Case Studies

3.11. F. Recommendations

You must have one! Business people are decision-makers; this is your opportunity to practice making decisions. Give a justification for your decision. Check to make sure that it is one (and only one) of your alternatives and that it does resolve what you defined as the problem.

Decide how to implement the best solution. Having good ideas is insufficient. You must be able to put them to work. Graduate students of business are often praised by executives for being theoretically well grounded, but criticised for lacking practical application. “A team of young MBA’s told me that we needed to sell this division of my company,” said an executive in the chemical industry. “But they couldn’t tell me what to do or how to go about it. All they knew was that we should try to find a buyer. Interesting,” he concluded, “but not very helpful.”

Explain how to communicate the solution. In a management communication case study, you will be asked to identify key audiences for your message. That means identifying which groups you want to communicate with and the means you will use to reach them. Think carefully about the broad range of stakeholders in the case: employees, customers, shareholders, business partners, suppliers, regulators, and the market-place-at-large. Identify exactly how you would plan to transmit your message, assure that it has been received and understood, and how you would analyse feedback from those audiences. You should think, as well, about timing and sequencing of messages. Whom should you speak with first? Who should send the message? How should this particular audience hear about this particular message?