Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star
Presents a detailed account of power dynamics that unfold in the firm when one of its best and brightest threatens to leave. Focuses on the dynamics of attracting, retaining, compensating, negotiating, and leveraging a star performer in a professional services firm. A manager and a star performer fight to improve their relative bargaining power. Specifically traces the detailed events from the resignation threat to the research director's struggle over deciding whether to counteroffer, to promote a junior, or to hire from outside the firm. Teaching Purpose: To discuss issues ranging from managing talent to resignation dynamics, power and influence, compensation, negotiation strategies, and managing a professional services firm.
Authors :: Boris Groysberg, Steve Balog, Jennifer Haimson
Swot Analysis of "Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star" written by Boris Groysberg, Steve Balog, Jennifer Haimson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Resignation Star facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Employee retention, Human resource management, Influence, Negotiations, Organizational culture and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star casestudy better are - – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Resignation Star, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Resignation Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Resignation Star
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 Resignation Star
Strengths Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Resignation Star in Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star Harvard Business Review case study are -
Strong track record of project management
– Resignation Star is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Resignation Star is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Resignation Star is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Resignation Star in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Resignation Star has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Resignation Star has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Resignation Star has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Resignation Star digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Resignation Star 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.
High brand equity
– Resignation Star has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Resignation Star to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Resignation Star 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 Resignation Star is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Resignation Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Resignation Star 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Resignation Star is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Weaknesses Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star, in the dynamic environment Resignation Star has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Resignation Star has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Resignation Star is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Resignation Star 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 - Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Boris Groysberg, Steve Balog, Jennifer Haimson suggests that, Resignation Star 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Resignation Star 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Resignation Star 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Resignation Star is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Resignation Star 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. Resignation Star 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Resignation Star has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Resignation Star 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.
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 Resignation Star supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Resignation Star vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Opportunities Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star | 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star are -
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. Resignation Star 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. Resignation Star 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Resignation Star 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, Resignation Star 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Resignation Star has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Resignation Star to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star case study. Resignation Star can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Resignation Star can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Resignation Star is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Resignation Star to increase its market reach. Resignation Star 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Resignation Star 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.
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. Resignation Star can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Resignation Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Resignation Star to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Resignation Star 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.
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 Resignation Star in the consumer business. Now Resignation Star can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Resignation Star to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Threats Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Resignation Star has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Organizational Development industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Resignation Star 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
– Resignation Star 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Resignation Star 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 Resignation Star in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Resignation Star with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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. Resignation Star can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Resignation Star 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.
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. Resignation Star needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Resignation Star is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Resignation Star
– 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 Resignation Star.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Resignation Star 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.
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 Resignation Star.
Environmental challenges
– Resignation Star 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. Resignation Star can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Roller Coaster Ride: The Resignation of a Star 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 Resignation Star needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.