2. Strategic Plan
“Produce a quality product that is marketed in all regions at
a competitive price while keeping salespeople and workers
engaged in the organization’s goals and productivity”
4. Q1, 2, 3 Strategy & Results
Quality Ad Message
Competitive pricing
Expanded capacity: build R1 & lease R2
Large Bond for capacity expansion
Hired workers to support capacity expansion
Increased investment in maintenance & training
Same strategic focus on quality as competition
Lowest price but lesser marketing and fewer
salespeople
Increased expenses from expansion in addition to
lower demand lead to negative cash balance and
net income resulting in emergency loan at higher
rate
Realized probability of lost workers and took
advantage
Found winning mix/balance to maintain productivity
5. Q4, 5, 6 Strategy & Results
Sold newly built capacity R1 to reduce expenses
Increased price and quality investment
Hired salespeople in R1 and added commission %
Ordered less raw material to reduce costs
Allowed probability of lost workers to reduce
workforce
Purchased additional marketing research
Product priced lower than competition
Competitive in quality investment
Not all teams selling in R3
Competition marketing more heavily in web and
trade publications
Continue to have too much raw material and
finished goods on hand
6. Q7, 8 Strategy & Results
Continued to allow probability of lost workers to
reduce workforce
Reduced training and maintenance to stabilize
productivity
Removed commission %
Increased price sold both quarters
Paid off Bond #1
Production halted as inventory, capacity, and
workers were reduced
Loss of leased space in R1 did not have a major
impact due to finished inventory on hand
Priced lower than competition with greater
investment in quality led to more competitive sales
Finished strong leading in return on equity with
significant upward strides in sales, net income,
return on sales, and return on assets
8. Process & Participation
Met weekly and bi-weekly via web conference to
discuss results from quarter processing and
develop strategies for the next quarter in real-time.
Individually reviewed results from prior processed
quarter before meeting.
Brought ideas, concerns, and considerations to the
group for discussion.
Theorized competition’s strategy based on results.
9. Lessons To Achieve A High Performing Team
Focus on building upon the vision in its entirety and establish a clear foundation
Create an environment that encourages open communication
Value both strengths and weaknesses
Respect team members regardless of background, status, point of view, and
bond through influence and authority
Create accountability
Cultivate a positive work environment
10. Motivators
The Bigger Picture
Refocused to long-term simulation goals
after short-term shortcomings
“Willing to Fail”
Shared risk and “willingness to fail” to
gain incite as a group
Strategic Planning
Reward Small Milestones
12. Successes/Failures
Successes
Reduced expenses to increase marketing and
remain competitive
Found the sweet spot for maintenance and training
to maintain and increase productivity quarter
over quarter
Able to find happy medium for staffing
Failures
Expanded capacity early without taking large bond
Reacted hastily and took too large of a bond
after first emergency deficit
13. Learnings/Adapting to Results
What did we learn?
The expense for transferred goods was less than leasing and buying capacity
The demand remained steady when we anticipated it to fluctuate more drastically
Should have focused on marketing more than building capacity and infrastructure
Cause and effect from simulation parameters were never truly explained
How did we adapt?
Continued to reduce built capacity, took out financing, reviewing marketing research,
shaved expenses in operations, and anticipated probabilities in simulation to affect the
organization
As a team we understand the value of a product and can recognize quality when we see it.
Rather than flood the simulation with a cheaper knockout lesser quality product, we decided to produce something of value to the consumer.
Mutually, we also value employee engagement in our professional lives.
Whether your business is successful or struggling to survive, the people are what make the company sustainable and their engagement is the foundation for productivity and efficiency.
The first three quarters were the initial test to see how playing against the computer would be different than playing and against each other.
Very early on we learned that we took a path not comparatively followed and adjusted course to realign and remain competitive.
The probability and service level agreements for subcontracted finished goods was too poor to gamble.
The “great expansion” in R1 and R2 lead to the long term growth opportunities despite only participating in the short term.
These decisions early on became our first and largest hurdle to overcome as a team.
Now the stage was set and patterns began form in the simulation and with our competition.
While we focused on operations, others focused on marketing.
We rarely had a stockout but incurred far too much expense in bonds and S&A.
We didn’t give up and continued to cut costs and make ourselves as lean as possible while allowing for ample investment in marketing.
Demand forecasts started to stabilize and our strategy was working.
Finally, the last stitch effort to pull ourselves over the finish line.
We weighed the options of the company’s sustainability and decided to run the simulation as if Q9 would exist and process.
After realized our finances needed more attention than they were originally getting, our competitive edge in marketing began to pay off.
As a final cost savings initiative, we allowed the lease in R1 to end and sold off all of our remaining finished inventory on hand.
If given the chance to run the simulation again or to continue the simulation for another 8 quarters, we would most definitely welcome the challenge.
The group initially met weekly and after the second week once the simulations began to process bi-weekly we kept our initial meetings as Sunday morning and added an additional meeting time on Monday evenings. We set our meeting times to suit everyone’s schedule and kept the progression of the meeting moving forward in respect of everyone’s time.
Each meeting Each team member brought ideas, concerns and considerations to the group for discussion.
We attempted to theorized the strategy of the other two teams and made decision that would keep up competitive based off the knowledge we had from purchased market research.
We started each meeting by reviewing the results from the prior quarter and worked around a structured approach so to speak where we focused on marketing first, then operations, and finally reviewed finance. We then took a second look at the entries to make sure our numbers and decisions were clear and were agreed upon by the group before ending the meeting.
Every team has a set structure that will typically unveil itself after the first interactions with one another. The varied personality types will become fairly obvious and it’s important to maintain focus and maintain a clear path to completion.
The first step toward attaining the goal is to establish a clear vision that everyone finds value in which will in turn build an environment that cultivates trust and encourages collaboration based off a common shared vision. We found that open communication, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and the respect of all team members is crucial so a teams success.
Cody emerged as the group leader and formed an engaging and positive environment welcoming feedback and ensuring each team member was on board with the decisions being made. His strengths were clear communication skills and idea generation which in turn triggered idea generation within the rest of the team. Cody has a strong collaborative leadership style and created value in the project and used that value to influence and motivate the rest of the team. He also maintaining a running record of our decisions and processed the information generated from the simulation results with cause and effect for group review.
Steph provided excellent stimulus to the conversation and often took a different approach to how we were focusing our decision and asked the questions of “what if.” That “what if” made the team take a different approach or simply consider the the opposing options and stick to our original decisions. By asking those questions it kept us on track and focused without making a quick decision.
I was also engaged in the conversation and was taking record of our decisions each week for future reference. I was more engaged in the aspect of trying something new to find the sweet spot of our cause and effect decisions. We took risks as a group and I was driven by my curiosity to see the outcome of varied choices. After the decisions we made in the first 2 quarters put us at a disadvantage, the focus was to even out our income and expenses for the remaining quarters.
Having both set and shared roles help ensure all members take ownership of the group’s work. If a person has a job to do, they are more likely to be engaged, and to support decisions of the group. Determining the team members strengths and weaknesses early on can assist in identifying, explaining, assigning, and executing roles. Strengths are represented by an action oriented approach, commitment, determination, empathetic listening, and flexibility.
Weaknessess can be seen as a lack of focus, disorganization, maybe taking on too much responsibility, perfectionism, being overly competitive, or limited experience, the team can turn weakness in to strengths if all members successfully work together and play upon the strengths and weaknesses of one another. The key to doing so is understanding that all team members are working toward the same goal. By establishing trust early on team members can share their own weaknesses which in turn will strengthen the team.
Overall, each team member brought value and offered creative ideas, flexible decision making based on simulation feedback, and respect toward the ideas of others. Team members who are a part of a positive collaborative culture operate at maximum efficiency, get more done, achieve goals faster, and create strong foundations to build on. Working as part of team three I can say we created a positive work collaboration, promoted trust withing the group and inspired creativity within one another.
After several initial quarters were processed with opposing results then what we were striving for the team refocused from the short-term goals and redirected our attention to the long term goals, and in turn our results turned our more favorably. During times a business is responding to marketing, expansion, reinvestment, and training efforts the motivators that keep a team engaged become an important part of the business strategy.
Our “failures” were agreed upon risks to garner incite into the cause and effect of our decisions. We focused on the concept coined by Edison, that 1000 tries are worth a single victory and together as a group took our losses and turned them into new objectives and retargeted new outcomes based on our prior decisions.
Regardless of coming in third place during each quarter with the exception of quarter 8, the team awarded the small milestones of achieved improvement. Each quarter we gained incite on how our business was operating and made calculated determinations prior to taking the next step. Each step provides value through experience, regardless the outcome. In one of our final meetings we discussed as a team the option of setting ourselves of to sell off all inventory and recoup as much as possible to try and boost numbers in the last quarter, but decided to keep the mindset that we want the company to continue past the eight quarter. We weighed both options and head the opinions of each team member and decided to maintain momentum and continue our attempt to grow the business and increase our market share.
Successes: Focused on marketing and quality Was able to remain consistent with maintenance/training for employees even though probability shows turnover. Productivity increased quarter after quarter Able to maintain employees even with probability of workers leaving. Operations were lean and were fairly competitive in marketing
Failures: Focused on long term building of the business instead of short term. If you build it they will come mentality with our plant capacity. Tried adding commission to motivate our salespeople to increase our sales but found that commission really had no effect on bottom line. Often times we did not invest in maintenance and training but continued to have increase productivity. Took out a bond that we should have paid off sooner. Hurt our expenses in the simulation.
What did we learn:
Transferring goods to Region 2 and Region 3 was cheaper than leasing and buying.
We were anticipating the simulation to fluctuate demand more than what it did and tried to prepare for that.
Focusing on Marketing was the key
In the long run, we continued to experience high productivity even though the simulation said otherwise.
Didn’t pay as much attention at finance in the beginning. Moving forward, we did not concentrate on it after that! Our goal was to decrease cost and increase marketing. Maintain productivity
Our goal was simple: Trying to decrease cost and increase sales even though we were building ourselves out of a hole we dug in quarter 1.
Never truly got an understanding of cause and effect of simulation.
How did we adapt:
Each quarter we focused on ways to decrease costs and expenses while continuing to market and sell our products. Started to focus on market research and focused on the anticipated probabilities that didn’t always come to fruition. Anticipated fluctuations that did not occur.
We continued to dig ourselves out of a hole after anticipated fluctuations did not occur.
