Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is?
Real strategy-in companies and in our lives-is created through hundreds of everyday decisions. As you live your life from day to day, how can you make sure you're heading in the right direction? The authors argue that the answer lies in taking a close look at where your resources are allocated. In this excerpt from their book, How Will You Measure Your Life? (Harper Business, 2012), they show that If your resources aren't supporting the strategy you've decided upon, you are not implementing that strategy.
Authors :: Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon
Swot Analysis of "Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is?" written by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Harper Day facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategy and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? casestudy better are - – increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, 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 backlash against globalization, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Harper Day, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Harper Day 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Harper Day
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Harper Day
Strengths Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Harper Day in Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Learning organization
- Harper Day 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 Harper Day is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Harper Day digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Harper Day 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Harper Day 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Harper Day to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Harper Day to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Harper Day 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 Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Harper Day 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
– Harper Day is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Harper Day 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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
– Harper Day has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Harper Day 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.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Harper Day 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 Harper Day in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? are -
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon suggests that, Harper Day 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 to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Harper Day is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Harper Day 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Harper Day has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is?, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Harper Day 's lucrative customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Harper Day 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Harper Day 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Harper Day is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Harper Day needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Harper Day to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Harper Day 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Harper Day is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? | 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? are -
Manufacturing automation
– Harper Day can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Harper Day 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. Harper Day 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Harper Day 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. Harper Day can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Harper Day 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Harper Day to increase its market reach. Harper Day 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Harper Day can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Harper Day 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Harper Day can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is?, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Harper Day can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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.
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 Harper Day 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Harper Day in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Harper Day has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Harper Day to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? case study. Harper Day can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Harper Day 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Harper Day has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Harper Day needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Harper Day in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is?, Harper Day may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
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. Harper Day needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Harper Day 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.
Increasing wage structure of Harper Day
– 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 Harper Day.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Harper Day 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
– Harper Day 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. Harper Day can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Harper Day can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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 Harper Day business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Harper Day.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Is Your Strategy What You Say It Is? 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 Harper Day needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.