A well known regional Institute of Technology, Science and Management situated in the NCR invited The Winning Mantra to create, design and deliver an interactive workshop on Business Case Writing and Analysis for its Faculty members drawn from the MBA program. A group of 25 senior and mid-level faculty members were identified for this workshop. They were evenly drawn from all the specialization areas of Marketing & Sales, Human Resources, Finance, Operations and Systems. The Director General of the Institute was himself from the industry and his brief was to make the workshop transform the pedagogy being employed by teachers and take it from rote learning to practice based education. He interviewed The Winning Mantra directors and reposed his faith on them, sensing their depth of industry experience and understanding of the challenge as a critical success factor.
Objective:
The strategic goal of this intervention was to create a shift in the approach to teaching and learning among the faculty members of the Institute. They were to be given the essence of case-based teaching to MBA students, and better understand the nuances of business cases across various specializations. Armed with this understanding, they were to begin writing their own business cases, thus enhancing their grasp of these nuances. A parallel objective was to create more indigenous business cases for future use, and improve the research ranking of the Institute through their publication.
Planning:
The Winning Mantra had a couple of meetings with the Institute Management to fine-tune its understanding of the brief. The background of the FDP participants was also sought so as to calibrate the FDP Workshop design and delivery. The Design team created a delivery plan which included a gap of a week in which the participants, working in small teams of 5, would write their own Business Cases and refine them. The idea of teaming 5 faculty members from different specializations was used to build better inter-disciplinary understanding and to enhance collaborative learning. The workshop was timed in such a manner that the Faculty members were free from the burden of teaching and evaluating, so that their entire focus would remain on the practical learning-by-doing approach of the FDP workshop.
Design & Delivery Process:
Given that the cohort of 25 Faculty members included many senior faculty members, The Winning Mantra spent many days prior to the workshop conducting secondary research on teaching pedagogies. It also interacted with industry recruiters to understand the kind of challenges they faced when hiring MBA students, to better inform the design of the workshop. Then a Mother case was created, using the example of a real company which had grown rapidly over some years and then got mired in several business challenges, leading to a decline. In part 1 of the Workshop, the Faculty groups attending the workshop were asked to analyse this intricate case, just as any student would, and told to identify practical learning opportunities therein. They were then given the assignment of creating multiple Child cases from this Mother case, each one focusing on a business domain/specialization. At the end of the workshop, each group had to present the business case they had co-created, while the other groups were asked to critique the presentation. The FDP facilitators were at hand to add their own perspectives, and enhance the learning of the Faculty Members. Finally, each of the Child cases was developed into a fully functional case that could be used to teach students the intricacies of business challenges in each domain, and the right approaches to tackle them.
Outcome:
The Institute Management gave a strong thumbs-up to The Winning Mantra at the conclusion of the FDP workshop. In the closing session, the Director General sought candid feedback from the faculty participants, and was told about the transformational impact of the workshop on the Faculty participants. All the 25 participants gave either “Very Good” or “Excellent” ratings in their feedback. Over the subsequent years, many of them stayed in touch with The Winning Mantra, and went on to become acclaimed academic leaders in their own right.
