Learning is fun
This is something I learned quite late in life; probably my junior year in college. Basically, I learned it 10 years later than most. . . but I am making up for lost time quickly. I think learning is the best; after all, what else is there?
As a teacher, so many OKR
A teacher’s platform is hallowed ground. Somehow, I got, earned, snuck my way into a situation where 260+ students are putting their faith in me. That I will help them learn some strategy basics. That this will be useful for their recruiting. That this will be helpful in their life. Less input, more output. Get 3 jobs, turn 2 down.
If I were to brainstorm:
- Know your stuff; through study, research, listening, and experience
- Be organized; students’ live crazy hectic lives; moving every year, new apartment, new roommates
- Put yourself in their shoes; what’s important, what’s relevant, what’s redundant, what’s pedantic, what’s dumb?
- Create an community of learning, surround-sound learning. The days of radio broadcasts are gone
- Prioritize; our brains want to conserve calories. “Do I really need to learn this?” “Just for the test, or for my life?”
- Use frameworks – so useful, good starting places – are kitchen tools. Useful, when you use the right one
- Customize – make it relevant to the individual, not the “average”. Don’t we teach “averages have no meaning?”
- Be fair – this is a big one. Individual, useful, relevant, personal, and no favorites. This is hard, and important
- Engage – Gallup defined this as “making progress at work at that matters”. Show progress. Make the work matter
One lovely thing about teaching. You have a lot of “at bats.” Didn’t work last class, or last semester, or last cohort? Revise, improve, and do your job.
What do we learn in strategy class?
So here is a crossword puzzle I made for my strategy class. Give it a try.
1) Email me if you want the excel version you can type your answers into. jkstrategy AT consultantsmind.com
2) After you complete it, I can check your answers. Thanks for playing.
ACross
1 Aspirational; when we grow up
2 Ambiguity; why are they so good?
3 What? _____? Then what?
4 Good hiring; get the right people on the ___ (hint: Jim Collins)
5 Patents make it difficult to ____
6 What’s your edge? Your ____ advantage?
7 More valuable the more people use it (think: AirBnB)
8 Jim Collin’s Good to Great; acronym for thinking big
9 Tarriffs ___ competition
10 Mintzberg says about strategy (e.g., IKEA managers discover the chair doesn’t fit in car)
11 If PESTEL factors change, you need to _____
12 ____ cycle; one good thing leads to another (hint: flywheel)
13 Copycat
14 As a seller, you want this
15 Can’t be all things to all people; you need to decide
16 Level 5; be humble, have drive
17 Moats around your business (hint: Warren Buffett coined this term)
18 Like kitchen tools; they’re helpful, but not the answer (hint: Porter’s, SWOT, VRIO)
19 How Apple wins at PC, tablet, phone, apps, headphones, same for Disney, Honda etc. . .
20 Coke & Pepsi
21 If you only had 1 supplier for a critical part
22 Strategic planning is useful for setting _____
Down
1 Willingness _____
2 _____ Destruction
3 ___ of Activities
4 Coffee to Tea
5 Management is a ____
6 Business is like a ___ match
7 One of the PESTEL factors
8 Scenario planning
9 I have it, you have it, companies have it
10 Group of incumbents, with same suppliers, buyers
11 Without data, it’s an _____
12 Can threaten profit by raising prices, limiting quality
13 The worst war between companies
14 Incumbents want ___ to be slow for new entrants
15 Lack of differentiation
16 Goes very well with #19 across
17 Porter’s Forces
18 Goal of strategy
19 So smart to call
20 Duopoly
21 Valuable, rare, (hard) to imitate, organized to capture