Management 430
I. Course Title: Winning Decisions with Analytics
II. Course Number: MGNT 430
III. Credit Hours: 3 credits
IV. Prerequisites: None
V. Course Description:
Provides lectures for soft skills to systematically define and frame problems. A variety of practical skills for decision-making and analyst management are covered based on the structured problem-solving process. It discusses data visualization and impactful Analytics technique selection. Effective storytelling techniques are considered for solution deployment and persuasive presentation.
Note(s): Applied Learning designated course.
VI. Detailed Description of Content of the Course:
The structure of the proposing course is in two phases. In Phase 1, students learn decision-making principles and the structured problem-solving process, shown in the below figure, for basic knowledge to develop winning decisions with Analytics. In Phase 2, students practice the knowledge by applying it to successful business cases, and then they apply the techniques to develop their own winning decisions that would revive a known failed company such as Toys R Us or Blockbuster. All individual students make the full document for their decision-making plans in a systematic form and present it to all classmates with presentation skills learned from the course. They share records of presentations and give feedback to each other with various feedback techniques considered in the course. They improve their decision-making plans and presentation based on the feedback they received. This second version is also reviewed by the instructor and classmates. Then, they submit the final version as the last assignment.
Phase 1: Basic Knowledge
Brief lists of topics are stated as follows with sample slides.
Chapter 0: Principles
- Why problems are so hard?
- Be intentional to lead your work
- Divide problems into pieces and collaborate
- Have the right fight at the right time; Wait until the time comes
- Let questions do the heavy lifting; Ask right questions
- Disambiguate! Clarify problems!
- Synthesize issues rather than collecting and mix problems
- KISS= keep it simple ... and start
- Start now and go back for completion.
- Do the right thing; Do not deal with ethics
- Ask the right questions.
Chapter 1: Define the Problem
- What is this problem really about?
- Techniques to systematically define problems and develop problem statements.
- Think of it with your target and its context.
- Frame the question carefully
- Frame can be a trap
- Key Players in Three Categories
- Identify & Understand them
- Mendelow's grid power & interest
- Problem Scope & Boundary
- Problem Definition Summary: Background, Players, Bounds
- Players: sponsors, decision makers, stakeholders
Chapter 2: Break Down the Problem
- How should we break the key question into pieces that drive understanding and shape our work?
- Techniques to systematically break problems into solvable pieces.
- Various techniques: 5 Whys, Fishbone diagrams, MECE, Porter's Five Forces, SWOT analysis, Four P’s, Issue Tree, Mind map
- Issue tree building steps: Classify, Arrange, Reframe, Tabulate
Chapter 3: Plan the Work
- Steps to develop a plan for coherent work streams
- Steps to make a task inventory (to-do list)
- Define sub-questions
- Develop hypothesis
- What analyses are required?
- Select the right proto-graphs
- What information do we need?
- Refine other resources and time
- Assemble coherent work streams
- Planning tips and prioritization
- Plan to change the plan
Chapter 4: Work the Plan
- How can we move a team forward effectively, pivoting from questions to insights to answers?
- Techniques to steer teams’ thinking process, manage their thinking styles, and give feedback
- A plan is a living document.
- Rule No.1: Involve key-players in conversation
- Rule No.2: Relentlessly ask, "So what?”
- How to do “So what?” process?
- From brainstorming to brainsteering
- How to steer brains?
- Steer people to think with the question-based approach.
- Right questions of brainsteering
- Devil’s advocate vs. Six thinking hats
- Manage team roles and thinking styles
- See all six sides of a box
- Feedback should be done with the intention
- Effective feedback
Step 5 Build the Case:
- How do we shape the strongest possible case for our recommendations?
- Techniques to strengthen the work with logic and evidence at congruous persuasion positions.
- Stress test to reinforce the work.
- Do tough tests from an audience point of view
- Persuasion positions
- Is our argument logically tight?
- Is our argument foundationally evident?
- Does our work support our recommendations?
- Fallacies
Step 6 Tell the Story:
- How can we give key players the clarity & confidence they'll need in order to take action?
- Techniques to customize the presentation for audiences, build a story structure, craft slides, and be a nice presenter.
- Effective presentations
- Set the goal of the presentation
- Customize your presentation for the target audience
- Build a story with a structure
- Do a storyline test
- Refine your slides with craftsmanship
- What to fill a slide?
- Communication modes: text, picture, table, graph
- Practice, practice, and be ready
- Presentation skills
Step 7 Start the change
- How can we influence what value is created by our work?
Phase 2: Application to real business cases
The course takes half of the semester to teach knowledge for winning decisions in Phase 1. From one-third of the semester, students apply the knowledge to real business cases throughout homework that requires lots of time and effort. The followings are brief descriptions of all homework.
- Homework 1: Summary of Winning Decisions by Russo and Schoemaker
The book explains the utmost initial step to win a game. It is the problem framing - more precisely, a winning framing. The book introduces a systematic way to frame and approach a problem in a shape that one can win. For each chapter of the book, students write two paragraphs. In the first paragraph, they pick one or more examples used in the chapter and explain how the key ideas in the chapter are applied. In the second paragraph, students make their personal thoughts about the content in the chapter. Students also state how the knowledge should have been applied to their personal experience or any organization. This homework is continued to HW2 to apply the knowledge they learned from the book to a real business case.
- Homework 2: Case Development for Winning Decisions
Write a case study of an organization’s failure story and develop a decision-making plan based on the knowledge learned from the book Winning Decisions and the course slides. Students can pick any failure case of a company, project, government policy, or product that they want to develop winning decisions to turn the failure into a triumph. The homework guides students to develop decision-making plans with very detailed fifteen questions.
- Homework 3: Summary of Predictive Analytics 2nd edition by Siegel
The book introduces twenty interesting applications in predictive analytics. Students summarize the introduction in 5-10 lines and state their thought in 3 or more lines in the view of a decision maker. Then, students choose five or more applications (not chapters) in the book and make a 5-10-line summary and their thought as they did for the introduction. For the thought, students mainly focus on ideas on how they can use predictive analytics in developing and deploying the decision-making plan.
- Homework 4: Applying SPS on the successful case
The main tasks of the homework are reorganizing the success cases of UPS and Syngenta into SPS considered in the course. Students imagine that they are the leader of the project in the case and will apply SPS to resolve the issue. Students are able to reorganize it since the case explains all their problems, challenges, trials & errors, solutions, and deployments. When students read the case, students do not need to understand all advanced analytics techniques considered in the article since it is not the focus of this homework. The focus is on learning the process to solve problems with analytics. More detailed questions are described on seven pages of the homework document.
- Homework 5: Winning Decisions-Ver.1 (Decisions & Presentation)
In homework 2, students picked an organization and developed a decision-making plan. Students make it more realistic in this homework with the structured problem-solving process (SPS). More detailed questions are described on nine pages of the homework document. Students submit a document that states all details of their decision-making plans and a slide with voice recorded to present their plans. Their presentations are also shared on Discussions of D2L.
- Homework 6: Feedback of Ver.1
As students posted their voice recorded presentations on D2L in homework 5, students select any 5 or more presentations and leave feedback for their decision-making plans and presentations. Also, they give a rate from 1 to 5 stars. Students may check the option, “Post as Anonymous” if they do not want to show their name. Personal feelings or impressions could be helpful feedback, but for this homework, the main feedback about plans and presentations must be based on the structured problem-solving process (SPS) and many other tips considered in the slide. Students have to be professional when they make feedback.
- Homework 7: Winning Decisions -Ver.2 (Decisions & Presentation)
Students read all feedback they received on D2L. For each feedback, they state their response and plan to use it to improve their plans and presentations. Students integrate their plans and make an overall plan for improvement. Then, students make the second version of the decision-making plans and presentations based on the improvement plan. In version 2, students need to add new slides that explain how they use feedback to improve their presentation. Their slides with voice recorded presentations are shared on D2L to get feedback from classmates and the instructor.
- Homework 8: Feedback of Ver.2
This homework is the same as Homework 6. Students make professional feedback to other presentations.
- Homework 9: Winning Decisions -Ver.3 (Decisions & Presentation)
This homework is the same as Homework 7. Students submit the final version of their decision-making plans that have been honed by many feedbacks from classmates and the instructor.
VI. Detailed Description of Conduct of Course:
Instructional strategies: student presentations, student development of business cases, feedback, role-playing/simulation, cooperative/group learning, demonstrations, failed and successful case studies, self-paced instruction, writing-to-learn activities, oral communication activities, use of audio-visual materials, lecture.
This course does not have exams. Instead, the course encourages students to study the course materials with quizzes in each chapter. A total of six quizzes takes one-fifth of the grading score. The main assignments are nine homework that is assigned throughout the semester. Students learn in-depth knowledge of decision-making pitfalls and advanced problem framing techniques from a book summary assignment (HW1). Students are required to study successful and failed Analytics cases by summarizing a book popular in the Analytics field (HW3). The two assignments require not only a summary of books but also individual student’s thoughts and essays from their experience.
All nine homework are tightly interconnected to learn a structured decision-making process. After students learn the initial three chapters and complete HW1, they develop their own case in HW2 with their choice of a failed company. When all seven chapters are covered, students do HW4 to apply the structured problem-solving process (SPS) learned from chapters into real successful business cases such as UPS and Syngenta. After they do the practice in HW4, they apply SPS to develop their own decision-making plans in HW5 based on the case study they developed in HW2. HW5 requires the first draft of a comprehensive decision-making plan to revive the failed company and the first version of the presentation. Since all assignments are individual work, all students experience the whole decision-making planning process. After presentations, students share their records of presentations on D2L, and they give feedback to each other with the feedback techniques learned from chapter 4 as HW6. The instructor also provides detailed feedback to improve their plans and presentations. In HW7, students make responses to feedback and present the second version of their plans. They repeat the feedback process in HW8 and submit the final version in HW9. Both students and the instructor have a very busy time for many assignments, discussions, and feedback.
VII. Goals and Objectives of the Course:
After successfully completing the course, students will be able to:
- Identify and define problems
- Break down the problems into solvable levels
- Plan the work and work through the plan with proper analytical skills
- Build cases for decision-making plans
- Present and deploy the decision-making plan with storytelling skills
VIII. Assessment Measures:
Measures: quizzes, homework, presentations, discussions
The list of course assignments is in the below table with scores and a grading scale.
Assignments | Points
HW1 Summary of the book Winning Decisions | 50
HW2 Case Development for Winning Decisions | 50
HW3 Summary of the book Predictive Analytics | 40
HW4 Applying SPS on the successful case | 50
HW5 Winning Decisions-Ver.1 (Decisions & Presentation) | 50
HW6 Feedback of Ver.1 | 30
HW7 Winning Decisions -Ver.2 (Decisions & Presentation) | 50
HW8 Feedback of Ver.2 | 30
HW9 Winning Decisions -Ver.3 (Decisions & Presentation) | 50
Quizzes of seven chapters | 100
Total | 500
Grade | Points | Lose up to...
A | 465-500 | 35
A- | 450-464 | 50
B+ | 435-449 | 65
B | 415-434 | 85
B- | 400-414 | 100
C+ | 385-399 | 115
C | 365-384 | 135
C- | 350-364 | 150
D+ | 325-349 | 175
D | 300-324 | 200
D- | 275-299 | 225
F | <274 | 500
Other Course Information:
Since the instructor made the course materials by combining multiple resources, the course does not require a textbook, but students need to read two books:
- Winning Decisions: Getting It Right the First Time by J. Edward Russo, Paul J.H. Schoemaker. ISBN-13: 978-0385502252
- Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die Hardcover by Eric Siegel ISBN-13: 978-1118356852
In the McConnell Library at Radford University, only a single ebook of the first book is available and the second book is downloadable as a pdf file.
The main resources used to develop this course are the following books and articles.
- Decision and Information Analysis by Patrick Noonan
- Making Sense of Data by Glenn Myatt, Wayne Johnson
- Winning with Data by Tomasz Tunguz, Frank Bien
- Communicating analytic results by Jeffrey Keisler, Patrick Noonan
Review and Approval
March 01, 2021