Improvement in critical thinking and analyses by Graduate Students

Every generation needs a revolution - an entrepreneurial revolution

Rizal Philippines
December 18, 2016

I am writing this a reflection on my attendance for strama defense.

Peter Senge is right that the Fifth Discipline, shared learning and the rest of the disciplines:    Mental Models, Systemic Thinking, Shared Vision are important in strategy and successful management of enterprise or change.  Let us take mental models.

1. The use of macro data for EFE even for local business that have only local competitors-  It should be used for FMCG products and products and services that have national coverage.  The presentor for a hospital in an island that have local market in scope used only macro data as if she was in MM, like a big hospital in MM.  Some would advocate the use of B2C marketing strategy even if the business were B2B.   Use of mass and social media for a B2B company.

2.  Using irrelevant or hostile data or making wrong conclusions from the data presented.   Some would judge the the same stuff as both strength and weakness.  Say for instance, on the CFS, they would judge having more products as one of the factor for success in the business And somewhere in the paper, said that the company was progressive because of diverse products.  And the graphs and table shows indeed that the company was ahead of competitors in terms of products and services.  And yet in the internal analysis says that the company has fewer variants of the products.

3.  Failing to address the SWOT analysis.   Some students would say that the company is weak financially (low liquidity, high DE ratio, etc)   And yet after noting that, while the student would profess marketing strategy fail to address this issue. Why would you let a very weak company run a sprint or a marathon.  Are the weaknesses not to be addressed.?  We should beef our finance mentoring sirs?




4.  Failing to support motherhood statements.   I witnessed the old professor Jess who says we must fail the student for failing to support his statement with facts and data.  If say even in the SWOT analysis, the student could not even mention the number of personnel and their skills, the type and conditions of their equipment.  If in the CPM there are no pertinent data.  And yet many paper I saw lately failed to support their statements with data. Like the ALS counterparts, we must have exhaustive research of the data.  Let us not defend a paper that lacks data. It is not a logical strama paper but one that is based on speculation and general statements

We had to ask one student to buttress his statement with data (he is a practicing CPA)

5. Again the financials:   The recitation of facts and the audited FS do not reconcile.  The chairman do not make conclusion or judgement call on  this aspect because they are aware that it is difficult to get accurate data and FS from local businesses that are small to medium.  Like the students would mention inventories that are unsold and yet the FS does not that there are inventories.  ARe there ethical issues here?  Is the student aware of that?

The FS data do not also jibe with the strategies.

  E.G.  the firms expansion

1. The student mentions a multi million disbursement (high 8 figures) and has only a one time disbursement.

2. It does not show in the Asset and Liability pro forma

3.  The interest charge was mentioned to be in the low single digit.  But when you compute for the interest expense is in the low double digit.

Problem with the excel?  or the student is not wary of pitfalls of poor Financial Management?

A lot can be learned though from the strama.  For instance, I learned that for generic medicines and nutritionals. the tack now is on celebrity endorsement even if the formulations were not much different from others or not more effective than others. Spin and adspend count., not the product.

A good panelist has to research hard and deep, not merely read the strama paper if he must give the strama defender a run for his money (Kaya may umiiyak at am I gaining a notoriety as a panelist? I have to do what I have to do if we are to develop great GSB graduates

6.  Connecting the dots:

Why is CPM important?  Or competitive activities.   The subject company is losing money by specializing in critical machining of products and parts. Its competitor though is making a lot of sales and money.  What was it doing?  Fabricating structural steel products for indies and for factory building construction?  Why is the company not considering that?

In the case of generic drugs,  the author did not recite the past strategies and the synergy that the company has.  It is part of a very big pharma company that has a long history, strong distribution network, and manufacturing facilities .  Thus it was able to grow from P500,000 sales and paid up capital  several years back to P8 billion last year. and now over P200 million in Stockholders Equity The author was not able to explain that and the strategies that the pioneers employed to achieve that. He was not able to explain well the difference in business model of ethical promotions and generic drug marketing.  Why his generic company is very competitive and very profitable.