Building successful organizations that endure

Assignment:

Quarterly Reports: A Speech Given to the Entire Company

For this learning module, you are to write a speech that will be 4-5 pages in length with appropriate references included. In articulating this speech, you are to assume the role of presenter at the quarterly sales meeting with CEO Darleen Simpson. Darleen and the CFO are the only two who know about the most recent quarterly financials. You are pleased to know from speaking to her that the news is actually good. For the first time in over a year, the numbers are getting better and there are real signs of recovery for Highpoint Industries. With that said, you, Darleen, and the CFO all recognize that Highpoint is not out of the woods yet. In fact, there have recently been some challenges that have come up. They are as follows.

First, IKEA has come out with a very high quality and low cost competitor to Highpoint’s basketball hoops. While reviewers continue to give Highpoint’s hoops a better rating, everyone in the company is unsure the degree to which IKEA will have an impact on the market. They are unsure how much IKEA will even pay attention to promoting this new offering and the degree to which buyers of this product will respond to a spontaneous purchase in an IKEA store. This is creating a great deal of uncertainty.

Secondly, in dealing with this issue, they know that they are under a certain degree of time pressure due to the fact that IKEA is going to be placing their new product in a number of their stores in just a few weeks. This creates a bit of a time constraint in that members of the C team want to be prepared for this issue while simultaneously not overreacting. Finally, even though the financial report will be good, the CFO was quick to point out that there is much less money in the reserves right now and the ability to spend extra money on resource support, etc. is at an all-time minimum in the twenty year history of the company. Simply put, unless the company is willing to significantly borrow against future earnings, they are going to have to innovate in a thoughtful and entirely fiscally responsible way.

Given the constraints of this extreme uncertainty, the time pressure you are experiencing with IKEA, and the resource constraints that have emerged, you are preparing a speech that will motivate and provide direction to the C team to meet this challenge. While you aren’t asked in this speech to specifically address how IKEA may compete and/or strategies for selling basketball hoops, you can address the degree to which uncertainty, time pressures, and resource constraints can have an impact and ultimately lead to better results. After all, you are aware of the fact that there have been many instances wherein businesses have been faced with unique challenges like this have actually come out ahead. They have been able to narrow their focus and achieve better results than ever. Your job in this speech, written in paper form is to make that case and to convince the C team that you are right.

Your work should come in the form of a formal APA paper and come in the following components.

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Component 1: The challenge of leading with uncertainty regarding systems and outcomes.

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Component 2: The challenge of leading with time pressures and objectives which appear to be more robust than the time available.

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Component 3: Conceptualizing and exploring the challenge of organizational improvement and development and the constraints to those objectives.

Please ensure in executing this assignment that you make specific references to the readings provided as well as the utilization of at least three outside references which can be used to support your ideas presented. The use of outside sources is important because even though the materials provided for this course are excellent, as a graduate student you are expected to be able to consult a variety of sources regarding a given topic and synthesize that scholarly input into a thoughtful set of recommendations, conclusions, etc.

The essay should be 1850- words and should include at least three (3) citations. The sections should be clearly marked with headings so that your instructor knows which points you are addressing. Follow the guidelines for APA writing style. The title page and references page do not count towards the minimum word amount for this assignment.