dahl0583: December 2009 Archives

Presentations 12/10/09

The presentations as a whole seem to be getting better every class period.  I have commented after past presentation that it seemed like too many individuals are reading the information on their slides.  That seems to be happening less and less.  The majority of the presentations now use their PowerPoint's as a guide to the topics they are discussing.  

Two presenters today are or were part of the organization they talked about, which is great, because it gives them a unique perspective on the issues discussed.   However, neither one of them made it explicitly clear that they had been or are a part of the organization.  It was a little confusing when half way through the presentations the presenters went from talking about their organization from an outside perspective to changing and talking about how they are involved.  Simply by talking about how "we" communicated or what "we" could improve upon.  This could have been easily avoided in both situations by mentioning at the beginning of the presentation how they are involved within the organization the decided to analysis.

Fast Shoe Comments:

I like your idea of using a mock company to illustrate your point. 
From your example of Fast Shoes purchasing another company to gain entrance into the track apparel market, Fast Shoes must consider many other things.  For example it cannot just look at this situation from a market share or earnings standpoint.  Fast Shoes must consider the internal power struggle that will likely occur between people at Fast Shoe and at the company they choose to purchase.  There is likely to be some cross over of positions between the two companies and Fast Shoes must do a considerable amount of planning to make the transition less difficult.  Such things would include deciding what employees Fast Shoes should keep from the company they purchased.  Fast Shoes would have to decide on a specific way to measure an employee that was fair, objective and establish who is the more productive employee.  Or maybe productivity is not you goal; maybe it is profits, market share or overhead costs. Either way a clear way to measure employees and decide what position would be eliminated must be formalized. They would also have to create an environment that was welcoming to the new company and its employees.  This would require the capacity within the leadership at Fast Shoes to recognize the problem with purchasing another company and then carefully consider if they still think acquiring a track apparel company was the best decision for Fast Shoes.

December 8^th presentations:

Brian Grant's presentation of the Pittsburgh Pirates came across very well.  I liked that fact that Brian explained how he was approaching his organizational analysis assignment.  Specifically he used a goal attainment approach to measure how his organization was effective.  Brian mentioned this specific approach several times throughout his presentation to reinforce the fact that this was his approach to this assignment.

            I also enjoyed the organizational analysis of the Intramural Department at the U.  Due to Rebecca's unique perspective of insider for the organization it was interesting to hear her own personal stories about some of the aspects of waste within the organization.  It was also interesting to hear about her recommendations for the organization because of her unique perspective.

            The Under Armor presentation was interesting because it was very similar to a presentation that took place previously.  While much of this analysis was similar to Emily's analysis, I found interesting that two different projects came up with very similar analyses to each other.  This leads me to believe that both of the presentations were well researched and based on class concepts.

Day 4 Presentations

After watching several days of presentations I have noticed that almost every presenter seems to be reading the slides to the class.  While this approach is fine for certain slides like a Mission Statement, the information should be expanded on besides the basic information about the topic that is on the slide.  I am able to read and would like more information then what I can read.  As an example Parker Kruckenberg's presentation, was very well done.  Parker had basic information on his slides but then shared a bit more about the topics presented.  Parker's story about the baseball player that would show up to practices hung over was presented in a basic manner on the slide.  After reading the slide Parker then expanded on the information by giving specifics about how he knew this information to be true and how it was not communicated vertically within the organization.  While Parker could have typed out all this information and read it to the class it was just as effective to tell the story without having to read it to us.