Boycotting HBR? Some Alternatives…

You may have followed the debate about HBR’s policy prohibiting professors from linking suggested HBR readings to their own library’s paid subscriptions (see Joshua Gans’ blog posts on this and his Financial Times article on HBR and their journal list). I have increasingly used McKinsey Quarterly which makes their articles available for free (you need to register but that’s free). Here are some HBR alternatives that seem to work well (often by authors you know well):

Strategy process & org change

Internal Analysis and Competitive Advantage

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Baby Click Me One More Time

Market signals can be rather noisy and firms may over react or miss the signal entirely. In a similar way, the resource based view draws on causal ambiguity as an isolating mechanism — firms may misread noisy observations and imitate the wrong thing. This clip illustrates that problem as a firm ramps up to meet demand triggered by unusual activity on its web page…

Contributed by Russ Coff

A Different Script Ending…

The economics of video streaming and DVD rental brought Netflix to conclude that the businesses were better off separated. However, they erred in assuming that the separation would be well accepted by their customers. Below is the explanation of the separation and how it would affect users after the uproar ensued. Ultimately, the customer pressure pushed them to reverse their decision.

…and this brought the following reaction from Conan O’Brien:

Contributed by Jeff Martin

Get Out of Jail Free

There are many game theory simulations available online to supplement lectures and cases. If you have limited class time or are teaching a distance course, these simulations can be especially valuable because, unlike video lectures or PowerPoint voice overs, these are quite interactive. Here are some examples:

If you really need a video, this one from Greg Mankiw’s page should work. See also the classic Dilbert Prisoner’s Dilemma video.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Facebook Discussion Bonanza

A number of faculty now use Facebook groups to encourage discussion of current events and strategy theory among students and academics. These are typically closed groups but you may be able to join if you ask the moderator nicely. If you have a page like this, please send me the URL and I am happy to add it to this post. Here are a couple of pages you might check out:

Contributed by Russ Coff

CEO Excels at Destroying Ideas

In another of our Onion News Network stories, the video below examines how a CEO has a knack for recognizing great ideas and then transforming them into complete failures. The story includes interviews of employees amazed at the skill with which the CEO dismantles exceptional ideas. Funny as it is, it may invite a rich discussion of how CEOs really can destroy good ideas.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Social Network Bingo

social20networkWe often try to convey to students how value can be created in social networks as actors gain access to more resources and knowledge. This exercise is a simple game of bingo where players have a list of resources they need to find to win the game (4 boxes in a row). To play, they simply find people in the room with specific attributes or knowledge and have them sign their card. I have added a simple twist that they can complete one box using an indirect tie (e.g., a friend of a friend). This teaches the very basics of social networks and serves as a nice ice breaker as well. Here are two Bingo card created for: 1) an exec ed program and 2) for a PhD Student Orientation. This gives you an idea of how to customize the exercise for the group. This can be useful to explore alliance networks at the organizational level or the role of individual networks in strategy formulation and implementation.

Contributed by Michael Sacks

A Focused Planning Meeting

Robert Wright offers an experiential exercise to get planning teams to think more deeply about their unstructured problems. He suggests applying his “FOCUSED” framework by having them consider a challenging problem and roll his specially designed dice (here is the pattern for the dice). This prompts them to address issues in each aspect of the framework. See his video below explaining the framework and the process for the exercise.

Contributed by Robert Wright

The Peter (not Paula) Principle

The Peter Principle states that people will rise in an organization to their level of incompetence. A recent HBR blog by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic explains why this might apply to men but not women. In essence, the attributes often associated with many high profile leaders (Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, etc.) are, much more frequently associated with failure than success but the failures are not as well publicized. In contrast, research suggests that women are more often linked to leadership styles that may be less flashy but are, on average more effective. However, in looking for the male archetypes, many incompetent men are promoted leaving few opportunities for effective women. This article would likely prime some rich class discussion on the topic. The following TED talk by Sheryl Sandberg will also spur discussion:

Contributed by Aya Chacar

CATME Teamwork System

Many strategy faculty use teams in their classes. The CATME.org website has multiple tools to support the effective use of teams in higher education. Team-Maker is a tool for assigning students to teams based on instructor-specified criteria. Instructors can choose from a library of questions, such as students’ schedules or majors, or write their own questions. Team-Maker collects the information from students and allows the instructor to assign use that information to assign students to teams based on the criteria and weighting that they choose. CATME Peer Evaluation is a tool for self- and peer evaluations of students’ contributions to their teams that is based on research. The system automates the data collection and analysis and allows instructors to release feedback to students. There are many optional follow-up questions about team processes that are taken from published research. CATME Rater Calibration allows instructors to assign students to practice using the CATME behaviorally anchored rating scale by rating fictitious team members. CATME Meeting Support provides templates for team charters, meeting agendas and minutes. Teamwork training modules are in development. The website shows research and other information about these tools.

Contributed by Misty Loughry

An Agency Problem at the club…

When making decisions on behalf of others, managers may not have their objectives aligned. This humorous video points out some of the challenges of trusting a party in this context. It is especially useful in exploring agency theory and corporate governance issues.

Contributed by Russ Coff

You’re Gonna Like My Company

After firing the founder and CEO (George Zimmer), the board has now released the reason: the CEO wanted to sell to a group of private equity investors. Here the board didn’t want to take the company private “for the sake of the employees.” While the CEO was fired, the news has apparently fired up investors who may be interested in buying the company — now it may be in play regardless of what the board wanted.This seems like it might be helpful to drive home the different goals and objectives for different stakeholders, While the board accused Zimmer of being opportunistic, he made the case for his actions in an open letter. This should make for enough drama to dress up your class…This video may lighten the discussion. At the same time, It highlights the company’s biggest strategic challenge: appealing to a younger audience…

Contributed by Russ Coff

Failing … to Succeed

Peter Klein writes, “To illustrate the importance of experimentation and learning, I showed my students the Michael Jordan ‘Failure’ commercial. Inexplicably, they were not moved to tears, as I was.” J.K Rowling’s 2008 graduation address at Harvard is also a nice example though it may be a bit long to play in class.

Contributed by Peter Klein

Fish Story: A common tragedy

The  tragedy of the commons refers to the inefficient use of a shared resource when individual actors have incentives that are misaligned with the larger community. Classic examples might be a shared pastures or common waters for fishing. Dennis Meadows and John Sterman offer a computer based game that simulates this problem in a fishing setting (Fishbanks: A Renewable Resource Management Simulation). Below is a short video that describes the problem.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Bullets Recalled for Being too Safe

The Onion offers a news analysis of a recall of defective bullets that fail to kill effectively. Of course, the discussion is a bit silly but this can be used to highlight how blame is assigned in organizations as well as how managers operate under conditions of causal ambiguity

Contributed by Russ Coff

Free Org Change Videos

Education Portal has put together a series of videos on Organizational Change that seem like a nice addition especially for online or part time courses. Education Portal Academy offers these videos for free. The content is fairly basic but some of it might be very useful to augment other course materials. This could help you cover these topics outside of class if you want to do an experiential exercise in class (see, for example, the org change ruse on this site) or if you want to give students some additional background resources.

Contributed by Russ Coff

 

 

Team Capability Inventory

You can take internal analysis down to the team level with a quick introductory exercise. The object is to find some commoFantastic4n capabilities across the team (beyond the obvious) and to find some unique capabilities that each person brings to the table. Then the team must describe how some of the unique capabilities could be leveraged in a team project.

  1. Objective: Find Capabilities. Uncover 3 abilities all members of this small group have in common (other than the obvious things such as you have taken the same classes). For example, all may have strong spreadsheet skills or all are good at interviewing. Then identify 1 capability that is unique to each person in the group. For example, only one is an accomplished musician or has contacts in the insurance industry. Continue reading

Proof of a Bad Strategy…

Kathy Eisenhardt has a classic paper describing how “slow” decision makers tend to explore one alternative until it has completely failed rather than considering other alternatives. When facing uncertainty (noisy signals), managers often need strong evidence before altering their opinions. This video depicts the consequences of waiting for such strong evidence.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Do We Need Managers? Valve doesn’t…

Valve Corporation is a game developer that has 400 employees, no bosses, and is very successful. How can you have a structure that flat? The company, a spawn from Microsoft, seems to be doing just fine thank you. The information at the following seven web links (including a podcast and the employee handbook) contain all of the raw material required for a live case:

I think you could probably just give these seven web links to students, say “discuss,” and get out of the way.

Contributed by Rich Makadok

Perception Drives Strategy

Another in a series of (entertaining) videos that illustrate perceptual biases. In the context of strategy, decision-makers inevitably have incomplete data from which to draw conclusions. In this context, behavior and choices are ultimately driven by perceptions as opposed to some objective observation of facts. You may also be familiar with the classic video where the task is to count basketball passes and viewers get to involved with the task that they miss the gorilla that walks through the middle. Here is a related article that shows how radiologists also miss the gorilla when it is in the middle of a lung scan.

Contributed by Russ Coff