The Task

You are asked to imagine that you are a team employed by a major UK Management Consultancy organisation. Your boss in the Consultancy has agreed that you will carry out a small piece of unpaid work for a client, with the aim of demonstrating the Consultancy's competence, integrity and value, and, hence, securing contracts for significant work in the future.

The clients for this exercise R who are senior managers in real organisations R will be identified at the first session. Each is interested in the strategic implications of a particular issue for their organisation; in particular, for the aspect of the organisation for which they are responsible. They may not, at this stage, be certain of how seriously they need to take the issue in their own context, or be entirely clear about its nature, but they are keen to know more about it. Details of the issues will be outlined in the introduction session. In each case, you may define the boundaries of your study in whatever way seems most appropriate.

Your boss has agreed with your client that you will make a verbal presentation to him or her at the end of the preliminary study. Your aim for this presentation, should be to provide some insight into the issue for the client and, where relevant, to demonstrate that the issue is (or is not), one which your client needs to take seriously. You are asked to imagine that your chance to gain further contracts with the client hinges, to a very large extent, on both the content and the professionalism of your presentation; i.e., on your ability to make a convincing case.

Because this is a "demonstrator" study you will have limited direct access to your client in advance of your presentation in fact it is a rule of the class that you do not contact any of the clients without first discussing this with your tutor. The amount of contact that you are able to negotiate will vary from client to client. As is often the case with a consultancy organisation, therefore, much of your knowledge of the client and his/her organisation may need to be built from whatever data you can get access to. In order to help you get started, each client has provided some general information.

Any further information you require must be gained by your own ingenuity. You should consider the client and organisation as they are today; i.e. as live entities facing current circumstances.

In order to make the best use of the time available to you, you will need to balance the time spent working collectively with that spent working individually. Some approaches to managing teamwork in this kind of setting will be discussed in the lectures, but you are advised to think explicitly about your general team process from time to time.

b. The Starter Packs

Starter packs for each team, containing some information provided by the clients about their organisation and augmented by the information services at Strathclyde Business School will be available for the duration of the exercise.

c. The Presentations

Your's presentation to the client should be 15 minutes in length with a further 15 minutes available for questions. The total limit of 30 minutes will be strictly enforced. You should also provide, for your client, a brief written document to supplement what you have to say. Both presentation and documentation should, of course, be as professional as you can make them within the resources you have available.

The presentations from each team will take place one immediately after the other. Teams may negotiate with each other over the order in which the presentations take place. After the presentations, your client will comment on what he/she has heard and will indicate whether each presentation would have convinced him/her to contract the team to carry out further work.

In order to help you achieve professionalism in your final presentations, trial presentations have been scheduled into the programme. It is expected that teams will wish to update both the style and content of their presentations as a result of discussion following these.

The client presentation and associated report form part of the assessment for this exercise.

APPROACH

Adaptation: becoming aware and active in group dynamics

(Record at least one example)

Reflection on action - transferable lessons about group processes

(Based on your insights above, develop some thoughts about how you would approach group processes in the future, and/or some issues that require further thought.)

Application: engaging with strategic tools in customary and evolutionary ways
(Record at least one example)

Reflection on action - transferable lessons for strategic tool / framework application
(Based on your insights above, develop some thoughts about how you would use strategic tools in new ways in the future, and/or issues with tools that still need further thought.)

Anticipation: handling pre-understandings and re-appraising clients and issues

(Record at least one example in at least one of these tables)

Reflection on action - transferable lessons for understanding clients and their issues:

(Based on your insights above, develop some thoughts about how you would ideally work differently with clients in the future, and/or some issue(s) that require further thought)

Learning agenda

(Describe how you intend to continue to develop the skills of adaptation, application and anticipation. Your thinking here should build on the reflection points recorded on preceding pages.)