BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success
In July 2014, the Global Executive Committee (GEC) for BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, held a two-day off-site meeting to discuss the state of talent within the firm. A year prior, in 2013, Chairman and CEO Laurence (Larry) Fink had asked Global Head of HR Jeff Smith to outline to the GEC the firm's Diversity and Inclusion efforts, benchmarking its progress against eight practices associated with building more inclusive cultures. At the July 2014 off-site meeting, Smith and Kara Helander, Global Head of Philanthropy and Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), provided a summary of the firm's journey to-date and an update on its progress. The message from Fink at the July meeting was clear: The firm needed to do more. This message was also reinforced by the Board which wanted to see an increase in diversity in succession plans and leadership ranks. Smith and his team needed to work with the GEC to lead the change. They needed to decide: What needed to be done next? What were the key areas that needed the most improvement? What were the greatest challenges and opportunities facing the firm, and how could D&I initiatives help address them? What actions needed to be taken to meet the request from Fink and the Board?
Swot Analysis of "BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success" written by Boris Groysberg, Katherine Connolly includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Gec Fink facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Diversity, Financial management, Gender, Leadership and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gec Fink, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gec Fink 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gec Fink
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 Gec Fink
Strengths BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gec Fink in BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success Harvard Business Review case study are -
Learning organization
- Gec Fink 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 Gec Fink is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Gec Fink is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Gec Fink in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Gec Fink
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Gec Fink does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Gec Fink 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 Gec Fink in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Gec Fink has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Gec Fink is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gec Fink digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gec Fink 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Gec Fink is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gec Fink 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Gec Fink are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Weaknesses BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success HBR case study mentions - Gec Fink takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Gec Fink 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success, it seems that the employees of Gec Fink don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gec Fink is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success, is just above the industry average. Gec Fink 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 Gec Fink products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gec Fink needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Gec Fink 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Gec Fink has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Gec Fink has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gec Fink has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Gec Fink even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Gec Fink 's lucrative customers.
Opportunities BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success | 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gec Fink 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.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Gec Fink to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Gec Fink 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 Gec Fink to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Gec Fink can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Gec Fink 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gec Fink 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gec Fink to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Gec Fink 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Gec Fink 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Gec Fink has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Gec Fink to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success case study. Gec Fink can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Gec Fink in the consumer business. Now Gec Fink can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Gec Fink is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Gec Fink to increase its market reach. Gec Fink will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gec Fink can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gec Fink 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.
Environmental challenges
– Gec Fink needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Gec Fink can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Gec Fink can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Gec Fink business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Gec Fink 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success .
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gec Fink 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.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Gec Fink needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Gec Fink
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Gec Fink.
Regulatory challenges
– Gec Fink 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.
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 Gec Fink in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success, Gec Fink may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Organizational Development .
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Gec Fink will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success 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 BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success 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 Gec Fink needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.