Case Study Description of Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom
Provides guidance for the preparation of teaching notes. Sets forth the rationale for teaching notes, what they should contain and why, and how they can be prepared. Based on the experiences of Harvard Business School faculty.
Swot Analysis of "Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom" written by James E. Austin includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Notes Teaching facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom casestudy better are - – technology disruption, wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Notes Teaching, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Notes Teaching operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Notes Teaching
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Notes Teaching
Strengths Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Notes Teaching in Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Notes Teaching has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Notes Teaching is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Notes Teaching is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Notes Teaching is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Notes Teaching is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by James E. Austin can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Notes Teaching is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Notes Teaching in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Notes Teaching has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
High brand equity
– Notes Teaching has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Notes Teaching to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Notes Teaching has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Notes Teaching digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Notes Teaching has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Organizational Resilience of Notes Teaching
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Notes Teaching does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management
– Notes Teaching is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Notes Teaching has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Need for greater diversity
– Notes Teaching has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom, is just above the industry average. Notes Teaching needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Lack of clear differentiation of Notes Teaching products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Notes Teaching needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Notes Teaching, firm in the HBR case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom, in the dynamic environment Notes Teaching has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Notes Teaching has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, James E. Austin suggests that, Notes Teaching is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Notes Teaching supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Notes Teaching vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Notes Teaching needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Notes Teaching has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Notes Teaching has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Opportunities Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom are -
Buying journey improvements
– Notes Teaching can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Notes Teaching can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Organizational Development industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Notes Teaching can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Notes Teaching can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Notes Teaching can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Organizational Development segment.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Notes Teaching can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Notes Teaching can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Notes Teaching can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Notes Teaching has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Notes Teaching to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Notes Teaching to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Notes Teaching to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Notes Teaching in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Developing new processes and practices
– Notes Teaching can develop new processes and procedures in Organizational Development industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Notes Teaching has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Notes Teaching can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Notes Teaching operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Threats Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom are -
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Notes Teaching.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Notes Teaching with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Notes Teaching needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Organizational Development industry regulations.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Notes Teaching demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Notes Teaching is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Notes Teaching can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Notes Teaching in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Notes Teaching business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Notes Teaching in the Organizational Development industry. The Organizational Development industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Notes Teaching has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Organizational Development industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Notes Teaching needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Organizational Development sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Notes Teaching high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Notes Teaching can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Teaching Notes: Communicating the Teacher's Wisdom is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Notes Teaching needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.