Exam Content
Assignment Overview
In this week’s Strategic Management Research Project presentation, you will demonstrate your understanding of strategic management, apply critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and exercise your skills in quality control when you evaluate the effectiveness of operational changes at Alphabet, Inc. Recall that you are the assistant strategic development analyst. You are presenting your findings to Alphabet’s leadership from your evaluation and entries in your strategic management research journal over the past 4 weeks.
Assignment Preparation
Review your strategic management research journal entries from the assignments in Weeks 1-4. Be sure to make changes as a result of your continued evaluation and apply faculty feedback from previous assignments.
Assignment Deliverable
Create a 12- to 14-slide APA formatted presentation (SLIDE GUIDELINE=5-lines of talking points/8-words per line) complete with slide discussion speaker notes for Alphabet’s leadership team, in which you summarize your key findings, propose recommendations, and provide rationale for your recommendations. See the NOTE below for more presentation info and assignment guidance. For guidance on creating Powerpoint presentations, please access How to use PowerPoint: A Beginner’s Step-by-Step Tutorial
(The minimum number of slides is 12, to include cover, intro, conclusion, reference, and the 8 bullets.)
Address the following topics and prompts in your presentation:
Topic: Alphabet’s Vision
Summarize your evaluation of the alignment between what Alphabet is currently doing and their mission, vision, or values statement (Is Alphabet living its statements? How is that demonstrated?).
Recommend any changes you would make to Alphabet’s mission, vision, or values statements to improve organizational goals. Explain what impact the changes will have on the organization’s performance (What statement changes would you make to clarify Alphabet’s intentions? What would that look like?).
Topic: Alphabet’s Competitive Advantages and Disadvantages
How would you summarize Alphabet’s strengths and weaknesses, given its competitive advantages and disadvantages? (Select 3 of the most critical weaknesses to focus on for the next 2 bullets.)
Recommend operational changes to improve Alphabet’s competitive advantages and business performance. How will these changes impact performance?(Briefly recommend changes to address each critical weakness.)
How should the recommended operational changes be measured and monitored to assess effectiveness at improving competitive advantage and performance? (Briefly address specific metrics and progress monitoring procedures applied to each change.)
Topic: Alphabet’s Global Strategy
Summarize your assessment of Alphabet’s global strategy and operational Implementation plan. (Briefly address the global strategy in place and how it is being implemented.)
Recommend operational changes to improve Alphabet’s global strategy and overall business performance. How will these changes impact performance?(Briefly recommend changes to address 2-3 critical weakness you see in the operational plan in place)
How should the recommended operational changes be measured and monitored to assess effectiveness at improving performance? (Briefly address specific metrics and progress monitoring procedures applied to each change.)
Format your presentation and references according to APA guidelines.
Submit your assessment.
NOTE (Slides & Speaker Notes Rationale)
PowerPoint presentations consists of slides with a list of talking points, an audience, and a speaker. The slide talking points alert the audience to topics to be presented and the order in which they will be presented. The audience can quickly refer to the slides to follow the presentation without being distracted from what the speaker is conveying.
Your presentation is structured to replicate what occurs in a live presentation. The speaker notes are substituted for you, the otherwise live speaker. Hence, graphics and the short list of talking points should be the full content of each slide, as any more than that would be a major distraction and make for a very boring and less comprehensive presentation. 5-lines/8-words per line are maximums; any more than that should continue on another slide.
Make certain your speaker notes briefly summarize each slide talking point and can be easily identified with a particular talking point (Label or use sequential bullets or numbers to connect talking points and notes, for example.).
These additional instructions are intended to provide more direction. Regarding word count, the wording should be minimal, as the keywords in the instructions are summarize and briefly. You have spent the last four weeks gathering information to support your recommendations, so there is no need to repeat all of that; simply take from that only the bare minimum needed to meet the requirements in week-5 (no long narratives that require sorting through to find what is needed). Use bullets or numbers to list talking points on slides, and use sequential bullets or numbers for the speaker notes that align with the talking points. Yes, in an actual presentation there would be a lot more verbage, but here we just need to get to the points. There is a limited amount of time available to assess your coursework.
