograph: TK 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Rume_9780307886231_2p_all_r1.indd vi 3/17/11 11:46 AM CONTENTS ■ INTRODUCTION OVERWHELMING OBSTACLES 1 PART I GOOD AND BAD STRATEGY CHAPTER 1 GOOD STRATEGY IS UNEXPECTED 9 11 How Steve Jobs saved Apple • Business 101 is surprising • General Schwarzkopf ’s strategy in Desert Storm • Why Plan A remains a surprise CHAPTER 2 DISCOVERING POWER 21 David and Goliath is a basic strategy story • Discovering Wal-Mart’s secret • Marshall and Roche’s strategy for competing with the Soviet Union CHAPTER 3 BAD STRATEGY...
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...Rumelt (2011) “The perils of bad strategy” McKinsey Quarterly June 2011, pp1-10. Bad strategy abounds, says UCLA management professor Richard Rumelt. Senior executives who can spot it stand a much better chance of creating good strategies Horatio Nelson had a problem. The British admiral's fleet was outnumbered at Trafalgar by an armada of French and Spanish ships that Napoleon had ordered to disrupt Britain's commerce and prepare for a cross-channel invasion. The prevailing tactics in 1805 were for the two opposing fleets to stay in line, firing broadsides at each other. But Nelson had a strategic insight into how to deal with being outnumbered. He broke the British fleet into two columns and drove them at the Franco-Spanish fleet, hitting its line perpendicularly. The lead British ships took a great risk, but Nelson judged that the less-trained Franco-Spanish gunners would not be able to compensate for the heavy swell that day and that the enemy fleet, with its coherence lost, would be no match for the more experienced British captains and gunners in the ensuing melee. He was proved right: the French and Spanish lost 22 ships, two-thirds of their fleet. The British lost none.1 Nelson's victory is a classic example of good strategy, which almost always looks this simple and obvious in retrospect. It does not pop out of some strategic-management tool, matrix, triangle, or fill-in-the-blanks scheme. Instead, a talented leader has identified the one or two critical issues...
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...Hidden flaws in strategy Charles Roxburgh The McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 Number 2 After nearly 40 years, the theory of business strategy is well developed and widely disseminated. Pioneering work by academics such as Michael E. Porter and Henry Mintzberg has established a rich literature on good strategy. Most senior executives have been trained in its principles, and large corporations have their own skilled strategy departments. Yet the business world remains littered with examples of bad strategies. Why? What makes chief executives back them when so much know-how is available? Flawed analysis, excessive ambition, greed, and other corporate vices are possible causes, but this article doesn't attempt to explore all of them. Rather, it looks at one contributing factor that affects every strategist: the human brain. The brain is a wondrous organ. As scientists uncover more of its inner workings through brain-mapping techniques,1 our understanding of its astonishing abilities increases. But the brain isn't the rational calculating machine we sometimes imagine. Over the millennia of its evolution, it has developed shortcuts, simplifications, biases, and basic bad habits. Some of them may have helped early humans survive on the savannas of Africa ("if it looks like a wildebeest and everyone else is chasing it, it must be lunch"), but they create problems for us today. Equally, some of the brain's flaws may result from education and socialization rather than nature. But whatever...
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...Share Repurchase: Is it good or bad? Financial Strategy (BMBA715.2) Date: 27th March 2013 Tutor: Mark Pilkington Author: Nandkumar Mahajan (136866461) Word Count: 3069 Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................. 3 Company capital structure & Shareholder value ...................................................................... 4 Why companies really repurchase shares? ................................................................................ 6 Is there any real value in share repurchase? ............................................................................. 7 Hewlett-‐Packard (HPQ) ................................................................................................................................ 7 Next Plc. (NXT) ........................................................................................................................................... 10 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................
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...2014 Many organizations think they have good strategy when, in fact, they don’t have a strategy at all. Three common mistakes that organizations make when trying to create a strategy is having bad strategic objectives, having “fluff”, and the inability to choose. When these three characteristics are involved in a strategic plan, there are major problems. Bad Strategic Objectives Many people feel like they need to come up with a long list of to-dos when coming up with a strategy. They may also restate the challenge at hand. What they don’t realize is that this is not a strategy at all. Having a good strategy involves focusing in on a few important things to accomplish that will lead to favorable outcomes. When you have a long list of to-dos, you may either get so overwhelmed with all the tasks that you give up, or you may see small improvements over a period of time. The best bang for your buck is when you really focus in on the important things that will have major results. Fluff Fluff happens when an organization comes up with a strategy that involves fancy words to make it look better, but the strategy doesn’t really say much at all. For example, the article included a quote from one bank’s strategy: "Our fundamental strategy is one of customer-centric intermediation." The article went on to explain that all the words in the strategy essentially stated that the bank’s strategy is to be a bank. When coming up with a strategy, people can see through one that is fluff...
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...Institute of Corporate Directors Management white paper (Are you sure of your leadership) Executive Summary This paper provides managers and leaders with the necessary information to implement a cure for poor organizational performance and its negative workplace politics. The paper addresses the following subject areas: 1. Leadership and Performance; 2. Strategic Alignment; 3. Performance Diagnoses Checklist; 4. Bad Politics and Performance Risks; 5. Treatment Challenges; 6. Best Practices for Curing Bad Politics 1. Leadership and Performance The subject of leadership has been greatly covered by scholars, academicians and consultants, yet building high-performance teams remains elusive to most companies. Leadership is the most important competitive advantage of a company, not technology, finance, operations or anything else. Leadership formulates the company's business strategy and builds its resources, including its people, finances and operations. The leadership team is the most important asset of the company and can be its worst liability. A failed business is the result of poor performance. Poor performance is the result of an incompetent or dysfunctional leadership team. To paraphrase Tolstoy, All successful companies are successful for different reasons, but dysfunctional companies are dysfunctional in the same way. In my experience, the main reason for poor organizational performance is not the lack of business knowledge, but rather negative internal ...
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...a solution, meeting of the minds by the participants and closing a deal. It is one of the most important factors that may make or break the success of a business agreement. We, therefore, conclude that the company should utilize transactional model as our main communication model because this can handle a complicated communication process like negotiation. Our negotiation style will first focus on Integrative strategy to gain a win-win situation between Levon, and Zenur. If this style will not work, mix-motive negotiation style will be our back up plan. To be at par with Zenur's vision and mission of expanding the business, the negotiation skills will be based on Levon's long term plans focusing on interests. The four stages of negotiation will be based on a solid foundation of understanding about Zenur. Regardless which stage we are at, we should be in the know of Zenur's business movement. The better we know every detail of the company, the better we can respond to their actions. Our negotiation strategies will focus on salami strategy and good guy/bad guy strategy through our negotiation process to push the deal towards the direction of what Levon wants where both companies will gain profit and reach a common goal. After thorough analysis and evaluation, we, as...
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...There are two types of messages, first is positive and the second is negative. In our project we are going to talk about the second type which is the negative messages. We are not only going to talk about the negative messages itself. We will talk about the strategies of delivering bad or negative news. Besides, we will give some solutions and methods to make the bad news seem good or accepted. What is the negative messages ? What are the strategies or plans to deliver the negative news or messages? What is the direct plan and the indirect plan and when should we use one of them ? And, how to deliver a bad news ? All of these wonderings and questions will be answered and clarified in this report. “ To be agreeable while disagreeing – that’s an art “ Malcolm Forbes Negative Messages:- Negative message is delivering bad news or any message to which the reader and listener or any type of receivers will have an unpleasant emotional reaction. A message is classified as negative when: * The main point is negative. * The receiver will be disappointed or angry. Besides, negative messages convey disappointing and unfavorable information for the receiver. But we can use some methods and strategies to deliver the bad news and avoid any unpleasant reaction. There are two types of approaches that can help in delivering negative messages. These two approaches are direct plan and indirect plan and that what we will talk about in details. The goals of an effective...
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...Good and Bad Procrastination Procrastination is one of the common worst habits to pick up as a human being. Most of the time people tell themselves that they have to get their work done. For some reason there’s a little part of our brains that tell us to wait and do it another time. Until its way too late and there’s not enough time to finish your task. Paul Graham wrote a selection about good and bad procrastination, and how procrastination can help you get your work done. Throughout most of the passage Paul Graham uses logos to persuade the reader that procrastination is a bad thing, but it can also be useful for finishing more important work. One example of logos used by Graham is when he writes, “Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work”. He then goes on to explain this idea that everyone throws off important work to run errands, so why not switch the cycle and throw off errands to get important work done. Graham then writes about how he uses his strategy and that it doesn’t always work. It’s better than bad procrastination which allows you to get no real work done and feel bad about it. I feel this could possibly work with others and really be effective with getting work done. Another example of logos used by Graham is when he writes about how this strategy works. He explains “If you want to work on big things, you seem to have to trick yourself into doing it”. He goes into detail by writing about how procrastinating is going to happen regardless...
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...____T__ 1. Good news and neutral news messages follow the same strategy. ____F__ 2. Emphasize I or we when planning a neutral or good news message. _____F_ 3. The indirect message pattern is appropriate for good news messages. ___T___ 4. A claim message should end with a courteous suggestion for prompt action. Directions: In the spaces proceeding the statement list the sequence. 5. List the sequence for the good news strategy. (1)_Open with the good or neutral news __________________________________________________________________________ (2)__Follow with adequate details or descriptions _________________________________________________________________________ (3)___End pleasantly ________________________________________________________________________ Chapter Six/Seven Directions: In the space preceding each sentence, write T if the statement is true or F if the statement is false. ___T__ 6. The objective of a refusal message is to say no and still maintain goodwill. __T___ 7. State or imply the bad news in the opening statement of a bad news message. __F___ 8. When you prepare a bad news message, use the direct message pattern. __T___ 9. Buffers do not contain negative statements. ___T__ 10. To promote diplomacy, use active voice in the explanation of the refusal. __T___ 11. Always end a bad news message with a positive statement. Directions: In the spaces provided fill in the blanks. 12. The persuasive strategy AIDA refers...
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...timely completion for the project. INDEX 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………………………4 2: Organizational Communication…………………………………………………………..5 3: Conflict Management…………………………………………………………………….6 4. Process of conflict management…………………………………………………………..8 5: Future Perspective………………………………………………………………………...11 6: Organization………………………………………………………………………………11 7: References…………………………………………………………………………………13 INTRODUCTION Organizational communication and conflict management is the topic I choose in which firstly introduce about organizational communication, Organizational communication can defined as that it helps in creating different types of social structure such as relationships, teams and networks, in this we can say that without good internal communication there is no external communications and this thing affect the performance of the business. On the other hand there is an another point is conflict management is the way to solve conflicts and also known as conflict resolution this is the way it helps to transferring the negative aspect of conflict to positive aspect of conflict. Both the things are very useful in an organization in which they both are inter-related with each other like for any organization it is not possible to imagine that organization communication...
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...Bank of America 3/12/12 History of the company: The bank of America has become one the most well known banks in the world. In fact this success is due to it several historical merges, especially with the bank of Italy, founded by Amadeo Giannini in San Francisco in 1904. The founder and president of Bank of America agreed to the merging on 1929. It operated under the name Bank of America, and in 1958 the bank harnessed the technology that lets credit cars to be linked directly to bank accounts by introducing bankamericard, and this was the progenitor of VISA. Bank of America first expanded to the borders of California with its acquisition of Seattle-based Seafirst Corporation in 1983. From this, the company expanded in Idaho, Arizona, Washington and Oregon, and it was the largest in history. In 1998, the company was purchased by NationsBank, which moved the headquarters to charlotte North Carolina. The bank suffered serious losses when the director was not able to pay back the large hedge fund it loaned. NationsBank structured the purchase as a merger and renamed the merged company the bank of America Corporation. The company had assets totaling 570 billion dollars, with 4800 branches situated across 22 states. It is currently the largest bank in the United States. Comentario [RN3]: I got lost with the dates during your presentation. There are some more here, but the history could have been made clearer with specific dates and actions. Comentario [RN2]: This sentence...
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...FACTORS YOU WOULD CONSIDER TO DO THIS AS A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS MODEL ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Top of Form Bottom of Form INTRODUCTION I ever passed a restaurant with the customers talking out of the front door and wondered, “Wow, how did this restaurant become so popular?!” A restaurant doesn’t miraculously get popular overnight and there are actually some elements behind the popularity and successfulness of a restaurant. The typical owner of a successful restaurant knows the successful factors besides his passionate to works tirelessly to ensure the successfulness of his or her restaurant. Below are the factors that make a successful restaurant business; 1. Good Foods and Drinks Restaurants exist because...
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...THE BRATTLE GROUP Name of Student: Name of Institution: Date: Table of Contents Profile of the Company 3 A Country and Entry Method 3 Ok Fit Country 8 Bad Fit Country 9 Business Strategy 10 Information in the News Concerning the Best Fit Country 11 Conclusion 12 APPENDIX 14 References 18 The Brattle Group Profile of the Company According to Zhu (2006), the Brattle group offers solutions to complex economic, supervisory, as well as financial processes for multinationals, legal firms and state governments across the globe. The company believes that any important insights depends on working hard, respecting details, as well as follow the principles. When the clients face massive challenges, then Brattle group works hard to give clear and independent answers, while being transparent, as the truths are better than giving them false comforts that are created from opinions that cannot survive scrutiny. The truth is provided using relentless pursuit of professionalism, as well as quality analysis. The company was established in 199 under five principles that adhere to integrity and excellent performance in economic and financial consultancy. In 1995 the company merged with Incentives Research to become stronger through the merged expertise in the energy sector, where it opened an office in Cambridge (Phillips et al., 2011). According to Zhu (2006, the company has managed to expand throughout America and Europe serving more than 300 people...
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