Personally, the most reasonable way of doing this reflection assignment while incorporating most of what I have captured in terms of learning through experience, would be illustrating my own experience journey in the DStudio, while working with EY. My pre-departure phase was faced with the challenge of developing my own personal SWOT. Tough, yes but it was a really useful tool in terms of knowing and understanding my thought process as well as recognizing that indeed we all have personal battles with ourselves but identifying them means that one gets to work on them to improve who they are.

If I look back now and reflect on my day one experience, I felt so lost and confused by just sitting in a class that required me to throw out the window my typical Sauder student “hat” and switch on and off other different types of hats, the De Bono’s thinking hats. It was like practicing how to shift alter egos while still keeping focus on my thought process and that was not only difficult but scary. Being forced out of my comfort zone was reflected by having to work on huge group projects such as the design brief and solution, with different individuals, having different mindsets yet come to a similar but creative idea. Being different seemed to be the norm of this class. My doubts about this class that I had me consider dropping it because I was not too sure I was going to pull through a whole list of design techniques,when terminologies like Socratic thinking gave me the chills because I was never a philosophical individual. “How would I sit in a class full of brilliant minds and not feel small?”  However, I was encouraged to share my thoughts because there was no right or wrong answer.

It was during my journey that I finally figured out that this was my leverage through which I could bring out my shy persona who wanted to learn new things and make her an inquisitive individual with constructive curiosity. This persona had gone through great lengths to acquire explicit and tacit knowledge.The journey was definitely not easy because having felt lost, I had to find my way back then continue on with my learning journey. However, as I reflect, I realize that feeling lost about and within my thought process was the whole point. How and what I used to find myself and my way back, was what really mattered. And this resonates with Albert Einstein’s saying on problem exploration, “if I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes the solution.”  Indeed it took a while before the fog cleared up and I could carry on with my journey.

It was times like these that I zoomed in and out in order to see if I was on the right path or I took a wrong turn again.This required not only convergent thinking but also divergent thinking because a different thought process takes you out of the norm and throws you into an organic space that favors the incubation of sporadic ideas. This suddenly created a fit element as it ties into my team’s design solution. We literally threw our group meetings to an entirely different space and this shifted our mindset completely. It honestly felt like a magician was playing tricks on us because that is how our design solution came to be. How a simple change of environment disrupts thought process, is still quite a magical thing for me. I have recently implemented my team’s design solution to my own study environment and it has worked wonders because I get my work done both sufficiently and efficiently.

Although there are many positive moments especially now with the reception that my team’s design solution received, there were tough times that my team members and I went through before seeing the light. Team dynamics played hard ball with us many times and the frustration was sometimes unbearable but we conquered it. We put everything a side and focused on the important matters that would create meaning out of the entire experience, which is learning from the mistakes that we did and moving out of the grey area to clear blue skies. How you start does not really matter it is how you finish that makes the difference. I honestly have no regret having gone through this journey because the take-aways are simply invaluable towards my evolved thought process and personal growth.

http://www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm
http://mappingexperiences.com/

Despite the fact the article talks about how African start-ups are surviving despite the odds,I think the start-ups should consider taking up the lean start-ups which reduce the chance of failure of blooming businesses. Abasiama’s Wild Fusion, a digital firm is one of those lucky start-ups that managed to get through tough challenges faced by start-ups in Africa. For the first few months he did not earn anything because his company was struggling to survive. Chances are that if he had adapted the lean start-up technique, things would not have been so difficult for his firm. Research has shown that start-up businesses face significantly high costs of getting first customers.This problem would have easily been solved by the lean strategy whereby the founder comes up with a business model plan and have customers comment on factors like pricing of goods or services and product features. The founder is easily able to identify what his target market wants without going through a trial period which will cost a lot.

The other problem that is identified with tech start -ups in Africa is the long technology penetration cycles. The internet is not will established in African countries and this is a huge challenge of up-coming tech firm like Wild Fusion. However, despite this various companies have been mentioned in article to have made through the turmoil of start-ups. For instance the Kenyan mobile money transfer by Safaricom which made revenue of about $145 million at the beginning of this year.

It duly noted that those start-ups that made it through did so because they received funding from huge developed companies an example mentioned in the article would be Ghana’s Rancard who received funding from Intel Capital. Majority are not lucky to get this funding because Africa does not have enough venture capital funds to help out start -ups.

Sources:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/african-and-mideast-business/african-tech-startups-held-back-by-lower-internet-penetration-scarcity-of-early-stage-capital/article15424220/

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&sid=a913e837-00c6-4479-9f1a-76ee8588b09a%40sessionmgr14&hid=25&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=87039866

Motivation is one of the key things that drives anyone to do a particular task and achieve their intended objective. Less productivity can be attributed to employees not liking their jobs. Recent statistics by a Conference Board in the U.S showed a decrease in the percentage of people who liked their jobs from 61% to 45%. Organisations are therefore taking motivational strategies very seriously in order to increase their productivity. Motivation can be done through actions from a little as making employees feel valued to just as much as paying them an extra amount of money for the work they do. Elise Lelon, owner of a leadership-consulting firm, has seen the importance of motivating her employees because it makes them happy because they feel valued and therefore they are willing not because they have to but they want to. The old perception of giving employees bonuses is slowly being out faced by new strategies that cost almost nothing but achieve the goal of motiving workers. Elise has taken up this by giving employees job titles and adopting autonomy whereby employees have the freedom to choose working hours that are convenient for them. Mr. Mills of Prime Debt Services has also adopted these strategies by enforcing feedback sessions whereby his employees are able to vent out and forward their complains. Mr. Mills wishes to motivate his employees so much that he offers them free breakfast just to make things lighter for them. However, despite the fact the motivation is a good way of encouraging workers, employers have to be careful of the “folly of rewarding A” as this will result to dysfunctional rewarding.

Sources:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704362004575000911063526360

http://www.executivemanagementskills.com/pdf/folly.pdf

More and more companies continue to realise the importance of shared value. Earlier on, companies had a limited scope of being profitable without considering the society, from which it benefited from. Well, times have changed and companies like Dow Chemicals, Nestle,Toyota and Intel are now more concerned about social value and the total economic pool as well.A good example for how companies have created shared value would be Dow Chemicals, who redefined their productivity and eventually gained a competitive advantage from it. The company produces canola oil which gives twice as much oil as other sources of oil and has a longer shelf value. Not only do they gain from their competitive advantage but so do farmers whose cost of production has gone down yet they produce more.

Creating social value is about solving problems in society which is considered as CSR, of which Toyota portrays by inventing low-emission vehicles and Intel by improving health care and education. These strategies that companies have come up with are benefiting society as a whole. However, some may criticise their actions as being insincere and hypocritical because they view these actions as an opportunity to gain popularity in the market and establish a more concrete foundation of their products within the their consumers’ mind.

On the other hand, those in favour of it see as beneficial because the whole society gains from employment, better healthcare, education, improved living conditions which eventually leads to economic growth and development.

Sources:http://hbr.org/2013/09/innovating-for-shared-value/ar/

http://www.waterhealth.com/sites/default/files/Harvard_Buiness_Review_Shared_Value.pdf

Jell-O’s recent sales decline can be attributed to its change of target market from mostly children to adults. It is no longer being seen as the fun food that it was, given its advertising strategies that included Bill Cosby, one of the best comedians of all time. According to Ries and Trout, to be everything to everyone will end up being nothing to everyone. This was a likely event that was to happen to Jell-o if they did nothing to change their direction. Luckily, they quickly realized that they are making a mistake and they are already taking swift actions to “reestablish Jell-O’s core purpose of food for fun” as Dan O’Leary, a senior marketing director for Kraft mentions.

It is very difficult to change the position taken by a product in the consumers’s mind as Kraft had hoped. The consistent knowledge that Jell-O is associated with children mainly, may have contributed to the failure of their adult campaign. Change in eating habits is also on of the factors that contributed to a slight decline in it demand. Hopefully it new campaign will restore its product’s position in the consumer’s mind.

Sources:

http://adage.com/article/news/kraft-launches-campaign-revive-jell-o/243616/

http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/ries-trout/positioning/

One might be easily tempted to question the managerial decisions of South Korean car makers on their recent abolition of overnight working yet in other rich countries in Europe and North America, overnight working is making a come back. Historically, in most developed countries, night shifts in manufacturing industries was banned as it was seen to go against the code of ethics by overworking workers. However, consultant Andrew Bergbaum, and others may agree that a night shift is better off than unemployment despite the fact that South Korean car plants like Kia and Hyundai have agreed to their workers demand and eradicated nightly duty. This is probably because South Korea has dived into the waters of developed worlds and as a result, the employees feel that they have better job security than before.

As South Korean car plants’ managerial decisions continue to embrace core values of fair play, their overseas plants are still burning their midnight oil in order to keep up with competitors like BMW and JLR ( The Economist). This is definitely a good strategy because the idea is embraced in America where their night shift runs have increased to 40% for a mere 9% as stated in the Economist.

Sources:

http://search.proquest.com/docview/1040403926

Apple’s ranking by Matthew Davis (a supply chain analyst with Gartner) as “world’s best supply chain for the past four years” is no surprise given the company’s seriousness in operational management. Over the years, Apple has been able to use its operational strategies as an asset by knowing what new products to produce and how to schedule them to its demanding customers. Apple’s close knit internal organisation is uniquely able to control its supply chain such  that even with the risk of massive product launches, its inventories are not much a risk. The company’s unique operations could be attributed to one of its co-founders, Steve Jobs , who made amazing operational decisions in order to beat competitors by delivering new products at an expensive cost but by faster means. He chose to fly new Apple products to its customers compared to other companies that opted for cheaper transportation but had their market easily snatched from them due to Apple’s readily available goods. It is this operational strategy that has enabled Apple to get manufacturing and transport discounts due to the bulk of products they produce. To some extent Apple has applied the direct business model whereby their designers work directly with the suppliers and therefore cutting off middle-men which decreases the production cost.

Sources

Apple’s Supply-Chain Secret? Hoard Lasers  (Bloomberg Business week Magazine)

 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/apples-supplychain-secret-hoard-lasers-11032011.html

Kenya has been on the list of Africa’s most corrupt countries. Truth be told, corruption has rampant over the past few decades. Safaricom, Kenya’s leading mobile operator, has decided to take ethical issues very seriously by daring to fire and prosecute its employees associated with fraud, bribes and other corrupt actions. The cases of fraud associated with Safaricom mobile services,Mshwari and Mpesa, have been tarnishing Kenyans’ view about the safety of their money. Back in Kenya, I am not such a frequent user of these services but the actions taken by Safaricom to improve their services is persuading me otherwise. The company is not only facing ethical issues by eradicating corruption but also it recently established a sustainability report that looks at their impact on the environment, economy and gender inequalities with its company’s employment. They are also focused on their corporate social responsibility by providing social amenities for its employees and society as a general. Companies in Kenya should follow suite and adopt such measures to curb unethical issues.

Sources:

http://www.itwebafrica.com/telecommunications/153-kenya/229957

http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2012/09/safaricom-sets-performance-bar-higher/