Summer+2009+Section+09-PJ+Week+1

=Class Discussion For Week 1=

To begin the first day of class, Paul gives a power point presentation on the syllabus for the course. He explains that his goal for each class is encourage class discussion. After a while, this even begins to happen. We discuss briefly how advertising has changed in recent years. A shift toward naming the competition in the ads is noted and its benefits discussed. The example used is the current push by McDonalds to take market share away from Starbucks. It is unclear whether this is done as an attempt to hurt Starbucks or help them both by differentiating the brands (since McDonalds sells Seattle's Best Coffee, which is owned by Starbucks). As it turns out, YouTube knows a lot more about this than we did: [|McDonalds Ad Campaign]
 * Syllabus and Class Discussion**

Brand new [|blog post] today by [|Kennedy Communications] addresses the McDonalds/Starbucks question. [|Starbucks] is currently launching a new ad campaign in direct response to the competition from [|McDonald's] national [|ad campaign] promoting its new line of low-priced coffee drinks. The campaign focuses on telling the story of Starbucks and building trust and value through enrolling their employees, or "partners", in the customer experience. Clearly the two brands are in competition. The Wall Street Journal calls it a "coffee war" in their [|article] that discusses the launch of both brand's ad campaigns. Check out the latest "assault" by McDonald's: "[|McDonald's Buys Prime Time 'Roadblock' on Hulu]." It will be very interesting to watch this and see how it plays out!

Another analysis and write-up on the McDonald's Cafe offensive can be viewed at []. It also discussed Starbucks spokespersons' downplay of the issue.

While discussing what we should do while writing our case write ups Paul recommended the book [|The Black Swan]. He said we should think outside the box and think about improbable things that can occur and find solutions for these.

[|Here] is another example of a company, [|Jack in the Box], naming their competitor, [|Burger King], directly. Is this the beginning of a retro trend in advertising which dates back to the cola wars of the 80's - another taboo lifted? No more "leading brand" talk! Plus, Jack in the Box's website is pretty cool. Go to their home page and let it sit for about 10 seconds.

This is perhaps just speculation or intuition, but I think this may be an expression of a "micro-trend", where the "upstart" (i.e. non-market leader) attempts to position itself as an alternative to "business as usual", echoing sentiments of the "time for a change" idealogy ushered in by the Obama campaign architechts. "Jack the CEO" has been around since 1995, however, creating and illusion of transparency and offering his alternative for awhile now. Maybe Obama copied him!!!

Syllabus review is broken down with the "Which Color is Your Pen?" and the "What is Your Preference?" self-assessments for participation and learning styles. This data is used to form teams, which Paul selects on the basis of uniting diverse skills and avoiding teaming up members with overly similar personality traits. The goal is to create groups comprised of dissimilar individuals in order to enhance learning. If groups are arranged in such a way that takes people out of their comfort zones and makes them slightly uncomfortable then they are more likely to learn and grow as a person. Paul outlined three levels of comfort, or "zones". The first is the Comfort Zone and shouldn't need any further explanation. The next is the "Growth Zone" where we learn, explore, and wait for it.... grow as individuals; we will spend the entire summer in the Growth zone with Paul. The third and final zone is the "Danger Zone" where we are so out of our element that we can freeze up or run screaming. While excited by this news team Top Gun was a little disappointed to learn that we would not be visiting the Danger Zone.The board is seriously altered from its original state after dinner.
 * Teaming Up**

The "Which Color is Your Pen?" self-assessment broke people into three groups: red, yellow and black pens. The average breakdown is 25% black, 50% yellow and 25% red. Our class only had three black, one red and the rest was yellow. The black pens were the people that would instantly grab a pen and go to the white board and start diagramming the discussion. The yellow pen people would likely wait for the black pen people to finish then highlight what they thought was most important. The red pen people would wait till the end then erase most of what they didn't like and use the red pen to correct thing and then draw the big picture that they saw from taking what the black and yellow thought and combining it with their opinion.

Along with the "Which color is your Pen?" and the "What is Your Preference" self assesments, there are other types of evaluations that can be performed to discover peoples skill sets, communication styles, and motivating factors for many different people throughout an organization. The [|Core Value Index] is one type of assessment used by companies during the hiring process. It enables the employer to figure out if canidates would be a good fit for a companies culture and meet the needs of the open position. Another company that does such assesments is [|Target Training International.]

It will be interesting over the course of the term to see 1.) How groups work together and define where the compliments and gaps are. 2.) Will someone change their color due to the thinking processes and ideas presented in the group?



//"The portion of class that stood out most for me was the “back of the napkin” segment. I gathered from the video that the limited space of the napkin and the use of pictures forces us to conceptualize our idea more thoroughly thereby driving our innovation to greater heights. I took away from our class exercise, as well as the movie, that brainstorming on the back of a napkin can help focus our ideas, flesh out our objective and guide our process."//
 * First you learn to draw...**

After the dinner break and team formation we continue to peruse the syllabus, delving into the book __The Back of the Napkin__ by Dan Roam, and are treated to a video of Roam's presentation to Google on the same topic. (A note to the context of Dan Roams graph example stating Google having less application than Yahoo! it should be noted that Google has more applications than Yahoo!.) Paint of learning not yet dry, we then adjourn as teams to discuss the Xerox case and present out on our ideas for the firm, whiteboard-style.

Using visualization (drawing or mapping information out on the board) is a good tool for providing everyone in attendance a snapshot or a summary of the ideas, concerns, problems, and conclusions presented to them. The following snapshots, then, could be classified as "meta-snapshots"...

This book is a classic example of an important way to learn for some people. These people prefer, if not need, visual aids to gather and decipher what the issue is and how to formulate a solution. Drawing can bring out a level of brainstorming that may not happen otherwise.

The book isn't totally focused on how to learn. This book is about brainstorming and developing simple solutions to complex problems. I have yet (not saying they don't exist) to see a quarterly report or business proposal that didn't present data in some form of flow chart, graph, or picture.

I think the reason that you will always see flow charts and graphs in quarterly reports and business proposals is that you have to target a broad audience. Not everyone is going to be well versed in all aspects of financial reporting or infrastructure design. The key to any successful report or presentation is to know your audience and tailor the message to that specific group.

In trying to find the best way to get their point across to other groups team Top Gun realized that thinking outside the box sometimes takes more effort than traditional thinking.

The concept presented in 'Napkin', however simplistic it may ultimately seem, requires a shift in thinking to be well implemented. It seems that team Top Gun was encountering this conundrum first hand - faced with multiple different issues and new concepts, simplifying into a meaningful picture was easier said than done. What is depicted above, I feel, is actually two separate images. The first pie image shows Xerox's corporate priorities as they stood between 1980 and 1986. I think it accurately indicates an equal weight on these priorities, as at the time any one priority was not necessarily ordered above another. To enhance this graphic, we might indicate the subsequent shift in priorities through a flow chart of sorts. This graphic should identify the new emphasis on customer satisfaction and how this emphasis lends itself to success in ROA and Market Share.

Our second graphic centered on Market Share, although as a group I'm not sure that our purpose for this graphic ever got fully fleshed out. Our graphic shows that Xerox is lagging in low-volume market share, and we were trying to connect it to the way in which Roam related the Google/Yahoo acquisition. Instead of focussing on consumer satisfaction here, we instead focused on acquiring a competitor to effect a change in revenues. I could be misrepresenting this however...team?

Team B focused on the different market segments and how to address the need of each segment(high, medium, and low volume. The team thought that a performance guarantee would be most important for the medium and low segments. The high volume segment would already expect a high level of performance because they were purchasing a top of the line product so the most important guarantee for that segment would be a response time guarantee because of how important limited downtime was to this group. These guarantee were based on the information from the telephone survey and focus group results.

Another idea team B had was that that since high volume machines were leased once they were returned they could be marketed to the medium volume group and come with a performance guarantee. This would help maximize the value that Xerox could get from each of their machines.

It is important to deliver the highest quality product possible, but there is no such thing as 100% performance guarantee. Lets face it, instruments all have issues associated them. Whether the performance issues are due to the technology, or due to the user, problems are inevitable. Providing customers with a performance guarantee is mandatory, but this policy should be a complimented with a response time guarantee - especially for new technology that has yet to be subjected to the day-to-day rigors of the common work environment.

The A Team (Dead Tigers) focused on Xerox's customer service goals. They had narrowed the field to three components: cash refunds/rebates, service-call time, and product quality. We had the thought that if Xerox focused on producing higher-quality, more reliable products - then cash refunds and service turn-around times would become less important as there would be fewer failures and less need for repair. Additionally, cash refund offers may lessen the confidence of established clients and firms they might refer to Xerox. The perception may permeate the market that as a reaction to shrinking market share, Xerox's build quality might be compromised-necessitating explicit warranties, where implicit warranties used to be sufficient. At the very bottom of page 115 of our text book, __Market-Based Strategies__, it reads that Xerox created a customer satisfaction program that guarantees product performance for an extended period. An interesting conclusion to our class discussion on Xerox.