Advice

OK, it’s supposed to be an arrow – if you think like me!

Thinking of his forthcoming ‘Rapport de Stage’ a mature student asked me to encapsulate my ‘Best Bits’ of advice to help him through the process from start to finish.

Well, here they are.  They should be pretty self-explanatory.

ONE.  The Driven Process.

Even before you start thinking about a topic/title, have a vision of how the whole process of delivery fits together; how each step in the process leads to the successive one.  That way you will never get lost in your own project: you will always know what is coming next.  Each step below is sequential – you can’t vary this order!

1. let your interests drive the subject and title and that title will then drive the aims and objectives (A&O)
2. your A&O will necessarily drive your secondary research / literature review (LR) to find out what is already known and written about your topic. This will then produce what I call a ‘research gap‘ (the difference between the title [what you need to know] and what the LR tells you is already well known). This research gap is effectively a ‘hitlist’ of targets for your own research, which we call ‘primary research‘.
3. The nature of your primary research targets (the ‘what’) will, in turn, help you devise the very best (i.e. the most efficient, effective and economical ways of acquiring such information).  This we call a ‘methodology‘.
4. The methodology drives all aspects your information gathering, your survey.
5. The material you gather in your survey will often ‘suggest’ the best ways of presenting it: data presentation.
6. As night follows day you will need to explain, interpret and analyse your data, breaking it down helpfully for the reader into appropriate ‘bite-sized chunks’.  Data Analysis.
7. If data analysis is about presenting and breaking things down, then the next step is evaluation: just what does this all mean?  (For example, 73% of respondents replied ‘yes’ to question 14….. but is that 73 normal, poor or downright miraculous?  This analysis and evaluation effectively produces quality information which was not available heretofore.  Information, in the right hands at the right time provides the opportunity for change: improvement.
8. This quality information, taken together, can enable you to draw conclusions in respect to each element on your primary research ‘hitlist’ .. for example, you might conclude that in certain respects your employer is performing really well, but not nearly so well in other respects.
9. Now you ask yourself, based upon these conclusions, what recommendations should be made to produce the necessary improvement…. after all, you now know more about this than anybody else, including your tutor and your boss!

————————————————

TWO.  Framing the title

First, can I say this – it is a play on words but it is true and you should never lose sight of it:

A Rapport de Stage is A LOT ABOUT A LITTLE …….. NOT …….. A LITTLE ABOUT A LOT.

You need something narrowly focused that you can attack with considerable depth of analysis.  It is in this depth that we see your Master-worthiness and that you earn a decent mark.   Some forms of titles can help immeasurably in this respect.  Others can be nothing short of time-consuming disasters.

Some ways of articulating a title work: they act like a triangle moving you from a wide base (the unknown) to a narrow apex (the conclusions and recommendations upon that which, through your research, is now known). …….. however, some can have the opposite effect: they stand the triangle on its apex and just grow and grow and grow wider and wider and wider and thinner and thinner and thinner with no possible resolution in sight.

Here are my three infallible options to enable you to move steadily and inexorably from ‘base’ to ‘apex’.

Articulate your working title in one of the following THREE forms:

1. A question to answer.
2. A problem to solve.
3. A hypothesis to test. If you haven’t come across one of these before, a hypothesis is a statement which you then set out to test (NOT under any circumstances to prove!)  An example. ‘If the gulf between our service quality and that of our principal competitors is not significantly reduced our market share will become unsustainable within a period of two years‘.   You then find a way to test this and draw your conclusions accordingly.  The danger lies in your personal perspective – you might easily believe this to be the case and show only that side of the evidence or draw unbalanced conclusions…. so be careful.

Of course, perhaps at the end of writing, you find a brilliant and intriguing phrase, a play on words (jeu de mots) with which to replace your working title.  Fine…. as long as it equally reflects the content and you explain this in your Introduction.

Each of these suggests its own methodological approach towards a resolution: the desired outcome.  PLEASE trust me on this…. just choosing a subject or a topic or an area of study won’t work – because there is no end point in sight.  So don’t ask your tutor: « Can I do something on SEO or internet marketing via social media? »  The answer will be yes, but WHAT?  Where are you going with it?  What’s the question you are setting out to answer or the problem you are going to try to solve?

—————————————————-

THREE: Measurement / Tools of Analysis

In all rapports you are inevitably going to be measuring something:

• how successful was the brochure?
• is our website performing any better after the ‘makeover’?
• just how good is our service quality?
• where, why and how did project x go wrong?
• can the logistics service be improved?

The questions then arise: what to measure and how… taking some of the above…..:

• how successful was the brochure?
  • were all the brochures distributed
  • did we get any positive ‘vibes’ from the market or the industry?
  • to what extent did it influence choice?
  • how many / what % of recipients made enquiries directly as a result of the brochure
  • how many / what % of recipients placed an order?
  • how much turnover/profit can be attributed directly to the brochure … did it cover its costs / hit its targets?
  • how long will the brochure impact last? etc etc
• is our website performing any better after the ‘makeover’?
  • what does Google Analytics say?
  • what do our customers think?
    • more intuitive
    • better impact
    • length of stay on site
    • user-friendliness
  • how do our customers act?
• just how good is our service quality?
  • is the SERVQUAL model helpful?
  • Should we benchmark against or major competitors or the best in class???

The point is that your Literature Review / Secondary Research should not just cover the topic, but also what techniques of measurement might be used.

Let me give you some helpful ways of looking at measurement in a system or process:

A. The FOUR ‘E’s

• (degree of) Economy: was it done within the budget envelope? (underspend / overspend etc).
• (degree of) Effectiveness: did it actually achieve its objective? (exceeded expectations, wholly, partially, not at all)
• (degree of) Efficiency: was it achieved simply, easily, quickly, without problems, smoothly … or……?
• (degree of) Equity [this means ‘fairness’ and is usually a criterion operating more in the public than private sector]

These are typical criteria that are used by persons charged with monitoring performance.  Clearly, each E would need its own set of measures particular to what it is that is being measured: brochure production will not be measured in the same way as, say, the introduction of a new developmental strategy.  If you are measuring anything in your rapport, then these are bound to feature – not just the odd one of them!

B.  Soft Systems approach.

This basically suggests that when you are looking at any system in operation, it can be broken down conveniently into essentially FOUR sequential components:

• INPUTS  (the what):  these are the resources introduced initially.  This might include: capital, human resources, time, political/ managerial commitment, raw materials/components, strategic vision etc etc.
• PROCESS (the how): this is how the inputs are arranged, engaged one with another in order to produce something physical or even immaterial which is desired.
• OUTPUT: this represents what is actually produced by the INPUTS + PROCESS. (It might be 2800 x Toyota RAV4 ‘lounge’ model Hybrids coming off the production line in Belgium in 6 months, for example)
• OUTCOME: Evaluation of the results of producing the OUTPUTS (maybe the RAV 4 production line broke all records and exceeded its targets and this success leads to the decision to build a new factory and take on 3200 new employees).

You might find your title concerns the entire system, so you will be looking at all these elements…. OR you could find yourself immersed in just one or two components (for example focusing upon the clarity,  communication and compliance with the ‘strategic vision’ within the inputs and processes section.

C.  Cascading & Communication: the Ps

I’ve said this many times before: ‘corporations don’t make profits – people do – with every idea and decision they put into practice individually and corporately (or don’t!).

People = Performance & Profit (or not!)

The point is that people can only perform if communication is effective from the top to the bottom of the organisation.  there is effectively a cascade operating here from what Mintzberg (1981. The Structuring of Organisations) termed the ‘Strategic Apex’ (the Boardroom / Chief Exec) to the ‘Operating Core’ so that everyone shares the same vision and acts in concert and compliance with it.  Essentially, from top to bottom it goes like this ( I hope you like my simple to remember Ps):

POLICY (Board of Directors / Chief Exec – giving key direction. e.g. outsourcing production to SE Asia)      –>

PROJECT (MD + key staff to identify ways and means this may be most Effectively, Efficiently and Economically achieved)  –>

PROGRAMME (MD and key Line Managers top level introduction & communication of ‘Road Map’)     –>

PROCEDURES (Senior/Mid Line Managers develop and introduce rules/processes by means of which the Road Map can be achieved) –>

PRACTICES  (Teams acting together to apply the rules and processes within their divisional/functional areas) –>

PERFORMANCE (Individuals acting independently on a day to day basis in compliance with all the other Ps above).

You will, of course, see the problem here: at each stage/each level there is the distinct possibility of things not transferring fully and accurately from above and to below.  By the time one gets to the bottom of the pyramid, is the worker at all aware of the policy decision taken at top level and specifically how it affects him/her?    Let’s speak about something ‘close to home’, then.  The UHA is setting great store upon reducing its environmental footprint/impact (we are the first French Eco-Campus with ISO 500001 status and over the summer we are seeking to massively reduce our annual electric bills of 18,000 Euros a week by switching over to a low/no cost heating system using ‘waste heat’ from the incinerator close to the campus)……  but that should be only the tip of the iceberg:  what is the UHA saying to YOU (and me for that matter) about ways in which we might moderate our behaviour?  What does that mean in terms of the core activities of learning and teaching for the 10,000 of us who are directly involved in it?).  Does it cascade down, barely trickle down, or like the mighty Colorado river, does it fail to reach the sea (us) at all?

————————————

FOUR. Make sure you are well set up / Use your academic tutor.

I would strongly advise you to think about a problem to solve, an opportunity to be seized or an interesting question to address and to suggest it to your Boss at work.  If he/she can see some direct benefits to the organisation of what you are proposing then she/he is unlikely to refuse.  If you don’t do this, you risk your Boss perhaps suggesting something you really don’t feel comfortable with and find uninteresting and ‘difficult’.

You then MUST run this past your Academic Tutor.  Here is what he/she will need from you.  It runs to no more than a page of A4 or so.  With such detail, you give us enough to help you: without it, we are unable to give you much advice at all – you won’t be giving us enough to go on.

PROJECT PROPOSITION FORM

Name and contact details

Employer and your job/mission(s)

Proposed Working Title [ABSOLUTELY MUST be expressed as a question to answer, a problem to solve or hypothesis to test]:-

A list of between 4 and 7 Aims and Objectives you will target in order to address 100% of the title chosen.  Start each of these with the word ‘To’… (We want to see what action you will take here to achieve the objective). These need to be clear, in a logical order and not overlapping.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Literature Review Targets. Take each one of the above Aims and Objectives and specify precisely where you will seek for the information which almost certainly already exists. Yes, we need more detail than ‘on the www’!

Although it will be difficult at this stage (before you have done the Literature Review and identified your Research Gap) to be sure of what sort of primary research you might think to do, giving a possible indication might help …. online questionnaire, observation, interview etc)

What do you see as the ‘apex’ / the end point of your research?  What will it enable you / the organisation to do/improve/change as a result? 

Do you foresee any particular difficulties with this?  (If yes, then what?)

Is there any specific advice you want from your academic tutor?

————————————————————————————————–

If you are fortunate/unfortunate enough (strike out as applicable!!) to have me for your Research Methods course, then I will go over and over this until you have ‘got it’ and the proverbial ‘light’ goes on.  If not, then I hope this distillation might be able to help you all.