Lessons Learned – Session 9

This week we had a chance to practise our presentation for next week as both our teachers were away on business. Karina stepped in and asked us to present our business models and revenue streams to the class and provided us with loads of useful feedback for our presentation to the professors next week!

This weeks class was all about the key activities and key resources of our business. We had to really think about what the key activities our business would be undertaking and what we would need to make this happen. We discussed how the system has to be simple so that ordinary people can work it and achieve the goals set. To do this Karina discussed the use of processes in an organization and how they were vital to the efficient functioning of the company. These processes are a way to standardize and benchmark efficiency/quality/outcomes.

After carrying out exercises based on the process of our business we watched a really interesting video, that made us all realise that even though an activity may seem completely obvious and simple, we regularly forget to carry it out and often these are the most important activities. By forming check lists and processes these problems can be eradicated! The final part of the key activities section of the lecture was discussing value chains and to understand which parts of our business were they key parts and which were support activities.

After the break we discussed the key resources, so the organizational structure of the business, the roles played by the employees and their capabilities needed. We also discussed how it was better to hire employees with the right attitude as these people have a motivation for the job and to learn, than to hire someone with capability. This is because even though someone has the right capabilities for the job, if their attitude for the company or position is negative then it is extremely difficult to get integrate them into the company culture and to get the necessary results from them.

Partnerships were also discusses, we realised that we need to develop buyer-seller relationships to develop strategic supply and ensure that we gain a high quality low cost supply that meets our demand at all times.

Having learned all this, we now just need to put it all into practise for next weeks presentation and read the next pages of the required reading!