Category: Strategic Management

Preparing for Behavioral Event Interviews

8/30/2019

Lisa Mann, from the UNC Asheville Career Center, visited both capstone Strategy classes this week to help the students develop the skill of story telling for their future career searches.

This was an experiential process. The students wrote a story that might be relevant in a behavioral event job interview in the Situation - Action - Result (SAR) format. They then shared their stories with students in the class that they didn't know well to get feedback.

Lisa also had them write a story about a time they failed in the SAR format, and share that story with a friend in the room.

All of this is to help them when they graduate, which most will do in December or next May, and in their future careers.

Link to UNC Asheville Career Center: https://www.unca.edu/success/career-center/

Link to Neil Bearden video about story telling: https://vimeo.com/354629176

Link to my LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/preparing-behavioral-event-interviews-paul-mcafee-mba-phd-abd

0 Comments

Strategic Planning & Implementation

7/29/2019

0 Comments

I have begun investigating offering a Strategic Planning & Implementation training program to businesses in the Buffalo/Niagara area. What would make this unique would be the use of the Business Strategy Game (BSG) simulation that I use for my capstone strategic management courses at Canisius College, Daemen College, and the University at Buffalo School of Management in Buffalo, and at the University at Buffalo School of Management business program in Singapore. The target companies would be manufacturing or product distribution companies. This is because the BSG simulation is for a globally manufactured product.

For Buffalo/Niagara area businesses, the benefit would be that members of all functions, such as Engineering, Finance, Manufacturing, Marketing, and Sales, could participate and apply what they know about their function during the planning and decisions-making stages of the simulation, and then see the results. Each function gets to see how its decisions affect the whole business.

The participants in each client company would form teams, with each team acting as an athletic shoe manufacturer. Here are details from the BSG website:
"The co-managers of each company are responsible for assessing market conditions, determining how to respond to the actions of competitors, forging a long-term direction and strategy for their company, forecasting upcoming sales volumes, and making decisions relating to:

Production operations (up to 10 decisions for each plant, with a maximum of 4 plants)
Upgrading plants and expanding/reducing plant capacity (up to 6 decisions per plant)
Worker compensation and training (3 decisions per plant)
Shipping and inventory management (up to 8 decisions each plant/geographic region)
Pricing and marketing (up to 10 decisions in each of 4 geographic regions)
Bids to sign celebrities to endorse their brand of footwear (2 decision entries per bid)
Corporate social responsibility and citizenship (up to 6 decision entries)
Financing of company operations (up to 8 decision entries)"

Learning outcomes for local business managers would include learning about data analysis, understanding strategic planning and decision-making, and seeing the interactive nature of business decisions. Each week of the corporate education program would represent a year of business in the BSG simulation industry.

I share these thoughts now to explore the level of interest. If you think this might be of use in your company, please get in touch with me on my LinkedIn page - www.linkedin.com/in/paulmcafee.

Two of the many data graphs are below, showing relative positions of the teams in one of my recent capstone strategic management courses.

#strategicmanagement #globalstrategy #corporatetraining #experientiallearning #businessstrategygame #strategysimulation

0 Comments

University at Buffalo classroom design for experiential learning

1/31/2019

0 Comments

Because all of the courses I teach involve team-based project work, it can be frustrating to have a classroom designed in the old lecture style, with arcs of fixed chairs and tables. Students have to contort themselves to work in teams. Increasingly, universities and colleges have begun to design classrooms with movable tables and chairs. This enables students to regroup in their teams quickly - and comfortably.

I am very happy that the classroom in the University at Buffalo School of Management Jacobs Building, where I currently teach the capstone Fundamentals of Strategic Management course, has chair-desk combos that can be rolled into team configurations quickly. The only challenge we will face is that the room is full, so students will need to sit in groups at the start of class, or shift to new desks when the team project work begins.

#experientiallearning #highereducation #universityatbuffalo #daemencollege #canisiuscollege #keukacollege

0 Comments

Preparing for Behavioral Event Interviews

Strategic Planning & Implementation

University at Buffalo classroom design for experiential learning

Subscribe by email

Paul McAfee

Archives

Categories