Description

To complete this Pre-Assessment, do the following:

• Review the Assessment Instructions and the rubric to ensure you understand the requirements for the Assessment.
• As stated in the Assessment Instructions, you must select a publicly traded organization, and/or one about which you have sufficient information to complete the work on this Assessment. The company that you select should have corporate social responsibility (and/or positive social change) as part of its mission/vision and/or business practices. If desired, you may use the same company you selected in WMBA 6070, Competency 1 (MF001).
• Download the SU001_Assessment Template(Word document).
• Using the SU001_Assessment_Template, prepare an outline of Section 1 of your playbook, including a draft References section. If desired, you may flesh out your outline into a draft, but at a minimum, ensure that your outline begins with an introduction and includes both major and minor points.

Overview

In this Capstone experience, you will develop a strategy playbook for a selected organization. You may be familiar with the concept of a playbook as it relates to a sports team, but what might that mean for a business? The Strategy Playbook for Exceptional Results is a roadmap, of sorts, that can help an organization achieve excellence, respond to challenges, and attain short-term and long-term goals. The organization you choose for this exercise could be an organization for which you have worked (or hope to work in the future) and for which there is adequate information available to complete all necessary sections of the playbook. For this Performance Task Assessment, you will begin work on the Strategy Playbook for Exceptional Results that you will build over the course of the three Competencies in this Area of Expertise. In this playbook, you will draw upon the knowledge and skills that you have gained throughout your MBA program to provide your selected company’s leadership with an analysis of the organization, as well as your recommendations for changes the company could make over the coming years to improve its organizational performance. The final compilation of your Strategy Playbook for Exceptional Results will be tangible evidence that you can put your MBA education to use, and it will provide you with a template for how you can help any organization achieve exceptional results.

Assessment Submission Length: 8–10 pages, comprising Section 1 of the playbook.

Instructions

To complete this Assessment, do the following:

• Select a publicly traded organization, and/or one about which you have sufficient information to complete the work on this Assessment. The company that you select should have corporate social responsibility (and/or positive social change) as part of its mission/vision and/or business practices. If desired, you may use the same company you selected in WMBA 6070, Competency 1 (MF001).
• In the SU001_Assessment_Template file, complete Section 1 of your playbook, using your Pre-Assessment submission as a starting point and incorporating any feedback as appropriate.
• Be sure to adhere to the indicated assignment length.

Before submitting your Assessment, carefully review the rubric.

Strategy Playbook for Exceptional Results: Section 1

For this Assessment you will play the role of a consultant who has been brought in by the CEO of your selected organization to lead a tiger team. A tiger team is an efficient, highly motivated, and diverse team created to solve or troubleshoot specific major issues facing your organization. The Assessment will be a building block for the playbook that you will develop as you work through the competencies in this Capstone. Your final, synthesized Strategy Playbook for Exceptional Results is due at the end of Competency 3, and it represents what can be thought of as a form of “due diligence analysis,” where you are stepping into the role of a consultant to a senior leadership team and are preparing a “forward-looking,” “crisp,” and “impactful” evaluation of where you think the company ought to be going over the next 5 years or so—and how it might get there.

This playbook could be a helpful tool for any organization that is experiencing a problem, either internal or external. Please note that your selected organization may not actually be going through any known issues now; however, you could bring to the table certain common issues—for example, your organization could be experiencing a decline in sales and losing its once abundant target market, or internally, the organization could be experiencing a high turnover in the operations department and the recent climate survey showed a decline in morale throughout the organization. These examples are not all-inclusive to an organization, but they may be present in some form or another. For the purposes of this exercise, you are at liberty to utilize your creativity to craft an issue the organization is facing. Be sure to consider the different functional areas, or business units, within the organization to ensure that you are doing a thorough analysis.

With those thoughts in mind, your task for the final playbook is to use the knowledge and skills that you have developed throughout this program to perform an analysis of the organization (Section 1), assess its readiness for change and improvement (Section 2), and then develop strategic recommendations for how the organization can overcome its challenges and achieve greater organizational performance (Section 3).

In the Assessment for this Competency, you will complete Section 1 of your playbook in which you will analyze your selected organization’s culture, social and economic climate, and overall purpose. Compile Section 1 of your playbook, being sure to address the requirements for the following three parts and including specific examples (where appropriate) as well as relevant citations from the Learning Activities from this Competency or from others throughout the program, the Walden Library, and/or other appropriate academic sources to support your work.

Section 1: The Organizational Profile

Part 1: Analyzing the Organizational Culture

In the first part of your analysis, address the following:

• Classify the current organizational culture of your selected organization, being sure to include how ethics, values, diversity, and social responsibility play a role in the culture. Provide two or more examples to support your response.
• Examine the benefits of organizational culture to your company’s position in the market.
• Analyze how conditioning and culture could challenge your organization’s strategy.

Part 2: Analyzing the Social and Economic Climate

In the second part of your analysis, address the following:

• Identify the external social and economic impacts of the organization.
• Examine how the social environment can influence the organization’s business strategy. Be specific, including what factors are most conducive to influencing.
• To support your assertions, do some research and locate at least two organizational examples of business practices that have shown success factors. For each example, do the following:
  • Briefly describe each organization (including what type of company it is, what sector/industry it is in, etc.).
  • Provide at least one specific example of how each organization employs (or employed) these factors in its business practices.

Part 3: Analyzing the Purpose of the Organization

In the third part of your analysis, address the following:

• Analyze how organizational purpose can empower a business strategy.
• Explain what a purpose-driven organization is and identify how it can lead to a competitive business strategy.
• Select one of the organization examples that you identified in Part 2 and analyze how the organization’s structure impacts its strategic business practices.
  • Specifically, in what ways does/did the organizational structure enable the organization to take advantage of strategic opportunities, have an impact, and/or achieve or maintain a competitive advantage?