Context for Assignment Three
You have been hired by Mark Zuckerberg! You are excited, but also a bit intimidated. It’s a huge job. Your role is to be a strategic management consultant that will help Facebook assess its current context and try to move beyond the challenging issues regarding its business model that have become the headlines of major news sources. Throughout your work with Facebook, think about course material and how it applies to the case. Keep a sharp eye on how your personal mission statement and philosophy of management aid or hinder your work.
I suggest that you begin by reviewing all the steps of your assignment first, then work back through each step, being thorough and reflective throughout.
Step One: Preparation for your role
You need to do some reading before you jump into your new role. The following articles and videos will provide some background for you, so please read and watch each carefully, taking notes as you go.
Step 1: Having read about Facebook and its current issues, which of the five approaches to strategy would you say most clearly applies? Now, what are three points of concern you have going into your new role? Please be specific and descriptive.
Step Two: A deep breath before the plunge
Please begin Step Two by copying and pasting your personal mission statement and philosophy of management statement into your post. Are you happy with it? Looking at it now, please feel free to make any edits they might need in light of your new role with Facebook.
Step 2:Provide a brief statement about your mission and philosophy of management in light of your new role and yourresearch about Facebook.
Step Three: The story the stock market tells
Please review the Facebook stock activity and the activity of a primary competitor, Alphabet (Google). Not sure what to do? Look back to the mini cases and see what we were looking for as we looked at stock activity as a reflection of strategy.
(https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG?p=GOOG)
As you prepare for your new role, what do you think? What are the trends? Why? As you review the trends of both stocks, what are your thoughts regarding Facebook’s strategic trajectory?
Step 3: Provide at least three specific points that you will communicate to your boss, Mark Zuckerberg, about Facebook’s stock price and trends. Include a statement about Facebook’s current strategy and the stock market’s response.
Step Four: Facebook on late night TV
Now please review the following clips, which you have been asked to respond to during a press conference after your boss’s testimony to Congress. If you want to miss comments on President Trump, please jump to 2:14 on the first clip. This is not about your politics, this is about your work at Facebook. How do you handle the content? How do you engage in a way that is helpful to your employer?
At the press conference, you are asked about the allegations that the FB stock price rose while your boss testified before congress. Is this true? Check back on your previous study of the FB stock price. If it is true, how will you explain this to the press?
Step 4: Provide at least three points in response to the stock price issue. True? False? Why?
Secondly, you are asked to respond to the allegations about your boss made by late night comedians on The Daily Show and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. You need to be gracious, but also firm, to end this news cycle!
Step 4 (continued): Please provide three key points you will make to the press in response to the strong comments by late night comedians. Will you defend Facebook? Laugh it off? Why?
Step Five: A meeting with the boss
Having put out several fires, you are now ready for a meeting with your new boss, Mark Zuckerberg. He has asked you to come with a strategic analysis of Facebook. Take a deep breath and review your previous work. You have looked carefully at Facebook as a company, have reviewed its presence in
the press, and have analyzed FB stock. Now apply all of that to a SWOT exercise.
Step 5: Please prepare a SWOT analysis for your boss, with specific points bulleted for each element. In light of your SWOT, please provide a carefully crafted summary of Facebook’s current strategic position. Include three points regarding your recommendations for strategic direction.
Step Six: A meeting with the Board of Directors
Mark Zuckerberg needs a break and is heading to Sweden to hang out with his friends from the World Bank. Yikes! You are now in charge! You have two meetings to prepare for and you want to be very ready.
First, prepare an agenda for a meeting with the Facebook Board of Directors. What are the key points you need to cover? Why? As you prepare, look carefully at the following list of who is on the Facebook Board. Who concerns you most? Who might react most strongly to your concerns? Be prepared!
Write!
Step Seven: Home and a deep breath
You made it! You completed your first crazy day at Facebook. As you sit quietly at your dining room table, the house is quiet. You turn off your phone and pick up your pen, grabbing a notebook from your briefcase. Time to reflect.
Step 7: Four short, thoughtful responses to each prompt, please. Deep breath! This is it!
Personal Mission Statement: I exist to make a difference in society through my love of travel and desire to learn, grow, and educate.
Managment Philosophy: I believe that the role of managers is to work alongside workers to support and engage in a manner to produce the best possible performance. I believe that the role of workers is to work together with a purpose of a common goal. I believe that ideally, management and workers are to work together with mutual respect, compassion, and understanding.
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