Tutor to students…..

Here is your assignment in the ‘practices’ part of the unit.

[That is not to say that other aspects of the unit: brainstorms, meetings, discussions, preliminary reports will not also be assessed].

Why the images?  Symbols of national culture recognised internationally!

Tutor’s Introduction.

I am imagineering (a term used by Disney to meld / blend ‘imagination’ with ‘engineering’) a situation in which:

• you are all part of one worldwide, intercultural consultancy group
• I am your Boss. You are my highly-valued (and highly-paid!) intercultural marketing consultants.
• I have ‘sold’ our services to the French branch of the International Chambers of Commerce [The Grand Est bureau is leading for the COCI].
• I am about to hand on to you the brief I have negotiated with them, for you to fulfill.
• Our classroom time will become our weekly consultancy ‘Project Progress Update & Advance Meeting‘, during which you will:
  • advise me as your boss of your progress
  • ask me if you have any questions concerning our commission
  • work together to fulfill the commission as individuals, task teams or as a whole consultancy group
  • reassure me that we are on target to hit our deadline with a report and presentation to client which are credible, professional and to the client’s brief (Fr. Cahier de Charges).

Context: [in consultancy role].

• Our consultancy (you can give it a good name…logo .. etc which works inter-culturally and internationally) has been approached by the French branch (Grand Est, Mulhouse) of the International Chambers of Commerce (Fr COCI) and I have negotiated a commission with them to help advise French businesses in the Grand Est (and subsequently throughout France) which might be hoping to  begin exporting or developing internationally / interculturally / globally.

• The FrCOCI (Grand Est, Mulhouse) advises that its member  businesses are reticent/worried/frightened about extending their markets internationally or setting up in other countries because they are worried about the risks [This should perhaps not surprise you, after all, what does Hofstede have to say about the general French cultural view of ‘risk’?  If you don’t know, then you should: view here] of so doing: different systems, processes, intermediaries, cultures, languages etc which have resulted in many embarrassing ‘faux pas‘ and costly disasters even for some leading national operators who have tried to internationalise and failed [sometimes repeatedly, like the UK’s Marks & Spencer].  So, simultaneously, businesses find themsleves in ever-more-saturated domestic markets where growth prospects are not attractive, yet seemingly not able or willing to exploit potentially available growth opportunities on the international marketplace   French businesses in Alsace and the Grand Est are therefore asking some critical questions:
  • what can we learn from the internationalisation and intercultural experiences, case-studies and histories [successes AND failures]  of organisations? [The FrCOCI has small, medium and large-scale member enterprises, so they are looking for case-studies of similar sized enterprises and organisations in the, private/commercial (and perhaps even in the public and voluntary) sectors who have attempted to internationalise and deal with cultural differences and the marketing challenges they present.  This could, for example, be a French company seeking to crack the Australian market or a British company looking to expand into North America: it does not have to exclusively involve French companies at all or indeed companies from other countries seeking to operate in France – the world is your frame here. [TJ Instruction.  Martine and Ellen’s TD1 members – half of the cohort/MICAI ‘promo’ –  will address successes.  Martine and Ellen’s TD2 will address failures.  That means about 18 of you per TD team.  I suggest that, to make things manageable numbers-wise, that within each TD team you create pairs to each identify and research thoroughly one valuable case study which offers considerable insight and learning. With 10+ decent successes and 10+ failures you should be able to address the following bullet-point client requirement:
    • how can this learning from case study histories help produce a ‘template process / blueprint‘ which businesses can follow to ensure that risk of failure is reduced at each and every stage and the chances of success are increased?
    • where the above requires knowledge, experience, training and support services which the organisation is unlikely to have internally, the FrCOCI members would like to see such knowledge, experience, training and associated services offered through the FrCOCI (Grand Est, Mulhouse) with our consultancy group’s support. Such services will be payable and potentially supplied by this consultancy under the ‘umbrella‘ of the COCI).
• Businesses are generally confused concerning how to reconcile the need to keep costs low to reach the largest market possible  (implying a strong tendency towards standardisation)  with the need to be culturally aware, sensitive and adaptable (implying higher adjustment costs, brand dissipation and lower margins).  Some are wondering whether the choice is even more stark: standardise or personalise (avoiding passing by an intermediary step of inter-cultural adaptation).  The FrCOCI and its members are seeking our guidance here.

NB. From the perspective of our consultancy, we see this as a significant opportunity: if we can get this project piloted, refined and successfully operational in Alsace, then we may be able to persuade the FrCOCI and the French state to roll out this support service throughout all French regions: effectively enabling us to recoup any number of times upon our initial investment.  It is therefore imperative that this pilot project is successful.  Need I say more?

INSTRUCTIONS

from Consultancy CEO

Tony Jolley

• Imperative ALL of you read this (and the above ‘context’) asap and fully understand our brief.  You must read, re-read and discuss until you have your respective ‘heads’ around the task and share a common vision of where you are going and how you are going to get there (i.e. a strategy incorporating ‘means’ and ends’).

• Elect four Project Leaders [2 from the Successes group and 2 from the group looking at Failures]. The idea is that they will help you keep on course and to deadline and specification.  They will be my first point of contact.  Failure to do so will not be accepted – lack of leadership is generally linked to missing deadlines and failure to deliver to specification and client expectation.  Such leaders are NOT there to tell you what you must do (that is in the brief), but rather to encourage you all towards the delivery of this consultancy project and to record and remind you of what you have agreed.

• Consider the tasks involved (from the ‘Context’ above) and your resources (principally people and time) and how they may be retro-planned to ensure that you hit the deadlines [detailed as follows]:

• • formal presentation to FrCOCI Grand Est and their Members: [in Tutor role: our last class in this subject in S1 ] accompanied by a written report to specification covering:
    •  the set/sets of principles & practices derived from the findings of the success and failures case study research designed to reduce the risk of failure and enhance the prospects of success in marketing inter-culturally. [The case syntheses  themselves can be contained in an appx]
      
    • an Action Programme for the FrCOCI and its members to adopt which:
      • is chronological, step by step / phase by phase, from the moment of determination to consider moving internationally/interculturally and which addresses inter-cultural challenges to successful export operation and marketing and international establishment. [NB. Although the focus is necessarily at the organisational level, the fact that the success of internationalisation programmes is in no small measure related to the work of Key Employees, the support of such individuals and their families must not be neglected]
      • will include highly-specific Action Points which must incorporate:
        • specification of action. The WHAT and the WHY (justification).
          
        • leadership responsibility (who should be involved in delivering the action point and which individual will be identified as bearing the prime responsibility for fulfilment).  The WHO
        • timeframe.  The WHEN
        • Key Performance Indicators (to ensure it is measurable – how will we know it has been successful?)  The HOW (will we know if it is working or not)
        • ‘Broad brush‘ / ‘ballpark’ costings [always incorporating ways and means of keeping costs low or generating funding support]  The HOW much
        • Support services available, as appropriate, from this consultancy / through the COCI

• A Job Description, Person Specification and organisational case for the critical post: « Head of Intercultural Management and Marketing ». Inter alia, this will include:
  • the position, power & authority and communication & reporting relationships of this post within the corporate/organisational heirarchy incorporating if possible a pictorial ‘mapping’ of where the tentacles of interculturality cross typical business functions/divisions is also believed by the COCI to be a valuable aid in getting CEOs to understand how deep interculturality runs throughout the organisation.
  •  details of the nature and scope of the post and its primary responsibilities (Job Description)
  • definition of a Person Specification which clearly identifies the experience, qualities and qualifications the post-holder should posses how the best possible post-holder might be recruited, selected and motivated.
    
  • how the organisation might subsequently retain and benefit from the highly developed expertise of such an individual upon return from overseas posting.

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Tutor’s NBs.

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The final presentation must be thorough, professional and cover ALL aspects of the brief.  The framework for this session in your last class in the unit will be as follows:-

• set up time: 30 mins
  
• presentation to COCI and Members: 1h 30 mins / 2h max
  
• questions from client  1.0 / 1.5 hours
• oral feedback from client on presentation
  
• Written feedback on Report before end of S1
  

This isn’t going to be easy (well, it is Master’s level after all!!)…. you are set to work in the unknown (researching, discovering, analysing, evaluating, synthesising, drawing conclusions, problem-solving and presenting creative solutionsn recommendations tailored to the client’s needs… This should ‘feel’ very familiar from the Intro to Research programme!).  You have to work out HOW to attack the problem.   You need to envision the task clearly AND optimise all your human resources!  There are a LOT of you, so division of labour (think FW Taylor!) will be of considerable importance as will be how you share your work across the TD teams and the consutancy group as a whole: maybe a Google Drive might help?.    The key will be to understand the brief and to be creative in harnessing your ideas, working professionally at all times and never losing sight of the consultancy specification, the COCI’s agenda and that of its member businesses.

To help you, we will be doing a significant amount of work on this in the classroom: 16 hours+;  (but I will expect just as many hours to be invested outside the classroom too – so will your colleagues!) where I can help you both in role as your boss and as your tutor by giving you formative feedback and some guidance and mini-lectures where I believe it is necessary to support your learning and the project’s advancement.

I believe in learning by doing, immersing you in situations as real as I can make them so that at the end you will carry away a sense of how to approach critical business problems, opportunities and tasks you may well have to face in your future.

Be Warned: You will almost certainly find this confusing and a little daunting at the outset as you will be starting with a blank sheet and having to think and brainstorm to produce your ideas of how to go about this.  That, in itself, is a valuable experience – trust me: your boss will never say: ‘Write me an essay on this‘, or ‘This is the problem, this is how I want you to go about it and this is the result/solution I want you to find’ … you almost always have to tip the jigsaw puzzle pieces out, turn them over and see how you can fit them together (and without the box-top picture to help you!).  I can help you to do this, but I cannot do it for you.  It will be critical that you read and fully understand the consultancy commission from the very start.  This will mean reading and re-reading and maybe putting yourselves in the client’s ‘shoes’.  Again, I cannot do that for you and I will not step in to lead the project for you (as your ‘Boss’ I have secured the project and have passed it over to you – I am not taking it back!).  If you can pinpoint where your difficulties are, then I will do all I can to help you…. but to a general: ‘I don’t understand anything‘ comment I will have little response to make other than ‘Read, re-read and tell me where you don’t get it. Then I’ll be able to help‘.

A Word About Assessment

I aim to assess most components of this assignment.  Apart from the written report and case study analyses of successes and failures (which I will mark on hard copy at home), the assessment will be in class.   I will be taking attendance sheets with quasi-religious fervour, so BE THERE – if you are not present and able and willing and active in participation, don’t expect a mark. Absence absolutely MUST be supported by Medical Certification or the Course Directors’ approval of absence.

The things I will certainly be looking towards marking:

• How well the group as a whole takes on board the professional role you are being given. Is it understood? Is it accepted?  Is the group running with the ‘ball’ or trying to ‘pass it back’ to me?  [Group base mark moderated for conspicuous personal performance / participation / contribution].
• The quality of ‘TD Pairs‘ written success/failure case study analyses & evaluations and ability to draw learning from these that can inform the Action Programme.  Willingness and ability to share and contribute this learning creatively to a TD plenary session in order to create the principles for avoiding failure and enhancing success. [Team base mark moderated for conspicuous personal performance / participation / contribution]
• Action Point construction and development [Team base mark moderated for conspicuous personal performance / participation / contribution]
• Presentation to client. ‘Slick’, professional, great presentation of content which meets the requirements of the brief.  Quality of answers from the floor (not just the presenters) to client questions. [Group base mark moderated for conspicuous personal performance / participation / contribution]
• Written report.  Sections are to be identified with individuals and teams, as are case studies and Action points. [Group and Team base marks moderated for conspicuous personal performance / participation / contribution.  Individual marks as appropriate].
• Quality of Project Leadership throughout.
• Overall impression / Acid Test.  Does this stand up as a credible and workable response to a challenging consultancy brief?  In reality, would the client pay for this – or send us back to the proverbial ‘drawing board‘?!?

NB. If I hear of members of my consultancy team who are not contributing as they should (appropriate contributions made on time) to the group and team work, they will receive a written and oral warning and if contribution and participation are not ‘normalised’ they will be effectively ‘fired’ (meaning in this case that they will not receive a mark for any group or team work to which they have made no significant contribution).  Please take note!