...United Parcel Service (UPS), as of 2005, has become the world’s largest package-delivery company as well as offering specialized transportation and logistics services. However such success is likely attributed to the strategic planning of the executive leaders of the company. Mike Eskew, the Chairman and CEO, said, “the future of our company will be no better or worse than the quality of planning we do to prepare for it.” Eskew realized that preparing strategy for a company is the most vital catalyst for success. While typically strategy is set with short period goals, UPS found it necessary to develop a set of long-term goals for which they can make decisions that impact their company years down the road. The way that UPS decided to set their long-term framework was through scenario planning. Scenario planning is a strategic method that has the team map driving forces defined by two axes, creating four quadrants. These four quadrants are then identified by combining the forces into four possible outcomes known as scenarios. Overtime, the scenarios are defined and written out such as positives and negatives of each scenario, a description of how it might come to fruition as well as naming each scenario so that it is easily referred to in future strategy decisions. Over a period of almost 20 years, UPS decided to take strategy planning seriously: 1991 Coporate Mission and Strategy Statement introduced 1996 Strategy Advisory Group and Corporate Strategy Group formed 1997 First...
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...The contrasting strategies Analyst felt that FedEx and UPS established themselves in China till the late 1990s following different corporate styles. While FedEx believed tackling foreign competition head-on, UPS believed in partnering with them. UPS, was happy to enter into lease agreements with other companies already having its presence in China. While FedEx’s main thrust was on capturing the accounts of its multinational customers operating in China, UPS tried to build an image of a local company. Advertising and promotion However, during the late 1990’s, as the competition in the logistics business in china intensified, both FedEx and UPS started emphasizing on promotion to attract Chinese customers. Till the late 1990s there was a marked distinction in the approach of FedEx and UPS towards advertising and promotion in China. FedEx followed an approach which emphasized on heavily publicizing its services offering in China. It launched intimidating ad campaigns to attract customers. One of the ad’s showed the tail of a FedEx plane parked in front of a forbidden city saying, “ Call FedEx , it’s almost forbidden not to.” FedEx stressed on promoting its service offerings and enhancing brand awareness among the customers in China. For this purpose, it hired a popular media partner, OMD based in Hong Kong. On the other hand UPS emphasized less on advertising because it preferred to project itself as a local company, but still it held up a six-week T.V campaign...
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...The movie UP is perfect for ABC yeah the movie of the house flying with a bunch of balloons. The movie consists on a young Carl Fredrickson meets a young adventure-spirited girl named Ellie. They both dream of going to a lost land in South America. 70 years later, Ellie has died. Carl remembers the promise he made to her. So he decides to go in an adventure, while he gets stuked with a young scout kid The movie up is perfect for ABC because it covers your basic requirements. The movie UP does not contain violence or profanity it is classified PG, in addition the movie UP has a perfect length of 1hr 29 minutes. ABC wants this movie because this points are important to consider, it is important because there is going to be children of a young age that could be sensitive at violence, that could lead to an unwanted behavior. Furthermore older people can be more susceptible to violence and could dislike the movie if so, your audience will really love this movie. Don't forget about the perfect length you have to take in notice that the movie UP is not a long movie so that kids can stay focused at the movie, and is not short so that you have time to appreciate it you must consider this factor a lot so that you can make you audience happy. I guarantee that they will love it. Paul Chambers from CNN Radio, ''Pure joy and one of the best films of the year. You gotta have a good story, and this one is a gem. It even made a bit misty-eyed. Good stuff from Pixar''. Also Dan jardine from...
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...UP (2009) Cast: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Negal, Bob Peterson Director: Pete Docter A 3D animated film named ‘ Up ‘ which directed by Pete Docter, produced by Pixar Animation Studio and released by Walt Disney Pictures portrays the adventure of an old widower named Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Edward Asner) fulfilling his lifelong dream along with a young Junior Wilderness Explorer named Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai) and a talking Golden Retriever named Dug (voiced by Bob Peterson) Carl Fredrickson always dreams to become an adventurer ever since he was a kid. He then met Ellie and both of them became friends. Both of them idolized explorer Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) and Carl has promised Ellie he will move their clubhouse, an abandoned house in the neighborhood to a cliff beside Paradise Fall in South America. In just 8 to 15 minutes, the film has shown how Carl and Ellie grew up and got married. As both of them grow older into their old age, one day Carl decided to surprise Ellie with two flight tickets to South America but unfortunately Ellie suddenly becomes ill and passed away. Sometimes later, a court orders Carl to move to a retirement home because he accidentally injured a construction worker for damaging his mailbox. However, instead of moving to a retirement home, Carl decides to fulfill his promise to Ellie by tying balloons to his house and make it fly. A young Wilderness Explorer named Russell accidentally...
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...understanding made eBay to use the strategies it had used in the US to enter the Japanese and the American markets. At the initial launch in Japan eBay set out to use collectibles this strategy was successful in the US market. This seemed to have failed as the Japanese user seemed to have preferred new products. The second mistake was eBay strategy to charge commission on each transaction as it did in the US. The Japanese market did not favor this as they were not used to pay commission or monthly charges. The second factor that made eBay to struggle in the Asian markets is its strategy of attempting to dominate the market by crashing all competition including the local. This proved to be a wrong kind of strategy as local competitors had a competitive edge over eBay. This was demonstrated by eBay earlier battle with Alibaba for the control of the Chinese market which eBay ended up losing badly to the local players. Due to the differences in market and business environments in Asia local companies that are used to these environments usually find an edge over foreign entrants and strategies such as that used by eBay have high probabilities of failures. Foreign players also end up incurring a lot of cost and therefore lose their competitiveness. Since eBay management team did not understand the local market they spend a lot of money doing the wrong things leaving their competitors to claim the market at a lesser cost (Wang, 2010).These mistakes by eBay in its strategy to enter the Asian markets...
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...adaptation of study strategies when preparing for classroom tests: This article informs us about the various test taking strategies that students utilize when preparing for and writing tests. In addition, the article presents us with the view that instructors often have when administering tests and strategies for studying versus the students’ adaptation to these tasks and strategies given by the instructor. The implementation of student goals for studying and their ability to adapt to and implement the strategies are also studied. The main point of this study is to motivate further research on strategy adaptation, which will in the future help teachers and instructors administer tests as learning incentives for the development of students’ strategy adaptability. There are four conclusions that result from this study. First: there is a suggestion that teachers provide students with sufficient information about their intended task demands. Second: teachers ensure that the task demands they formulate are convincing and compelling enough. Third: teachers vary the types of study tasks they give to their students. Fourth: teachers may give metacognitive support to students. The reference above helped me understand my topic, which was preparing for and taking tests. There were many strategies for test taking given in this article, as well as diagrams and charts. In addition, there were ideas for instructors as well and how they should administer the strategies so students can better...
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...Riordan Manufacturing Team Building and Conflict Management MGT/311 October 28, 2013 George Beaini Riordan Manufacturing Team Building and Conflict Management Riordan Manufacturing is working to launch CardiCare Valve heart valves and in doing so is designing a new team to proceed with the product launch. The company is looking to use many current employees along with some new hires to build the team needed to manufacture this new product. The company will be using team building strategies to determine how to build the new team for this product and will also be looking at conflict management and conflict management strategies to handle any possible problems that may arise. Part I: Team Strategy Plan There are different strategies that can be used to identify employees for a team. It is very important that when putting a team together the people used have complementary skills and are able to work together. Reviewing employee files would be a good place to start. Looking at performance reviews and employee’s strengths and weaknesses can help to determine what people to use in the team for this new product. This will only work for the existing employees. With the new employees that are coming in to work on the project for the new product the data from the interviewing process and past job experience will help to determine how these employees can be best used in the new team that is being developed. There can be a variety of challenges that arise while developing...
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...Assignment No.3 “Better a consistently applied mediocre strategy, than a series of ad hoc brilliant strategies.” Introduction to strategic planning To achieve certain strategically valuable results, specific actions are required to be planned and acted upon by an organisation or an individual. What inputs are made by the management of an organisation define the expected outputs. Steiner, George A. (2010) in his book explains that strategic planning is indissolubly mixed with field of management these days and is not regarded as a separate process. Managers focus has largely shifted from ‘operations only’ to ‘strategize and operate’ philosophy (Steiner, 2010). However, organisations are in a state of dilemma over the concept of effective strategy implementation (Grimshaw, et al., 2004). Some believe in single strategical approach that is consistent with one pre-planned scheme which slowly adapts to the environment; is most effective, while others point of view is that; to survive in this competitive market environment one has to adopt to series of ad hoc brilliant strategies because it can provide their business cutting edge over the others (Pietersen, 2002). I believe that both the strategies has a role to play in achieving desired strategical outcomes. What is important is that they fit right in the current environment and are implemented in a risk free manner. Changes in theories of Strategic planning When strategic planning was modernised in 1950s, large scale companies...
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...CEO, he demanded that business unit heads present their proposed strategies in no more than a few slides. Executives who failed to meet Reed’s exacting standards for brevity met with his unconcealed displeasure. And if it happened too often, they ran the risk of being left out of the loop on future strategy sessions. Many leaders share Reed’s obsession with the big picture, yet our research shows that few companies actually have a clear strategic vision. The problem, we believe, stems from the strategic-planning process itself. The process usually involves the preparation of a large document—culled from a mishmash of data provided by people from various parts of the organization who often have conflicting agendas and poor communication. The report typically begins with a lengthy description of the industry and the competitive situation. There follows a discussion of how to increase market share here and there, capture new segments, or cut costs, which leads to an outline of numerous goals and initiatives. A full budget is almost invariably attached, as are lavish graphs and a surfeit of spreadsheets. No wonder so few strategic plans turn into action; executives are paralyzed by the muddle. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We suggest an alternative approach to strategic planning, based not on preparing a document but on drawing a picture we call a “strategy canvas.” This approach consistently produces strategies that are easy to understand and communicate, that engage more people...
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...parts for the organization. Team A will develop a Team Strategy Plan of which we will identify several strategies in building viable teams, identify challenges or barriers that may occur, determine the best approach, and measure the teams efficiency. While developing these teams, Team A will create a Conflict Management Plan of which we will analyze the teams strengths and weaknesses, implementation of different conflict management strategies, select the best approach, identify potential challenges, and consider alternate strategies that will foster an efficient team. The Various Strategies Available to Build Teams Riordan Manufacturing is striving to create the perfect teams of employees to generate the best possible production of the newly designed CardiCare Valve heart valves. Creating those perfect teams requires much planning and organization. An important thing that Riordan needs to think about when trying to construct their teams is the number of members of each of the team. Generally speaking, the most effective teams have five to nine members (Robbins & Judge, 2011). When teams are larger, coordination and communication amongst its members may be an issue making it harder to get work done. Another thing for Riordan to consider when building their teams is the purpose each of the teams. Effective teams begin by analyzing the team’s mission, developing goals to achieve that mission, and creating strategies for achieving the goals (Robbins & Judge, 2011). Setting...
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...rather than become employees. Several questions are given consideration such as who are those who become successful and when does realization strike them that they really are one? But it seems like there is a bigger question being imposed here and that is, “Why do some succeed and some fail?”. What do these emerged businesses do that affect their fate in their chosen path? The answer is strategy. Strategy as defined by Helmuth von Moltke is ‘’applied common sense and cannot be taught”. He explains that strategy is about going beyond what you learn in school which is basically just about the common culture. There is no definite formula. Strategies are not only planned but can also be unexpected. In the business world, there are unexpected circumstances that come up that can be adapted into the existing strategy. It is important for a strategist to be able to see these opportunities that is usually otherwise buried under normal existing conditions and not visible to the eye of a normal human being. They must be able to recognize the patterns that emerges from opportunities. Although strategies should not always be deliberate, there are guidelines that a strategist may follow. Kenichi Ohmae explains that it is important for a businessman to be creative, have endurance and have good intuition. As explained previously, it is important that he/she must be attuned to the external environment and be aware of how it could affect your company and how it could affect the society. Aside...
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...Alternative Strategies Healthy competition within the industry is apparent. The major issues lie with regulations, loss of consumers/interest, the recession, and the counterfeiting wars. All companies have strategies that are effective, but should be changed to adjust to the current environmental issues. Callaway currently has an effective strategy focusing on research and development and remains the industry leader. TaylorMade is focusing on out sourcing production in order to increase operating margin and is second in the industry. Titleist is focusing on their strong golf ball market. This is dangerous because if they were to start losing market share, the heavy reliance could negatively impact the company and they could lose millions. Ping currently focuses on its drivers and irons which are selling well, but because of their limited amount of product lines it remains fourth in the industry. Nike relies heavily on endorsements and is the younger company in the golfing industry. The following are three alternative strategies that can help the companies and industry as a whole live up to their full potential at this point in time. Blue Ocean Strategy All the golfing manufacturers could benefit from a blue ocean strategy. A blue ocean strategy is one in which “growth in profits or revenues is achieved by discovering or inventing new industry segments that create altogether new demand.” (Gamble, 2011) In the golfing industry competitors are constantly trying to beat each...
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...align with the team’s mission and strategy. Goals must be specific and challenging and not general or unrealistic to accomplish. Our team realized the importance of goals in the beginning and that is why we were able to achieve every goal that was set in the initial meeting. The following were our goals that we set for the group: 1. Be prompt for all calls-each team member usually arrived 10-15 minutes early for every call that was scheduled. 2. Respect for each other’s time by communicating to the team leader if unable to participate in the calls-each member of the team made every call that was scheduled. 3. Everyone was expected to participate in the calls-every member of the team actively participated in the calls providing feedback when needed. E2. Motivation Strategies Motivating a team can be more challenging than motivating one person because each person within the team has different personalities, values, beliefs and goals. If a team can capitalize on each team member’s positive traits that they bring to the group, it will enable the team to be motivated and achieve more. Every team needs some form of motivation to accomplish its goals. Our team effectively established motivation strategies right from the start in the first meeting and we utilized them throughout the duration of the class. Our group realized the importance of motivation and made it a top priority. We established in the beginning that one strategy for our group would be non-aggressive...
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...contact with possibly hundreds of customers a week. This will allow for an opportunity to up sell and increase revenue. Expanding on services that generate income would push Mountain Bank into increasing their corporate market practices as well as real estate and mortgage banking. One way to do this would be to implement a differentiation strategy to break away from the pack. Differentiation strategies are interested in innovation and quality enhancement with an emphasis on specific roles (Stewart&Brown, 2008, p.66). This type of strategy is exactly what they need to set themselves apart. Implementing services that cost less but provide more would be ideal. A cost leadership approach would benefit Mountain bank in two ways. First it would allow Mountain Bank to utilize its most valuable resource-the tellers and it would allow for a strategy that would tell the tellers exactly what it wanted them to do. The tellers could focus more on interacting with customers to find out their needs and reel in new real estate and mortgage banking. A human resource professional should recommend that a universalistic approach be considered. For example Wright noted that the commitment and control strategies allow for broadly defined tasks. This would make it easier for tellers to provide customers with information and remain well within their scope of employment. Wright also notes that the best HR strategies focus on getting the best from its employees. Although the face...
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...the direction we want to go, and enhances our abilities to achieve our life goals. I had never given much thought about strategy and strategic thinking in my personal and work life, but I now see the many benefits of practicing strategic thinking in my daily life. Effective execution of a new strategy is widely believed to be more important than even the strategy itself, and therefore, it is extremely important for management to skillfully lead a strategy’s implementation. There are many components involved in successfully enacting a strategy, most crucially active communication. Many complications arise in the process of implementing strategies due to the lack of complete understanding from everybody involved. Implementations often fail when there are unclear roles and responsibilities, and as a result of conflicts and misunderstandings. Successful managers are great communicators and ensure that the vision of the company and the strategic goals in the project are clear and well-defined in order to increase understanding and create alignment within the organization. They must also regularly share ideas, information, outcomes, and reasons so that everybody stays informed and on the same page. Organizational coordination is developed through quality communication and greatly reduces confusion and ambiguity. Managers should strive to align strategy implementation with their company’s culture in order to create value. This can be accomplished by setting goals and initiatives...
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