Questions
What is a tax plan for taxing 1 million residents and need 20 million dollars in...

What is a tax plan for taxing 1 million residents and need 20 million dollars in revenue that isn't already being taxed, and why/how does it relate to Adam Smiths 4 cannons of taxation?

In: Operations Management

PayPal is quickly becoming one of the most popular methods of payment in E-commerce, and is...

PayPal is quickly becoming one of the most popular methods of payment in E-commerce, and is available in many Caribbean countries. Although it is not a free service, it does offer full integration into most sites so that customers are sometimes not even aware that they are using PayPal to make the purchase. Use the Internet to obtain information about PayPal, and how it helps customers with making purchases online. Share your opinion on whether electronic money could be the money of the future. Conduct research using the Internet on electronic money, or e-money, and digital cash. Argue for or against the usefulness of e-money and digital cash

In: Operations Management

Write a paper that identifies at least four differences and four similarities in mobile marketing in...

Write a paper that identifies at least four differences and four similarities in mobile marketing in each region of the world listed below:

East Asia

Southeast Asia

India

Middle East

Africa

Central and South America

North America

Europe

In: Operations Management

Discuss the leadership style that made a team successful or unsuccessful. What was the reason(s) for...

Discuss the leadership style that made a team successful or unsuccessful. What was the reason(s) for the success or failure?

In: Operations Management

1. How would the price elasticity equation apply to the purchase price of (a) gasoline, (b)...

1. How would the price elasticity equation apply to the purchase price of (a) gasoline, (b) an airline ticket, and (c) a checking account?

Give examples of situations that would affect this equation.

2. What would be your response to the statement, "profit maximization is the only legitimate pricing objective for the firm."?

3. A marketing manager reduced the price on a brand of cereal by 10 percent and observed a 25 percent increase in quantity sold. The manager then thought that if the price were reduced by another 20 percent, a 50 percent increase in quantity sold would occur. What would be your response to the marketing manager's reasoning?

In: Operations Management

4 Multiple Choice Questions with the correct answers from the article below. The idea that execution...

4 Multiple Choice Questions with the correct answers from the article below.

The idea that execution is distinct from strategy has become firmly ensconced in management thinking over the past decade. So much so, in fact, that if you run a Google search for “A mediocre strategy well executed is better than a great strategy poorly executed,” you will get more than 42,600 references. Where the idea comes from is not certain, but in 2002, in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, Jamie Dimon, now CEO of JPMorgan Chase, opined, “I’d rather have a first-rate execution and second-rate strategy any time than a brilliant idea and mediocre management.” In the same year, Larry Bossidy, former AlliedSignal CEO, coauthored the best-selling book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, in which the authors declared, “Strategies most often fail because they aren’t well executed.”

The trouble is, Dimon and Bossidy’s doctrine—that execution is the key to a strategy’s success—is as flawed as it is popular. That popularity discourages us from questioning the principle’s validity. Let’s suppose you had a theory that heavenly objects revolve around the Earth. Increasingly, you find that this theory doesn’t predict the movement of the stars and planets very well. Is it more rational to respond by questioning the theory that the universe revolves around the Earth or to keep positing ever more complicated, convoluted, and improbable explanations for the discrepancy? Applying Dimon and Bossidy’s doctrine rather than Occam’s razor would have you going in a lot of unnecessary and useless circles.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what often happens when people are trying to understand why their strategy is failing, especially when consulting firms are involved. In fact, Dimon and Bossidy’s approach can be a godsend for these firms because it allows them to blame their clients for any mistakes they might make. Firms can in effect say, “It won’t be our strategy advice that will let you down but your implementation of that strategy. (To help you get around that problem, we suggest that we do some change management work for you as well.)”Of course, lining the pockets of consulting firms does nothing to further most companies’ performance. I suggest a superior way to proceed. Rather than doubling down on the prevailing theory to try to get it to work, consider the simple possibility that the theory is wrong.

So let’s evaluate the idea of the brilliant strategy poorly executed. If a strategy produces poor results, how can we argue that it is brilliant? It certainly is an odd definition of brilliance. A strategy’s purpose is to generate positive results, and the strategy in question doesn’t do that, yet it was brilliant? In what other field do we proclaim something to be brilliant that has failed miserably in its only attempt? A “brilliant” Broadway play that closes after one week? A “brilliant” political campaign that results in the other candidate winning? If we think about it, we must accept that the only strategy that can legitimately be called brilliant is one whose results are exemplary. A strategy that fails to produce a great outcome is simply a failure.

As I hope to show in the following pages, the idea that we have to choose between a mediocre, well-executed strategy and a brilliant, poorly executed one is deeply flawed—a narrow, unhelpful concept replete with unintended negative consequences. But the good news is that if we change the way we think about the problem of strategy versus execution, we can change the outcome.

Let’s begin by exploring the consequences of the prevailing view of strategy.

A Misguided Metaphor

According to the accepted dogma, strategy is the purview of senior managers, who, often aided by outside consultants, formulate it and then hand off its execution to the rest of the organization. The pervasive metaphor that informs our understanding of this process is that of the human body. The brain (top management) thinks and chooses, and the body (the organization) does what the brain tells it to do. Successful action is made up of two distinct elements: formulation in the brain and execution through the body. At the formulation stage, the brain decides, “I will pick up this fork now.” Then, at the implementation stage, the hand dutifully picks up the fork. The hand doesn’t choose—it does. The flow is one-way, from the formulator brain to the implementer hand. That hand becomes a “choiceless doer.”

A neuroscientist may quibble with this simplification of the brain and body (and of the true order of operations between them), but it’s a fair description of the accepted model of organizational strategy: Strategy is choosing; execution is doing.

To make this more concrete, consider the example of a large retail bank. The CEO and his team formulate a customer strategy. They flow that strategy down to the bank’s branches, where it is executed by the customer service representatives (CSRs) on a day-to-day basis. The CSRs are the choiceless doers. They follow a manual that tells them how to treat the customers, how to process transactions, which products to promote, and how to sell them. The hard work of making all those choices is left to the higher-ups. Those on the front lines don’t have to choose at all—they just do.

Now consider an experience I had working with a large retail bank in the early 1980s. The bank was revising its strategy and, as a young consultant, I asked to shadow a teller to get a better sense of the bank’s operations. I was assigned to Mary, who was the top teller in her branch. As I observed her over the course of a few weeks, I began to see a pattern in the way Mary dealt with her customers. With some, she was polite, efficient, and professional. With others, she would take a little longer, perhaps suggesting that they transfer some of the extra money in their checking account to a higher-yielding term deposit or explaining new services the bank had introduced. And with some customers she would ask about their children, their vacations, or their health but relate very little about banking and finances. The transactions still got done in these instances of informality but took far longer than the other customer interactions did. Mary seemed to treat each of her customers in one of these three distinct ways.

After a while, I took Mary aside and asked about her approach. “Customers come in three general flavors,” she explained. “There are those who don’t really like banking. They want to come in, do their deposits or transfers, and get out again painlessly. They want me to be friendly but to manage the transactions as quickly as possible. If I tried to give them financial advice, they would say ‘That’s not your job.’ ”

“Then there’s the second kind of customer, who isn’t interested in my being her friend but thinks of me as her personal financial service manager. This customer wants me to be watching her other accounts.” She pulled out a drawer and pointed to a set of small file cards. “For those customers, I make up these little files that keep me posted on all of their accounts. This lets me offer them specific advice—because that’s what they want from me. If I were to ask about their children or their hip surgery, they’d feel as if I were wasting their time or, worse yet, intruding into their lives.”

“Finally, there’s a group of people who view a branch visit as an important social event, and they’ve come in part to visit their favorite teller. If you watch the lineup, you’ll see some people actually let others go ahead of them and wait for a specific teller to be available. With those folks, I have to do their banking, but I also need to talk to them about their lives. If I don’t, it won’t be the event that they want, and they’ll be disappointed with our service.”

Intrigued, I asked Mary to show me in the teller manual where it described this strategic segmentation scheme and the differential service models. Mary went white as a sheet, because of course none of this was in the manual. “It’s just something I’ve tried,” she explained. “I want customers to be happy, so I do whatever I can to make that happen.”

“But for the middle segment,” I pressed, “you have to make these files yourself, cobble something together that bank systems could be designed to provide.” (Of course bank systems did eventually catch up, and banks created sophisticated computerized customer information files that looked a lot like Mary’s file cards.) “And frankly,” I continued, “other tellers and customers could benefit from your approach. Why don’t you talk to your bank manager about the three segments and suggest doing things differently?”

That was too much for Mary. “Why would I ever do that?” she replied, suddenly impatient. “I’m just trying to do my job as best I can. They’re not interested in what a teller has to say.”

Mary had been set up as a choiceless doer. She had been given a manual that essentially said, “It’s all about the transaction—just do the transaction and be friendly.” But her own experience and insight told her otherwise. She chose to build and implement her own customer service model, understanding that the ultimate goal of the bank was to create happy customers. To do that, she had to reject her role as a choiceless doer. Rather than obey the teller manual and deliver subpar service, she decided to make choices within her own sphere. She had decided, dare I say, to be strategic.

But Mary understood just as clearly that she was in no position to influence the decisions made at the top of her organization. Although she had chosen to reject the conventional, her superiors had not. So the bank, which could have benefited from her strategic insights, was shut out. It’s a pattern I have seen again and again throughout my career. Often, what senior management needed most—although it was rarely able to recognize it—was to have someone talk with the rank and file in order to understand what was really happening in the business. Senior management couldn’t get that information itself because it had created a model in which its employees were convinced that no one was interested in what they had to say.

The Choiceless-Doer Dilemma

The strategy-execution model fails at multiple levels of the organization, not just at the front line. Executives, too, are constrained—by the boards, shareholders, regulators, and countless others that dictate to them. Everyone from the top of the organization all the way down to the very bottom makes choices under constraints and uncertainty. Each time a frontline employee responds to a customer request, he is making a choice about how to represent the corporation—a choice directly related to the fundamental value proposition the company is offering.

A Warning Unheeded

Most managers are so used to believing that strategy and execution are distinct from one another that they are blind to whether the strategy-execution approach makes any sense. The notion that strategy and execution are connected isn’t new. But apparently we didn’t listen carefully enough to the great management theorist Kenneth Andrews, who established the distinction between the formulation of a strategy and its execution in his 1971 book, The Concept of Corporate Strategy. He wrote,

“Corporate strategy has two equally important aspects, interrelated in life but separated to the extent practicable here in our study of the concept. The first of these is formulation; the second is implementation.”

Despite the warning that strategy formulation and implementation or execution are “interrelated in life” and “equally important,” four decades later, the strategy-execution theory artificially conceptualizes them as separate. It is high time that we delved a little deeper into the twisted logic of our current approach. If we don’t, we are almost certain to fail.

In: Operations Management

Operating a search program can be difficult. Identify how product sites, audiences, countries and technology contribute...

Operating a search program can be difficult. Identify how product sites, audiences, countries and technology contribute to the difficulties with operating a search program. Please explain in detail. Write a 350 word paper on this topic and cite your sources.

In: Operations Management

Provide and explain at least four different methods for monitoring search health. Which do you think...

Provide and explain at least four different methods for monitoring search health. Which do you think is the most important and why? Write a 250 page paper on this topic and cite your sources.

In: Operations Management

ANTI-AVOIDANCE PROVISIONS Access and examine section 17 of the Income Tax Act of Jamaica, then perform...

ANTI-AVOIDANCE PROVISIONS

Access and examine section 17 of the Income Tax Act of Jamaica, then perform the following tasks:

1. Distinguish between a fictitious transaction and an artificial transaction

2. Outline the anti-avoidance provisions as they relate to: • the transfer of property to a child, a trust, or a connected person • dealings in security

In: Operations Management

Define Supply Chain.

Define Supply Chain.

In: Operations Management

In 200 words essay format state: How should you (i)document employee counseling sessions for employees due...

In 200 words essay format state: How should you (i)document employee counseling sessions for employees due to the level of offences committed and at what point should (ii) documentation be sent to HR? Please re-frame from using ambiguous terms such as it, this, and they.

In: Operations Management

Please make observations, with examples, of FORD MOTOR in a overall situation" Question: How serious are...

Please make observations, with examples, of FORD MOTOR in a overall situation"

Question: How serious are FORD'S weakness (in a SWOT) and competitive deficiencies? [200 words or more][Will give thumbs up]

In: Operations Management

The plant managers of ABC Corporation's five plants have met at a common location at 8:00...

The plant managers of ABC Corporation's five plants have met at a common location at 8:00 am every Monday morning for 20 years. The people serving as plant managers have changed several times during this period, but the meeting has not. Every Monday morning all five plant managers are seated around a conference table in the home office. It is not uncommon for the managers to have no pressing business to discuss and the meeting amounts to nothing more than a Monday morning coffee session. Not only is the meeting inconvenient, but it is also costly, time-consuming, and occasionally interferes with the work of the plant managers. Finally, one of the plant managers had had enough. He decided to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the meeting. When he presented it at a meeting of the plant managers, ABC's CEO and the other plant managers were shocked to learn that the company could have $50,000 if the managers met only when there was pressing business to discuss.

Discuss the following question:

How does this case illustrate the need to constantly review the status quo and ask "Why"?

In: Operations Management

Assume that if the product requested is not in stock, it needs to be manufactured before...

Assume that if the product requested is not in stock, it needs to be manufactured
before the order handling can continue. In this way, an order can never be rejected.
To manufacture a product, the required raw materials have to be ordered. Two
preferred suppliers provide different types of raw material. Depending on the prod-
uct to be manufactured, raw materials may be ordered from either Supplier 1 or
Supplier 2, or from both. Once the raw materials are available, the product can be
manufactured and the order can be confirmed. On the other hand, if the product
is in stock, it is retrieved from the warehouse before confirming the order. Then
the process continues normally. After confirming the order, the shipment address is
received and the requested product is shipped while the invoice is emitted and the
payment is received. Afterwards, the order is archived and the process completes.With respect to the above process, use the following report format and provide
necessary discussion under each section:

1. Assumptions & Simplifications
- State all assumptions are made to abstract the system in the conceptual
model.
- Describe any simplifications are made during the abstraction process.

2. Plan of Input Data
- Describe all input data which are required to code your conceptual model
into a computer model. Also, explain which of these data are deterministic
and which are probabilistic and propose probability distributions.
- Explain how to do you plan to collect these input data.

In: Operations Management

Two questions: 1. Identify the central issue(s) of the case. 2. Outline the facts of the...

Two questions:

1. Identify the central issue(s) of the case.

2. Outline the facts of the case.

* Below is the case study *

Wings of Fire Case Study:

Following his graduation from college, Tony Smith wanted to continue to live and work in Oxford. However the community was small and there were not a lot of readily available opportunities for a new college graduate. Fortunately tony had some experience working in the food service industry gained in the summers and throughout high school at his uncles’ restaurant in Buffalo. When Tony decided to leverage his experience into a small delivery and take out restaurant located close to the university he thought he had hit on a great idea. Tony would offer a limited fare consisting of the buffalo wings his uncle had perfected at his restaurant. Tony called his restaurant Wings of Fire. Although success came slowly, the uniqueness of Tony’s offering coupled with the growth of the university community made Wings of Fire a success.

Tony’s business was pretty simple. He purchased wings locally, and the wings were then seasoned and prepared in his restaurant. Once an order was received Tony cooked the wings, which were then delivered or picked up by the customer. His establishment was small and there was no place for customers to dine in the restaurant. However his wings proved so popular that over time Tony hired several employees including three delivery drivers. Business was steady and predictable during the week, with the biggest days being the home football Saturdays.


A little over a year ago the city really began to grow and expand. Tony noticed that his business was beginning to suffer when other fast food delivery restaurants opened around campus. Some of these restaurants were offering guarantees such as "30 minutes or its free." Tony’s Wings of Fire now had to compete with fish tacos, specialty pizzas and gourmet burgers. Most of these new restaurants however were dine in establishments that provided carry out and delivery as a customer convenience. However Tony was certain that he would need to offer a delivery guarantee to remain competitive with the newer establishments.

Tony was certain that a delivery guarantee of "30 minutes or its free" could easily be accomplished every day except on football Saturdays. Tony thought that if he could offer a 30 minute guarantee on his busiest day he would be able to hold onto and perhaps even recover market share from the competition. However before he was willing to commit to such a guarantee, he wanted to ensure that it was possible to meet the 30 minute promise

He knew it would be no problem for customers to pick up orders within 30 minutes of phoning them in. However he was less confident about delivering orders to customers in 30 minutes or less. Not only would the wings need to be cooked and packaged but the delivery time might be affected by the availability of drivers. Tony decided that he needed to analyze the opportunities further.

As a part of his analysis Tony decided to take a random sample of deliveries over five different football weekends. Cooking time and packaging time were not considered in his analysis because wings were not cooked for individual orders. Rather, large number of wings were cooked at a single time and then packaged in boxes of 12. Tony therefore decided to focus his analysis on the time required to deliver cooked and packaged wings. He collected information on the amount of time an order had to wait for a driver (the pickup time) as well as the amount of time required to transport the wings to the customer (the driver time). The sampled information is in the file Wings of Fire (ATTACHED). Tony is not willing to offer the guarantee on football Saturdays unless he can be reasonably sure that the total time to deliver a customers’ order is less than 30 minutes on average. Tony would like to know how likely it is that the total time to make a delivery would take more than 30 minutes. Based on the sample data should Tony offer the guarantee? What percent of the Saturday deliveries would result in a customer receiving a free order? What recommendations might help him improve his Saturday delivery times?

In: Operations Management