Market based approach to strategy

This topic of block 3 of B713 touches on how strategy can be put together based on the understanding of the forces in the market. This is the case if an organisation intends to venture into a new market segment or region. There are two key theories relevant to this; the Porter (1980) market five forces and an extension of it by David McKevitt (2000) that takes a slightly extended view on public organisations, in particular those that have direct interaction / interfaces with the people.

Porter theory is most relevant in the context of free market. Understanding the forces - existing competitors, (bargaining power of) suppliers, (bargaining power of) customers, (level of) barrier of entry, and (potential) new entrants provide - allows an organisation to come up with the right strategy. For example, in a market that is highly driven by brands, it is important that the right level of investment is allocated to introduce a new brand.

In this topic of market based strategy approach, what is most key is that how an organisation is adapts to the changes in the market and alter and align its strategy accordingly. What is more important is its sensitivity to indicators of these changes to react early enough.

online discussion ... "First Class"? far from it

Thanks to Adr for reminding me about the online discussion started to today. For some reason I thought the first session was to take place tomorrow.

I have to say it was done in a funny way, using email with everyone posting replies to the question. Not the right way to do it, let alone effective way. From the beginning I hated it. It's not even forum tool. You will be lost half way through the discussion not knowing where it began and where it progresses to. Apparently there is proper tool for such a discussion, including voice feature available and we can use it for our third session on Wednesday. It puzzles me why this was not used today.

The topic discussed revolved around organisational performance and critique of balance scorecard (BSC). I had a few ideas in mind having seen BSC used in my organisation and had met with the person responsible in rolling it out and managing it this afternoon. The key question I posed was if the BSC was created based in cascaded objectives coming top down. The answer to this was Yes, indeed the case. Corporate sent a challenge letter to Sector, and Sector down to business. Based on this, KPIs were chosen to be the basis of the BSC covering four areas namely processes, finance, people, and ... I don't remember the fourth. The use of the BSC is no more than to provide a quick, simple way of monitoring mainly key operational areas. This can be used to be proactively anticipate and handle issues in projects or organisation.

TMA03 Marks

Today I got back the marks for my fourth TMA - number 3. I knew it wasn't gonna be good, having rushed to complete it in the last minute. let me see .... fewhh!! Thank god. Not that bad.

Mr Tutor commented that I did not use enough the principle of Theory - Interpretation - Evaluation in question a on organisational performance. Precisely what went wrong. I wouldn't disagree a single bit. I mentioned very little of the theory, hence no interpretation of it. Evaluation was quite poor. In terms of collaboration, I got involved a lot in the TGF but did not make use of it so much in the answer. To be honest I got a lost in the forum --- the forum tool is to be blamed. Extremely poor functionality and miles from being user friendly.

Question 2 on financial ratio which I thought I was gonna do pretty good did not turn so ... darn it! The comment: "you probably needed to thin down what you offered, as the extent of what you contributed somewhat obscured the detail of what the anser needed - a case of too much, basically.". I went over board in my rationale of the ratios? Hard to believe. I've asked Mr Tutor to provide clarification.

Finance

For the past one week I have been working hard on Finance topics. The brought back memories of the struggling times I had with Accounting when I was in high school. Once, I screwed up a paper and got and "F" for it, probably the only failed test/exam I ever had in my entire life.

I'm getting the grasps of the topics. So far so good. Numbers and reasons.

The TMA seems to look quite straight. Hope I'll score some good marks.

first TMA submission

My first TMS submitted! I'm very concerned in case I have deviated from the question. Let's wait and hope for the best.

first meeting

I just got back from our first group get together. For the first time on the road I was stopped by the "polizei". "Auslanderausweis" checked, "driving license" checked, car registration card checked! Alles gut. Not, quite sure what they were looking for.

Got home, and I feel really tired, and damn hungry. What's fast to cook???? hmmm ... can't think of anything else - curry, done. It's on the stove now.

Being the first get together, we were not entirely sure how we should structure the session. In the end it was kind of unstructured discussion revolving around organisation culture, politics, structure, CEO being snobbish and pain in the neck, "tough-guy" / "macho-man culture,  intra-competition between internal service providers, clashes of two cultures due to merger, contractors/professional dependency in organisations (IT, audits, legal) .. and all sort of other things that have one way or another relation to the current topics of B713. 

Trevor who's joining UBS said he does not know his organisation structure. In fact there is none. All he knows is that he will have 3 direct reports. Nothing else, nothing more. I found that to be very strange. It turned out that it's just the way it is in UBS and most likely the same in Credit Swiss. Alstom is "kindergarten" in comparison to UBS, according Adrian (who's already with the bank). Hmmm..

We got into a discussion on how much we get to see the products of work. I was the odd one ... almost none when I think about it. We realised that it has some relation to the structure of the organisation -- mine is Matrix, and it's difficult to get make things happen in such org. 

 

first tutorial

I just came back from our first tutorial at the Movenpick Hotel, Zurich. 16 out of the total of 18 students were present. Quite a good turn out.

I had been wondering if half a day would be sufficient to cover all the topics in the agenda. It turned out, wasn't quite. But, we managed to cover most of the key points.

I got to be in a group of four with Trevor (an IT contractor, soon joining UBS on permanent basis), Adrian (an employee of UBS, involved in client advisory) and Chris (a business owner in hospitality). Hopefully, it'll be a productive group moving forward. We agreed to meet on regular basis, which is something I'm looking forward to.