Graded Homework

Assignment 2:
LASA 1 Assignment—The Leader as a Strategist Report

For this
assignment, you will choose an organization to analyze. This organization can
be one you are personally familiar with, or one you have observed to be an
effective organization, You now become a newly appointed senior leader in that
organization.

As a new leader,
you must prepare a report for the CEO that assesses the organization’s overall
alignment between its vision, mission, values, and strategy. This report should
consist of the following sections:

1. An analysis of the strategic cascade of the
   organization This includes assessing the organization’s strategy and
   market position. Use the framework implied in Michael Porter’s (1997)
   article “What is Strategy.” When describing the business strategy of your
   organization, consider the following questions:
• What is the target market (target
  customer)?
• What is your organization’s value
  proposition (How does it deliver value that satisfies the target’s wants
  and needs?)?
• How is your product or service positioned
  in the market (What specific features and attributes define the
  product/service and how is its value reflected in its pricing,
  distribution, marketing communications, etc.?)?
• How is your organization sustainably
  different from your competitors (What is the source of uniqueness and how
  sustainable is it from being diminished by competitors?)?
2. A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
   threats (SWOT) analysis A SWOT analysis is a strategy planning tool that
   examines both internal and external environments for factors and trends
   that should shape planning and operations over the next five years.
   Environmental factors internal to the company are classified as strengths
   (to be leveraged) or weaknesses (to be mitigated), while external factors
   are classified as either opportunities (to be pursued) or threats (to be
   monitored and responded to). Some primer questions for the SWOT analysis
   include the following: Strengths
• What advantages does your organization
  have?
• What do you do better than anyone else?
• What unique or lowest-cost resources can
  you draw upon that others cannot?
• What do people in your market see as your
  strengths?
• What factors mean that you “get the
  sale”?
• What is your organization’s unique selling
  proposition (USP)?
• What aspects of your product or service
  could you improve?
• What market segments or competitive areas
  should you avoid?
• What are people in your market likely to
  see as weaknesses?
• What factors can make you lose sales?
• What good opportunities can you spot?
• What interesting trends are you aware of?
  Useful opportunities can come from such things as the following:
• Changes in technology and markets on both
  a broad and narrow scale
• Changes in government policy related to
  your field
• Changes in social patterns, population
  profiles, lifestyle changes, and so on
• Local events
• What obstacles do you face?
• What are your competitors doing?
• Are quality standards or specifications
  for your job, products, or services changing?
• Is changing technology threatening your
  position?
• Do you have bad debt or cash-flow
  problems?
• Could any of your weaknesses seriously
  threaten your business?

WeaknessesOpportunitiesThreats

1. A summary of the internal environment,
   including the organization’s values and the key elements of the
   organization architecture that influence worker behavior. Include the
   following characteristics when analyzing the internal environment:

• Structure: This includes the ways the
  organization assigns formal roles and responsibilities, decision-making
  authority, expertise and skills, and work tasks. Think of the organization
  chart and how its implied structure directs the decision making, resource
  allocation, and workflow of the organization. Is it consistent with the
  strategy?
• Systems: This comprises the information
  flows that coordinate activities between groups and across the organization
  structure while helping direct worker behavior, including performance
  management, financial management, operating, forecasting and planning, and
  other regulating mechanisms. How do these systems help align workers and
  their actions with the strategy?
• Culture: This consists of the unwritten
  rules and norms that govern worker behavior and help coordinate the
  activities across structural boundaries. Is the organization culture an
  enabler or impediment to the corporate strategy? What specific behaviors
  embedded in the culture support the strategy? What specific behaviors
  block the strategy?

A synthesis of
the information evaluating the ability of the organization to implement the
strategy using Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices (for example, modeling the way)
as a framework. Include answers to the following:

• Company Culture
• Describe the values and culture of your
  organization.
• What are the values of your organization?
• How are they reflected in the behaviors
  you see at work?
• Employee Behaviors
• Describe the behaviors in your
  organization.
• Are these behaviors consistent with the
  business strategy?
• Where do they conflict with the strategy?
• What new behaviors are required to align
  with the strategy?
• Leadership
• How might you and other leaders create new
  behaviors to support the strategy?
• What specific actions would you implement
  to communicate, motivate, model the way, coach, inspire the vision,
  challenge the process, and encourage the heart?

Your response to
each part of the assignment should be approximately three pages.

Your final
product will be in a word document and be approximately 10–12 pages in length
and utilize 4–7 scholarly sources in your research. Your paper should be
written in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrate ethical
scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources; and display
accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.