This is a version of a ‘reflective learning’ I completed for my MBA in strategy, analysis and implementation. It constituted only part of the assessment, and I was awarded one of the highest marks in the whole class for the whole module which was a special elective on strategy developing the topics we had covered in the basic compulsory module.
I am posting this for one of the tweeps I follow, who is a law student. ‘Reflective learning’ is only part of ‘experiential learning’, but I hope it helps.
This diagram is from the Leeds University website.
Their description is as follows:
Reflective practice is important to the development of lecturers as professionals as it enables us to learn from our experiences of teaching and facilitating student learning. Developing reflective practice means developing ways of reviewing our own teaching so that it becomes a routine and a process by which we might continuously develop.
Kolb developed a theory of experiential learning that can give us a useful model by which to develop our practice. This is called The Kolb Cycle, The Learning Cycle or The Experiential Learning Cycle. The cycle comprises four different stages of learning from experience and can be entered at any point but all stages must be followed in sequence for successful learning to take place. The Learning Cycle suggests that it is not sufficient to have an experience in order to learn. It is necessary to reflect on the experience to make generalisations and formulate concepts which can then be applied to new situations. This learning must then be tested out in new situations. The learner must make the link between the theory and action by planning, acting out, reflecting and relating it back to the theory.”
My response:
I should like to present some thoughts within ten minutes on what I have taken away from the ‘Strategy analysis and implementation’ course.
This brief outline is in three parts.
Firstly, I should like to offer a reflection on my own personal learning experiences in the entire module, including the impact on my own learning.
Secondly, I should like to offer some perspectives about the Report I prepared for the assessment, including again the impact of the preparation of my Report on my own learning.
The third, and final part, of this presentation is an explanation and critical justification of rationale for approach and content of written Report.
Firstly, the reflection on my learning experiences in the entire module including the impact on my own learning
In the core module, ‘strategy, systems and operations’, I felt we went through the basics of performing a strategic analysis for a business in a competent way, and that was indeed useful.
I personally used the technique of ‘mapping’ using http://www.mindmap.com a useful way of structuring my thoughts on topics we covered during the substantive teaching of the course until December.
However, I am very happy that I did this special elective on strategy analysis and implementation.
This special elective has definitely taken me out of my “comfort zone”.
I now believe that strategy is at heart of all businesses, whether allied to marketing, organisation structure and culture, leadership, operations, or managerial accounting. I therefore value now value as pivotal in contextualising virtually all of the rest of my MBA, including my special electives such as innovation.
In addition to my cognitive knowledge of strategy from before, I believe that I have learnt more skills. I have a markedly different attitude to strategy now, however.
I perceive strategy to be a very inexact science, but where the benefits and outcomes of your analysis have to be communicated to the client in a very concrete manner. In fairness, it is not possible for me to know for certain how much more I actually know. On a positive note, I feel as if I know where to find information if necessary, using the BPP online library, and I feel as I have learnt how to learn better.
My original thesis at Cambridge, for my Ph.D., was in individual decision-making. I therefore especially enjoyed topic 4 (strategy in the face of uncertainty), topic 5 (bounded rationality and cognitive limitations).
However, as the module progressed, I really appreciated the fallacy of the ‘one glove fits all’ approach. I found enormously useful, therefore, topic 6 on speed and agility, and topics 7 and 9, the complexity and human dimensions of living systems, but I found myself towards the end of the module unable to rationalise how the fertile academic debates about strategy in terms of behavioural economics could be reconciled with clear-cut recommendations of the type you would deliver to a client, in practice.
Finally, for this first part, I really do feel as if this entire course has taught me how to ‘reflect’ in my own time. I am mindful that it is almost irrelevant how much you know about a subject, if you are unable to communicate it effectively. I have enjoyed bouncing ideas of my peers, and it’s been overall a rewarding, fun and interesting learning experience.
(roughly 1 minute)
Secondly, I’d like to offer some perspectives of reflection about the Report including the impact on my own learning
My first response to doing the Report was simply to describe the events as they happened, but I found that I was offering no critical insight at all, and the description was taking up a huge amount of the word count.
I feel the module enabled me to describe, comprehend, apply, analyse, synthesise and evaluate key decisions in the case study provided to me at the end for my summative assessment.
I hope, in my response to this assessment, to have provided more than a descriptive or dialogic reflection. A descriptive reflection is merely to Report the events as they happened in the case study, and a dialogic reflection is where I have offered some limited judgements and alternative hypotheses about what happened.
(roughly 6 minutes)
Thirdly, and finally, here is an explanation and critical justification of rationale for approach and content of written Report.
I think an ability to write an effective business Report is a skill I should like to have mastered by the completion of my MBA at BPP Business School.
I wished to produce a Report which is professional, written in an interesting and lively way such that it would be attractive to the reader. In addition to the short-term purpose of achieving a reasonable mark for the assignment as a whole, I wished to obtain further practice in how to write a Report of professional standard, in terms of content and presentation.
Executive Summary
The outcome of my proposal is for CD Hotels to continue to pursue a franchising strategy, in a straight choice between franchising and acquisitions. I specifically did not consider any other mechanisms of market entry, as these had not been asked for at all. I feel that this is an important section of my business Report. I wanted to convey the summary simply in a way that would make the reader wish to be convinced about my proposal.
Table of contents
In this section the topics covered in the Report are to be indexed with the page number where it is written in detail.
Introduction
In this section, I presented a framework for the Report is presented.
Detailed Report
I did not break the Report down into individual chapters, as this Report, excluding the executive summary, had a total word limit of 2,500 words. Using the existant literature, I attempted to answer directly the actual questions posed.
Conclusion
This section gave the results that I had derived from my studies on the case study. I also tried to give a brief indication about the main limitations of my Report. I have provided a brief record of my literature review as key references.
This section consists of the brief list of all references which I have referred to in the main body, but my reading was much wider in fact.
I’d diarised what I’d read to keep track of my research. I only looked at a few journal articles in the end, but I did particularly enjoy Beer and Nohria (2000). I looked at a number of book chapters, but I did find Johnson, Scholes, and Whittington textbook extremely helpful as a book, but I didn’t use it uncritically, I hope.
However, I found the industry cases very helpful, especially the article ‘Chic to cheap’ January 2008. http://www.ttgdigital.com/ and the Bernstein Research Report ‘Lodging the power of brands’ (2010) extremely helpful.
I also did much background reading on the international regulation of franchises. I decided not to include this in this Report, as the Report is not supposed to be a specialised legal analysis.
I’ve only got two appendices in my report. Appendix 1 sets out the case against acquisitions, but in favour of franchising, in my opinion, and Appendix 2 sets out my recommendations for a successful implementation of franchising this time around.
Limitations of my analysis are inevitably having to rely on the truthfulness of the facts. It could be the case that there are certain issues which are not quite as Reported, for example the precise relationship between the actors of the case study.
Lastly, I’d like to mention some notable omissions. The word count I felt was appropriate for the Report requested. There are clearly aspects of leadership styles which are relevant to how successfully CD Hotels functioned, but I decided to omit these as what was required was a strategic analysis and implementation. In my Report, I have tried to analyse the strategic decisions actually taken, as well as to consider the efficacy of the implementation of these decisions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope I have provided some insights in what I have learnt from this module, and from doing the Report; furthermore I hope that I have justified the content and approach of my Report.
