The MBA Program Project

Hello everyone…I am Dr. John Craddock, and I am a lead faculty member in the School of Management. I have been an online educator in graduate schools for many years, and in another life spent 30-plus years developing, owning and managing a variety of businesses; ranging from 4-star hotels, to major soft drink bottling and distribution companies; both internationally and domestically. I also served as a senior corporate officer in several international hotel chains and have been a long-term advisor to both the US State Department and the United Nations in the areas of national tourism industry development in emerging nations.

First off, permit me to welcome to the MBA Program Project. Over the remainder of your MBA program you will have the opportunity, on a course by course basis, to apply the concepts and theories you are learning in your class to the accomplishment of one of two projects: A business plan for a new venture, or a business analysis plan for an existing venture.

Important Notice

Under no circumstances may any proprietary, confidential or otherwise internal information that is not publicly available be used in your work in the Program Project. This is done for everyone’s protection. If you have a question, consult with your faculty member and your employer prior to including or submitting such information for review.

In selecting your project, please realize that outwardly both may appear similar in content, but in reality, each is unique. Here are some of the distinctions.

The Business Plan for a New Venture

The business plan for a new venture is designed to be a document that could be both a tool to manage the enterprise once underway; and more importantly a tool for raising venture capital or obtaining a loan. As such, it must be comprehensive and include everything that a lender or investor would want to understand about the project in order to make an investment decision. This would include information on the company itself; the founders and their experience; the vision of the business, its mission, goals and objectives; the market opportunities and financial results that could be potentially achieved.

The Business Analysis Plan

The Business Analysis Plan, starts from a slightly different perspective. Here, you are looking at the operations of an existing enterprise, with the objective of assessing its viability; and making recommendations for improvement and or enhancement. The goal of this plan is to assist the venture to possibly improve its market penetration; profitability, sales and revenue, working environment, corporate culture, etc.

You will start with real numbers and assess them in terms of what they mean. Financial analyses will not necessarily be done in your first class, but may wait until you get into the areas of accounting and finance which comes later in the program. However in this course you can start gathering the information and performing a cursory review to see what is present.

Organizing Project Work and Resources

So how do we approach organizing all the information we will need for the Program Project? It can become a huge task with many components. The solution to organization is a simple method that I have used over the years to do research for various projects: I create virtual file cabinets in my computer for each master area of information that I'm going to be assessing during the course of my work.

For safety and security, I also make a backup on a drive outside of the computer and create a third backup source that I can carry with me when I travel so that I can work on my project in my hotel room or on my vacation. This is best done by using a flash drive.

As I think of a topic, or gather information, I review it initially, and then I file for future use it in the area I have designated in my virtual file folders. These file folders might carry titles like ”Marketing Information”; “Market characteristics and Demographics”; “Legal Issues”; “Business Culture”; International and Global Opportunities and Challenges” and the like. You will have to determine the best way to set up your files that works for you.

As I review each of the areas of information I make notes to myself and I start writing an outline of what I want to include in the template. This is the skeleton of the content that I will have within that area. As I obtain additional information or have additional thoughts, I expand my outline to become a paragraph or set of paragraphs.

Illustrative Sample Plan Templates

So that we achieve consistency from course to course and from student to student, we are including a set of illustrative planning templates that you may use as models (only) for the enhancement of your business planning and writing processes. I recommend that you take the time early in this course to review the sample plan templates and select one, depending on your project type. That way you will be familiar with what is needed.

Please note that these are provided to illustrate what a plan should look like, and not to be used as a specific template for a particular plan format. Use these as guides only and create your own documents responding to the individual requirements and terminology your project may require. The question sets in the samples can be valuable coaching aids, but once again, are not to be considered as all inclusive. You are not limited to the questions that are contained in the sample plan templates, as each project is unique. You are expected to personalize everything you do and expand the sample questions based on the specific requirements of your particular project. Include or delete areas which are not appropriate to the work which you are doing, and in the case of the Business Analysis Plan, discuss what you want to include with your faculty member on a course by course basis. That way you will meet the needs of your plan, and also the needs of the course.

You are also encouraged to use any other outside references or tools that will make your work more effective and professional.

Starting Your Plan

In this course, we will focus on the first section of the plan, which is a General Company Description including the following:

  • Background Information and Introduction
  • The Vision
  • The Mission Statement
  • The Long-Term Goals and Objectives
  • Keys To Success

In developing the above for a new venture business plan, you will want to create the information described in the above headings. In preparing this information for the analysis of an existing business, you will want to start by abstracting this information from current company documents or other areas such as websites.

Please feel free as you are working on this information, to make notes and add any additional information into your virtual file folders for work on other areas of the plan that you want to expand at a later date.

Background Information and Introduction

This should be a simple section to author. Here you should include enough information to give the reader an understanding of what it is to want to accomplish, a bit of the project history, the key issues that it faces, and what you hope to accomplish. Be specific. Remember, your reader doesn't know anything about your project, and you have to guide him or her throughout the entire process. Always place yourself in the mind of the reader and ask yourself this: "What is necessary for this person to know so they understand what I am trying to accomplish?"

“Quo Vadis?”

One of the primary tasks of a leader is to encourage and empower followers to accomplish tasks or to head in a specific direction for a given purpose. The first question that a follower probably would ask would be “where are you going?” [Quo Vadis?]. Unless the leader knows this, it’s going to be very difficult to convince followers they should follow. In project management, we recommend starting at the end, and working backwards. By this we mean that we envision a project as it will appear when it is fully completed in final form, and then determine what we have to do to accomplish the tasks to achieve the desired outcome.

The leader has to know where he or she is going, and what the destination will look like on arrival;this would be described in our Project Plan by the Vision Statement. The followers also have to know how to get to the destination; and this would be described in our Project Plan’s Mission Statement. Let’s take a look in the following paragraphs about each of these critically important elements.

The Vision Statement

If you are new to the business planning process, you might ask "what is a vision?" In simple terms, it is a statement which indicates where a company wants to be once it has fully evolved and is fully successful. This is also referred to as the "end state". The starting point would be considered as the beginning state, and the Plan addresses the gap analysis which indicates what is necessary to achieve a final successful outcome. In recent years some enterprises and organizations have ignored the need for a “Vision Statement” or are using a combined Vision and Mission Statement, sometimes referred top as a Strategic Vision Statement. The problem with this, and why you are asked to include both, is simply clarity and focus. In truth, we can not have a viable Mission Statement with out a destination to move towards. That is the purpose of the Vision Statement. In short it is the answer to the bigger question businesses face: “What will we be and by when?”

The best vision statements are those which can unite people behind them, into a common purpose, and are passionately developed and presented. Before people will buy into something, you and they have to be emotionally attached to it. This is especially true for startup ventures. You want your investors, management team, staff and stakeholders to have a personal and emotional investment in your business. To the extent that they do, you have a greater opportunity to be successful. This is equally true and important in an ongoing business. If the Vision is not clear, or is missing, it will be difficult for the staff and management to achieve buy-in or have the motivation to succeed. In this case it will be necessary to define or re-define the Vision for the enterprise.

One of the better vision statements in recent history was a speech made by Dr. Martin Luther King commonly referred to as the "I Have a Dream" speech. The speech was so clear, that an entire society responded to it, and the civil rights movement which was in the early stages saw significant greater momentum. It is still used today as an example of what one person can do to change society. [Note: If your computer is a part of a corporate network or behind a firewall, you may not be able to see or listen to the video links below. These will be accessible however, in most typical home computer settings.]

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Another masterpiece in this area was the inaugural or address of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In that address, he challenged the nation and society as a whole not to look at what was best for them, but look what at was best for society. As a result of this programs like the Peace Corps were born. It also resulted in the first efforts to put man on the moon. That was a significant vision statement and it was so huge, that everyone in the country could rally around it and buy into it. It was exciting, challenging, and had a good purpose. Everything about the vision of going to the moon was positive.

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The Mission Statement

When President Kennedy addressed the nation and NASA and stated that he expected the United States to send a man to the Moon within a decade, he created what we would consider to be NASA’a space program "Mission Statement". It was the articulation of the president’s vision of sending a man to the Moon and the roadmap to its successful achievement within a finite, measured period. It had the key characteristics that are necessary in a good Mission Statement: It was long term; broad brush; and it was measurable. Remember this: if you can't measure it, do not include it.

So in summary, the Mission Statement is the articulation or “roadmap” of how we get from “Point A” to “Point Z”. It will tell us in very broad, measurable, long-term parameters, the targets we are looking towards (the Goals) and the milestones that we have to achieve along the way (The Objectives), as well as the general time frame which we have to accomplish our goals and objectives. If it is not clearly defined, it will be very difficult to accomplish.

Long-Term Goals and Objectives

In this section, you want to be as specific as possible regarding your long-term goals and objectives. By long term it is meant to be from three to five years or longer. The goals and objectives should be clearly defined and measurable. One goal for example for Microsoft might be to "be the dominant provider of operating software for personal computers by the year 2010 “. Another might be "to attain International Standards Organization) certification status within 18 months".

Both of these are medium to long term goals and are clearly defined by objective standards and measurable. One important point is that the goals (the targets you are aiming for) and the objectives (the milestones monitored in achieving the goals), should point towards the strategies that you will develop to accomplish them. So, for example, one question that might be posed regarding ISO certification objective above might be: "Which strategies and business practices are required in order to attain the certification?" In looking at this from the perspective of the business analysis plan, we might ask ourselves: "what is standing in the way that prevents us from achieving ISO certification in our current operations?"

Keys to Success

The keys to success in any venture are those elements that are critical to the achievement of the goals and objectives and the steps set forth in the mission statement. These are normally "best practices" that we have as an enterprise. This might include specialized technology; unique leadership capabilities; strong capital resources; domination of the current market; unique knowledge of potential new markets; particular cultural fluency, et cetera. Each will be unique to the enterprise and specific to the plan we are preparing.

Summary

In this first podcast, I have attempted to give you information which will assist you in creating the first section of the paper. We examined how to organize a project; what would be necessary in each of the key project areas for the fist section; and ways by which we can determine and develop the information necessary. I hope that this has been helpful in organizing your work. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask your faculty member regarding any of this material or material in the Program Project.

MMBA 6510 Podcast 042007

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