NVC Reflection 2

Venture idea

How has our idea developed over the last week?

Not much progress this week. We have delivered our first presentation and decided on what we should be doing for the next week. We quickly agreed that a weakness in our venture is evidence – evidence to support the drivers and dimensions that we presented, they were mainly based on our own feelings rather than fact.

So we’re going to fix that and then work out a plan for the remaining two weeks before our final pitch.

What are its main strengths and limitations; has anything happened that requires additional skills or resources?

Strengths lie in the social aspect of the venture still, the team cooperation and positivity, and we also have a quirky brand now.

Weaknesses include evidence, finances, and we must turn our idea into a reality by addressing the operational issues. How much money is needed? Who are our growers and buyers? Where are we going to set this up in the country first? How can we manage the risks?……..

What techniques or approaches could we apply in order to produce a more convincing proposal and an improved business model?

Cash flow forecasting
Combine concepts idea to create a more robust business idea
Network analysis and identify/bridge gaps
Manage risk – plan to mitigate weaknesses and reduce risk for the investor.

Venture team

How well are we working as a team this week?

Still working well. A little slower due to other commitments though I’m sure. The slower pace in this weeks research reflects that. The following two weeks will be busy!

Do we have compatible values and ambitions for the venture?

Still yes. Difficult to identify and keep to boundaries for the venture. It’s all too easy to get ahead of ourselves sometimes and discuss large scale, longer term aspirations before sorting out the basics.

What could we do differently in order to become more effective?

Maybe allocate jib titles? Finance lead, operations lead, stakeholder lead, network development lead…….

What role(s) am I playing in the team?

Similar to before, although taking a little off of the gas to allow others to come forward this week. Sometimes I feel frustrated with the leads I’m trying to generate with development of the venture, but I need to understand that others are busy too.

How could I make a more effective contribution?

Perhaps take more of a leading role, but don’t want to step on others’ toes. I’ll continue to try and be creative in what we need to be doing and influence the agenda if possible.

How do our experiences compare with those of established entrepreneurs and with research findings?

…

Entrepreneurship

What have I learned about entrepreneurship this week?

That having ideas is great but it pays to quickly get to the operations and nitty gritty of how you will achieve the plan. There is a lot to consider.

This aspect reminds me of the entrepreneurs role in taking something that is a creative idea and making it happen (Blunder and Locket p.70)….

Creativity: Gearing New ideas……..  the initial grower/seller marketplace idea, transportation and storage growth, and geographic expansion ,use of local schools/businesses to help fill resource gaps and so on.

Entrepreneurial Role: Translating ideas in to practice…. in order to ‘translate ideas in to practice’ we have now picked a ‘start location’ (East Wiltshire) which allows us to determine exactly who our customers are, how many of them there might be, transport links and main commuter routes for storage perhaps, who in the local area might actually help us and so on….  I think this has been an important development in our project.  It will also help us to present a more realistic venture for our final presentation where we will be able to make things ‘real’.

We have also assigned (determined and agreed) ‘roles’ in the team.  This will help us to each take ownership of what we see as the main areas of the venture (operations, marketing, finance and network development) – and we are now each working on presenting information relating to these for our presentation.  It helps to present a professional approach and will help to control how we manage any questions at the end of our presentation.  This aspect of our experience relates to ‘Session 2.4 – Organisations, individuals and teams, particularly the early stages of venture development and a limited capacity, perhaps the need to adopt additional roles that we would rather not.  Role flexibility.  As our venture/network grows roles may change – we may need particular expertise, or the venture may take a new dimension that requires a new focus.  Collaboration between roles will be important as we identified that some areas will help, affect others.

Innovation: realisation of new ideas…….We also spent an amount of time to determine the boundaries of the venture.  We have loads of ideas for growth but were getting ahead of ourselves a little.  It seemed silly to plan huge developments before we had got anything off f the ground – i guess this related to a risk of not actually having a venture if we don’t start small?  This made us revisit our growth model – just sell/buy in year )-1 then look to grow either with the same model geographically, or through delivery/storage services dependent on the emerging dynamics.  This approach will help us with identifying capital structure and cash flows for the first few years.

 

How do my experiences compare with those of established entrepreneurs and with research findings?

….

What theories, concepts or frameworks might help me to understand or to address recent experiences?

Review entrepreneur traits and motivations in order to pitch my suggestions for progress in a better context?

Other thoughts…..

Do you have any other thoughts or questions that you want to record for a future discussion with your tutor or other team members?

Is there anything you want to follow up later (e.g., further reading suggestions for the EMA)?

04/08/15 – Post-Scouting/Pre-Scoping Reflection

So i’ve had time to reflect on where things are at with respect to my management initiative and wanted to keep on top of this journal, so that I can plan my next steps and make sense of whats been before.

The experience:

I’ve been able to identify a potential Management Initiative that relates to a ‘systemic change’ at work.  We face a lot of ‘skeletons’ and staff are eager to sort them out, consequently i get bombarded with a lot of intelligent solutions to the many operational problems  we are facing.  The trouble is that we are sometime too reactive when a ‘bright idea’ comes-up and our corporate compass often gets distracted away from issues that we really need to take action on in order to achieve our goals.  I’d like to explore this aspect of day-to-day business further in order to find a sustainable solution, and i believe that solution lies within ‘creative approaches’ and ‘innovation’.  I need to confirm the issue with more robust evidence now, and I will need to identify some management theory that can help me implement a process to manage the volume of ‘ideas’ that staff present me with. Perhaps a leadership framework will be useful – as the ‘creative’ approach is not something found within my very traditional organisations ‘cultural handbook’, maybe developing ‘trust’ is key in order to have my team follow me in these new approaches, or perhaps specific ‘creative’ frameworks will be the area to focus on.  I’m not quite sure yet.  What i do know is that I will have to confirm support from all the stakeholders involved, and I will have to be able to measure the effect that I am (or am not!) having in carrying out this initiative.

My observations:

There is potential for a good initiative here but i don’t yet have enough to move forward.  No robust evidence, no confirmation of theory to use and what shape the initiative will take, no evidence for stakeholder support, no mechanism to obtain/record insightful evidence/experiences that relate to this and no plan of how to implement whatever it turns out to be that I’m trying to do.

Conclusions:

• I need to sort out how I am going to collect evidence and actively seek it/keep my eyes open from here on in.
• I need to confirm assignment requirements regarding evidence of learning (developing productive inquiry).
• I need to choose what theory to throw at this and do some wider reading.
• I need to map out stakeholders in detail, gain support from those who have authority and identify those who might pose a threat to progression.
• I need to put together a register of risks.

Next steps:

• Review Developing productive inquiry paper.
• Record evidence from experiences at work – use ideas from first assignment.
• Pick a theory to focus on.
• Map out stakeholders.
• Review ‘project failure’ and ‘change’ frameworks from year 1.

And ta-da!…….there’s the plan!

NVC Reflection 1

Venture idea

How has our idea developed over the last week?

This week we took on the idea for an online marketplace – where small vegetable growers and buyers can come together in order to sell/buy produce. It’s developed a lot this week during our first two Skype sessions and asynchronous work in Evernote – the Opportunity Business model has helped to promote wider and detailed thinking. The idea developed particularly well after each of us took on an aspect of the model to complete. We have been able to identify potential market size and revenue, customer and other stakeholders, and realised some important drivers that have confirmed our thoughts about this being a strong social venture.

The first review of our attempt at applying the business model created some great development discussion….. Our estimation of revenue highlighted that profit might sit between £1-10k if we were to operate within 1 twenty mile radius market, not great in monetary terms but still allowing good societal returns. In moving on to discuss ‘processes’ we found opportunities to develop the storage and delivery aspects of the venture, but in comparing resource costs to revenue found that obtaining storage and transport could be difficult without some form of capital/investment. This discussion led us to consider adopting a more community based model where partnering with other companies in order to achieve storage/transport capabilities, we also discussed the possibility of selling in partnership with schools in order to increase scale and this too raised the idea of partnering with a school/tech college in order for them to assist us with the web-based market place development – providing tech students with important practical experience.

An exciting development has been that – as a result of storage and transportation issues – we have been able to generate a growth strategy. Year 1 = sell/buy and collect. Year 2 = sell/buy/store/collect. Year 3 = sell/buy/store/collect/deliver! This helps with managing risk for the venture.

What are its main strengths and limitations; has anything happened that requires additional skills or resources?

The ventures strength lies in its community/social vision. In keeping operational costs low it also offers the possibility of cheaper, and more environmentally friendly veg – as no huge CO2 impact, that fits with more recent social drivers. It also provides the opportunity for micro growers and small households/retailers to access a market that they are otherwise priced out of.

At the moment it is limited in its network. We need to focus on finding partners for tech development, storage and transportation. We also need to start pinning down some growers and sellers. Somehow they need to be encouraged to come together in our market place.

We also need to create a brand and venture name.

What techniques or approaches could we apply in order to produce a more convincing proposal and an improved business model?

Market research to support grower/seller needs and problems. Network mapping and our own personal contact network analysis in order to identify ties/links or even latent relationships that we might capitalise on.

Venture team

How well are we working as a team this week?

Our team is 4 strong and are spread across Oxford, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Italy! Despite the geographic issues we work well. We put venture aims and started to write ideas into our shared Evernote book which is working well, and we’re able to discuss/rule out/in each idea sensibly and agree on the option to take forward with no problems.

Importantly, I think we’re using the teams strengths well. We have a good organiser and meeting coordinator, a member who works in the social sector and plenty of enthusiasm. Everyone has a willingness to learn from each others experiences and to consider any new ideas.

Do we have compatible values and ambitions for the venture?

Yes I think we do. Otherwise we would be working so well as a team. Sometimes we’re a it ambitious but with each new growth idea we discover that we should probably reign things in a bit.

What could we do differently in order to become more effective?

I think geography could obviously be better and if we were all closer we could meet more often to discuss things face to face. Maybe we could each adopt the lead on a business function so that each of the key areas were covered as things progress?

What role(s) am I playing in the team?

I think I’m adopting a bit of an IT role, a ‘keep thugs on track role and like other an idea generator role. I’m enjoying it and trying to link problems to potential solutions.

How could I make a more effective contribution?

I could be more effective if I spent more time researching aspects of the venture: competitors, pricing for the web application…….

How do our experiences compare with those of established entrepreneurs and with research findings?

Similar to Facebook at the start where Zuckerberg didn’t have everyone he needed to create the venture. He developed his PCN in order to find others with the resources needed.

Entrepreneurship

What have I learned about entrepreneurship this week?

I have learned that team satisfaction is important if you want to avoid conflict, no one has fallen out! I’ve also confirmed learning from my last assignment – networks are really important if you want to succeed especially when it comes to accessing knowledge and resources. I’ve learn the there is a lot to consider and that it will take time to cater for each of the aspects required from a business model – research, research, research! I think my biggest area of learning has been around social entrepreneurship – of you take the moral approach and try to make a ‘better world’ then there’s nothing wrong with approaching other people/firms in order to develop a business that benefits the community. You might just achieve things at very little cost and get things going!

How do my experiences compare with those of established entrepreneurs and with research findings?

Comparable to teams being based on values rather than skills alone. And comparable to networking theory where without a wide array of ‘links’ to skills /resources you can quickly become stuck. Perhaps a creative approach to overcoming problems is needed too – must be some examples to be found here!

What theories, concepts or frameworks might help me to understand or to address recent experiences?

Network analysis and mapping.
Risk – financial/growth model.
Creativity and innovative approach to problem solving?

Other thoughts…..

Do you have any other thoughts or questions that you want to record for a future discussion with your tutor or other team members?

Is there anything you want to follow up later (e.g., further reading suggestions for the EMA)?

I want to review the other areas of entrepreneurship that we have covered already.

Marketing Focus Group Activity

One more thread to record my experience of a marketing focus group. Tagged ‘Focus Group’.

I completed this activity in order to answer the following…..

Marketing question: how can we improve customer satisfaction?

Research question: What constitutes a competent exercise therapist?

Reflections…..

I had to change my initial marketing and research questions and they were too focussed and almost warranted a direct answer that would not give further insight.

I had to exclude an amount of the data collected. This included observer comments, discussions about software outside of our remit, and location specific issues, any career management issues, any focus groups politics and any comments about individuals/specific organisations. These themes stray from the marketing research question and/or pose ethical issues.

One of my questions asked participants to complete a sentence and for ethical reasons I had to conduct this before the focus group and individually so that there was no influence from other group members. It was useful in order to gauge customer perceptions of the role that students had to fulfil. Answers ranged from safety to knowing policy, and no one was able to pinpoint one aspect as the most important. I have yet to determine how to merge these findings with those of the group discussion.

There were issues in my sample group in that only one organisation was represented – a number of others failed to attend. This may skew findings in that they could be location specific and only reflect specific experiences.

Identifying themes from a recording was fine but then attaining a frequency count proved a little difficult. Does one person discussing the same theme twice count? If the theme is repeated should it be counted again? I chose to count a theme each time it was mentioned whether that be by the same person or others, as I feel this represents how important it is to the customer.

Two themes that arose were the ‘practical’ and ‘theoretical’ aspects of the job. With a ratio of 8:5 in favour of practical application. This information is useful be use it may help us to design training in order to meet customer expectations. Presently there is an emphasis on ‘theory’ that may need to be addressed.

My observer feedback states that there was no need to hold a period of silence, as participants were fully engaged. I believe my initial question required a moment of silence, possibly because this was the start of the group and people weren’t quite at ease yet. Nine the mess the short silence allowed them to think and prompted someone in the group to kick things off.

A Recurring Experience….

So I had an experience today that I’ve had a number of times before and thought it was high time I reflected on it.

You may well relate to the experience I’m about to describe and I’d be interested to hear of any similar experiences….

Have you ever had the feeling that someone has come to a meeting with something on their chest already? You know, something that might have happened a while ago, unrelated to the meeting, but is driving their responses, tone and general approach to the topic at hand. Clouding their judgemental even. It may seem like an obvious scenario, and perhaps I’ve been a little slow to pick up on the frequency of it, but put in the context of my experiences over the last 11 years there’s a good learning opportunity here.

So that’s what I now know that I experienced today and reviewing these events has helped me to make sense of things a little better. Today’s events were tiring. My intentions, leadership and integrity were questioned – I tried to remain calm and not adopt the approach I was being presented with. Like before it wasn’t a nice experience. What I saw as a sensible course of action was challenged, based on someone believing that I wanted to make them look bad. If you know me that’s not my style, and I guess because I believe helping people to achieve their goals is important, its an uncomfortable thing to be labelled with. Never the less, that’s what happened, that was how they felt and I must have had a part in making them them feel like that. I’ve got to take some responsibility.

What can I conclude from today and similar previous experiences? Well, I have to accept that my actions might not always be taken in the manner that they are intended. In this scenario my intention has been to highlight a threat to our operations in order to present drivers for change. Perhaps I could have used different language, perhaps I could have done it in a different forum – but I didn’t and as a rare occurrence I’m not going to be too harsh on myself about it. Despite my reasonably good understanding of emotional intelligence, there are limits to how well we can predict people’s responses to our actions. Yes I do believe we should consider people’s values and beliefs when communicating, and I continue to try and do that as best as I can, indeed I’m still learning. However, what I can conclude is that it’s not always possible to determine how best to frame and issue in order not to offend others, or what language to use that they can relate to – sometimes you just don’t know what else they might bring with them emotionally….. A previous conversation that upset them that they haven’t cleared up? A strong value of others seeing them succeed without ever getting something wrong? Cultural and peer pressure that interprets mistakes as incompetence rather than a learning opportunity? You simply just can’t cater for everything.

So, perhaps for the first time, I’m not going to beat myself up about this. I feel sad because I’m not sure that a relationship will be the same after today’s events. With difficulty, I’m going to take away a ‘non-arrogant’ view that sometimes the response you get just couldn’t have been avoided. The person involved is amazing and I want to see them achieve their goals – they’ll meet them easily – I’d still like to help them get there but that’s clearly their choice now. Perhaps a little time will help provide an opportunity for me to let them know that. What I can do from here is take what I have learnt about them, and perhaps others that are similar in the organisation, and try a different approach next time.

My Management Initiative

So, i haven’t been posting much here for year 2 of my MBA – its been busy…new job, longer commute and general life ‘stuff’…but I’m back.  Back more importantly in order to capture some learning for my Final Project – The Management Initiative.

I’ll tag all related posts ‘Management Initiative’ for ease of use.

First reflections from assignment one soon to follow……

Protected: There are no better drivers for a change of approach to my MBA….!

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Capabilities – Apple, Samsung, Smartphones and some Double Loop Learning….

Listened to a really interesting recorded discussion today with Robert Grant (of KSF/RBV Strategy fame – and of course English West Country Fame (judging by his accent).

The discussion was about capabilities within organisations embedded in the smart phone market. It highlights how Apple don’t actually manufacture anything – they outsource that – and how consequently manufacturing capability may not really be key to competitive advantage for these phones.

There’s been some pretty tough legal battles between Apple and Samsung recently, particularly over breech of Patents relating to hthe operating systems of these phones. Apple accusing Samsung that is. So it appears that external legal issues and incumbent behaviours to project operating system capabilities, create a fierce amount of rivalry – and so it may be that an operating system competency is where the value lies.

Interestingly the discussion went on to highlight increasing use of the android operating system, which is open source (available to all). Now first of all I thought –

well that’s no good is it, because if it isn’t rare then it won’t be able to create the best opportunity for competitive advantage

. But the discussion went on to highlight that this may turn in to a problem for apple – as the ability for everyone to develop operating systems for smartphones is a huge substitute for apple products, and so it may have been naive of me to jump into my evaluation of that particular issue.

A very interesting insight to capabilities and how they can be considered. I still think the value of hierarchical lists here is limited – there’s no way all possible capabilities can be listed to cater for all industries, and what I see as a capability may be different to someone else’s opinion. But it has helped me to remember to always go to that next stage when formulating an opinion.

I value the ability to NAIL an issue and if I jump straight in I won’t be able to do that. It may have been ok with somethings up to now, but thinking, learning and situations in and out of work are getting more complex the older i get and I should change with them.

What I need to do is ensure that I don’t stop at the first stage when assessing something – but to always go a little further before jumping in.

Who is the competitor in the public sector?

Been thinking about strategy today a lot and got onto the topic of competition and having that competitive edge. Which made me try to tie down the ‘competitor’ for public sector organisations.

I can see private health care as competition for the NHS, private security firms competing with the police perhaps or even the private transport companies that poach customers from poor public transport networks.

But what about the armed forces? We only have one organisation that provides defence – I’m not aware of any militias that the public might prefer to seek security from.

I guess you could look towards increasing numbers of private security companies and the close protection companies that wealthy companies and families employ – especial for businesses in high risk areas rand the world. But is there any real TANGIBLE competition for our armed forces? Are the public looking to others to provide homeland security and to protect our national interests abroad? I’m not sure they are. Are there competitors but the armed forces have simply dominated the market so much that they are completely irrelevant? Or perhaps there’s another way to think about this…..

Could it relate to the unrelenting pursuit of value for public money – more with less – aka lean production? Is it that there isn’t a tangible competitor but one that disguises itself as wasted resources? Or bad press for the armed forces? Or even bad decisions by government? I guess what I’m saying is that the competition could be against those developments that hinder effective and efficient use of public money and all things that contribute to negative word off mouth about the MoD.

The so what – I’m struggling to see how to apply the strategic approaches that I’m learning about to an environment where I have yet to pin down what/who the competition are! After all strategy is about creating unique value in ways that others (competitors) aren’t in order to gain greater market share/profits. Now profits I can see – national security the freedoms we all take for granted today because of what previous ‘fighting’ generations have provided for us…. But a competitor?????

I guess if my thoughts about the competition hold any value then being able to provide the outputs of the MoD in the most cost effective manner – without compromising the quality of the product – could hold some weight. And in that case acting frugally in tough economic times to maintain its objectives for the longer term would apply to the strategy theory.

Maybe it’s late and I’m missing something obvious here, but so much talk about competitiveness and analysing, choosing and implementing processes in order to differentiate an organisation from the ‘competition’ has got me wondering. More thinking to be done I’m sure!

After thought – an obvious idea would be other national defence forces – need to differentiate to maintain a competitive advantage over them – but they’re certainly not competition when it comes to provision of security for our country. It’s not as if we could rely on someone else to do that for us surely!

The big lesson continued….

So am building a cracking (objective) case to counter a proposal – stakeholders mapped, commitment mapped, drivers and restrainers investigated and put into a force field – have even found a lever to convince our ‘hosts’ that they need to continue to support us based on ethos, culture and the benefits they get from our ‘intellectual property’. it was going great guns today. Really pleased with progress.

Then the ever changing environment pounced on me again and a key player I thought I could rely on for support didn’t present the opinion I needed. All is not lost however – they are ‘on the fence’ and it’s now my job to swing them the right way. Work in progress.

What had also been highlighted – and granted this was a valid point in the first twenty hours of knowing the problem – is that one of the first comments I got about it all today was ‘well you obviously don’t want x because it affects you doesn’t it!’. This is going to be a real issue now – how to counter that obvious argument to my case. Is it even possible, is it perhaps a little bit true – never the less I need to reflect it the comment today and find a way forward. I’m thinking about gaining trust and relationship commitment so might trust their – and of course highlighting reasons why that isn’t the sole reason for my case. Evidence!

Very complex and taking up a lot of my thinking time when I should possibly be revising for exams – difficult to balance the two.

Still need to determine drivers and what exactly has been put forward as restrainers so far too. Whilst then spending time to look at the counter arguments to my points.