Reference no: EM131370

Question 1. how is it possible for individuals and organizations to fail to focus on customers?

Question 2. What are the similarities and the differences between serving internal and external customers. Explain customer focus strategies - internal or external - from you own experience.

Question 3. Middle managers are often at the center of efforts to develop tactical plans to implement established strategies. How are tactical plans typically established? What challenges confront middle managers charged with strategy implementation?

Question 4. Beer and Eisenstat identify what they call ‘silent killers' of strategy implementation and learning. Provide concrete examples - preferably from your own experience - of how these ‘silent killers' sabotage strategy implementation. Why do Beer and Eisenstat add ‘learning' to the list of victims of these ‘silent killers'?

Question 5. What are the fundamental tensions that Dodd and Favaro identify? How does finding the balance among these tensions impact middle managers? Give examples from your experience.

Question 6. Kaplan & Norton suggest techniques for implementing strategies without disrupting organizations. Provide examples from your work experience of disruptive and non-disruptive strategy implementations.

Question 7. Were the strategies that did not disrupt the organization deliberately designed so as not to be disruptive?

Question 8. Is it sometimes appropriate - even necessary - to design strategies with the intention of disrupting organizations? Can implementing disruptive strategies constitute a strategy for organizational change? How do disruptive strategies impact middle managers?

Question 9. Mintzberg distinguishes between ‘deliberate' and ‘emergent' strategies. What are the advantages of emergent strategies? Are they particularly appropriate and effective in certain kinds of organizations? In certain kinds of environmental and competitive conditions? In tackling certain kinds of problems?

Question 10. Comment on RosabethKanter's use of improvisational theater as a metaphor for emergent and flexible strategy.

Question 11. Characterize the culture of the organization in which you work. How does this culture affect the work of middle managers?

Question 12. Have you experienced deliberate interventions by senior management that were intended to refocus, refine or revise the culture of an organization? To what degree were these interventions successful or unsuccessful? Why? [See textbook assignment and linked websites for background.]

Question 13. What is organizational design? How is it like and how unlike design of a manufacturing process (for example, automobile production)? [You might wish to consider Jeanne Liedtka's arguments here ("In defense of strategy as design").]

Question 14. Organizations have both formal and informal (tacit) structures. How can we predict the effects of calculated and deliberate organizational change on informal networks and structures? How can we mitigate against unanticipated and unintended consequences of organizational redesign?

Question 15. Provide examples from your experience of the different kinds of leaders identified in the readings. Are typologies of leadership styles useful in the practice of management? If so, how? If not, why not?

Question 16. Does a good manager need to be a leader? Is a leader necessarily a good manager?

Question 17. Within any group a leader typically emerges. How can a manager effectively supervise an employee that emerges as a group leader and turn the leader-employee into a managerial asset?

Question 18. Provide examples from your work experience of ways that managers strike the balance between their organization's commitment to systems of control and to empowering employees. Are there systematic strategies to address these challenges?

Question 19. To what degree does an organization's success in this area depend upon the good instincts of middle managers and the good will of employees?

Question 20. Tannen analyzes gender differences in communication within organizations. Does her analysis resonate in your experience? Have gender-specific differences in communication become less pronounced as participation by women at all levels of employment has increased or do they remain stubbornly fixed and inflexible?

Question 21. In your experience are female bosses that speak and manage like their male counterparts perceived differently by their subordinates? How so? Why? Do women managers confront more resistance from male or female employees or is there no observable difference?

Question 22. Do managers of color face obstacles comparable to those that Tannen discusses with respect to women? What about managers from minority religions? Old (or very young) managers? Managers with disabilities? Gay or lesbian managers?

Question 23. What strategies can organizations employ to improve communications in light of the patterns, influences and challenges that Tannen discusses?

Question 24. How are reward, benefits and employee development systems aligned with strategy in your organization?

Question 25. What, according to Huselid, Beatty & Becker, are A, B, and C ‘players.' What role should each of these categories play in an organization's strategy? Does your organization have a clear and coherent strategy for recruiting, training and retaining employees in all three categories? Are you in the category appropriate to your talents?

Question 26. Kerr addresses examples of misalignment between strategic needs and reward systems. Give examples of reward systems that fail to provide incentives, or in fact provide disincentives, to efforts and activities that advance organizational mission and strategy. How can middle managers mitigate the undesirable effects of these kinds of misalignments?

Question 27. Have you encountered situations that you would Explain as examples of Ghoshal's allegation that "bad management theories are destroying good management practices?" By contrast, can you recall situations where management theories have assisted managers in making good decisions?

Question 28. Roxburgh identifies some ‘hidden flaws in strategy." Give examples from your own experience. Have you encountered strategic flaws that do not fit into the categories that Roxburgh identifies?

Question 29. Does Rosabeth Moss Kanter's article resonate in your experience? How?

Question 30. Do you feel empowered and able to innovate in the organization in which you work? To what extent?

Question 31. What limits your ability to innovate? As a manager, how do you empower your subordinates to be innovators? Does your organization support these efforts?

Question 32. What risks does your organization face with respect to your areas of responsibility? How do you and your organization assess and mitigate these risks?

Question 33. What distinguishes quality initiatives like ISO 9000 and the Baldridge National Quality Program from Total Quality Management (TQM) and similar managerial commitments?

Question 34. There is some evidence that in the years immediately following Baldridge or ISO certification/accreditation, performance standards and attention to quality actually decline to levels below the build up to accreditation review. What might explain this result? How can managers guard against this kind of ‘relapse'?

Question 35. If you have been employed in an organization that has gone through the Baldridge or ISO process, share your experiences. What challenges did you face? Was the payoff to the organization worth the effort?