Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF
This case covers the career of Christine Lagarde from 2011 to 2018 as she takes the helm of a troubled multilateral organization during a time of deepening economic turmoil. As the first female leader of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and as a non-economist, she overcomes early challenges to gain her footing with the multiple constituencies she must serve. She also focuses the IMF on "macro-critical" issues including gender, socioeconomic inequality, and climate change. In 2016, she is reelected to serve another term as Managing Director and considers how to ensure that the IMF remains relevant. For coverage of her childhood to 2005, see Christine Lagarde (A): A French Prime Minister Calls (419017). For coverage of her career from 2005 to 2011, see Christine Lagarde (B): Being a Public Servant (419018). For comprehensive coverage of her evolution and career, see Christine Lagarde (419016).
Swot Analysis of "Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF" written by Julie Battilana, Carin-Isabel Knoop includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Lagarde Christine facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF casestudy better are - – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization,
technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lagarde Christine, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lagarde Christine 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lagarde Christine
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 Lagarde Christine
Strengths Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lagarde Christine in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF Harvard Business Review case study are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Lagarde Christine 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Lagarde Christine in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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.
Training and development
– Lagarde Christine has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Lagarde Christine 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 Lagarde Christine in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Lagarde Christine to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Lagarde Christine to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Lagarde Christine 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 Lagarde Christine is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Lagarde Christine is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lagarde Christine 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lagarde Christine in the sector have low bargaining power. Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lagarde Christine to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Lagarde Christine is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Lagarde Christine 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Lagarde Christine 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Julie Battilana, Carin-Isabel Knoop suggests that, Lagarde Christine 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Lagarde Christine 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. Lagarde Christine 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lagarde Christine is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Lagarde Christine 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, Lagarde Christine 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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 Lagarde Christine 's lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Lagarde Christine products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Lagarde Christine needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF, is just above the industry average. Lagarde Christine 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Lagarde Christine 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 - Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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 Lagarde Christine supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Lagarde Christine vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Opportunities Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF | 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Lagarde Christine 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Lagarde Christine to increase its market reach. Lagarde Christine 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.
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 Lagarde Christine in the consumer business. Now Lagarde Christine can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Lagarde Christine 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Lagarde Christine 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Lagarde Christine can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lagarde Christine 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 Lagarde Christine has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Lagarde Christine to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF case study. Lagarde Christine can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Lagarde Christine 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lagarde Christine is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Lagarde Christine 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 Lagarde Christine can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lagarde Christine 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lagarde Christine to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF are -
Increasing wage structure of Lagarde Christine
– 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 Lagarde Christine.
Environmental challenges
– Lagarde Christine 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. Lagarde Christine 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.
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 Lagarde Christine.
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 Lagarde Christine in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lagarde Christine 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.
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. Lagarde Christine can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lagarde Christine 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, Lagarde Christine 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF .
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Lagarde Christine 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF, Lagarde Christine 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 .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lagarde Christine is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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 Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF 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 Lagarde Christine needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.