Arv's initial thoughts on assignment 1

Hi guys, here are my initial thoughts on the assignment. Please feel free to post comments about this.

Analysis

1. I think the main to analysis tools we'll use will be PESTLE and Porter's five forces model - the frameworks we use will largely be drawn from unit 3. It will be interesting to see what people get for assignment one. We should leverage our learnings from this - trying to take the best from the feedback we get from each team member's assignment.
2. We will need to agree on the list of strategic stakeholders. I believe we will need some theoretical framework to assess this.
3. This will build on the first part of the analysis. We can incoporate SWOT into this part. Again, the framework for this can come from unit 3. This is where our industry research will come into play. From our task list, I think the ASX reports and historical financial performance will be important. We can try to identify trends in the steel market and also markets that the steel industry relies on...like construction. These dependent industries will help us formulate the likely scenarios.
4. Vlade and Dave's access to Bluescope will become invaluable in this part. Units 7 and 8 will provide a good foundation to assess the strategies against. These units talk about strategy of product development companies and we can assess Bluescopes product development process against this. Unit 10 gives some insight into managing companies that span foreign markets. It will be interesting to see how bluescope's strategies have changed as they have expanded into countries outside of australia.

The Report

1. This will just take from conclusions drawn from the the analysis. Nothing to elaborate on here.
2. We should draw heavily on frameworks in the course notes. Unit 11 talks about how to effectively monitor strategy. It would be good to understand how bluescope monitor the success of their strategy and then respond to it and change. Unit 5 talks about the need to be agile in responding to change. How agile is bluescope? can we find evidence of this agility? what recommendations can we make so that bluescope can become more agile?
3. When making recommendations we should understand clearly what the company's mission, vision and objectives are and how successful they have been. We shuld try and draw on case studies and examples of companies that have similar vision or mission to Bluescope and see if we can apply some of their strategies to bluescope. I think we need to think outside the square here. Recognising company's with similar strategies, not just from the same industry as bluescope, but other industries.