A Personal Strategic Analysis Project for Jesuit Business School Students
Philip W. Glasgo
Department of Finance
Xavier University
3800 Victory Parkway
Cincinnati, OH 45207-5162
(513) 745-3595
glasgo@xavier.edu
A Personal Strategic Analysis Project for Jesuit Business School Students
About a decade ago the author’s university deleted a strategic management(or
Business Policy) class from the required undergraduate curriculum. This was done at
least partly due to a general unhappiness with students’ performance in the class and a
widely-held belief that since 21-year olds would probably not be making strategic
decisions for many years, the significance of the class was probably not apparent to
them.
In place of the Strategic Management class, one required course in each discipline
was designated as the “Capstone” class for that major and professors teaching it agreed
to include a strategic management component. As the primary instructor teaching this
class in the Finance Department at a Midwestern Jesuit university, the author was a part
of this process.
Although the author had previously taught the Strategic Management class at the
graduate level, it proved quite a challenge to select material that was relevant for the
undergraduate students and even more of a challenge to maintain student interest in the
material. Initially, students were required to choose a local company or a nationally or
internationally known company and conduct: an analysis of their mission statement; a
SWOT analysis; a five-forces analysis; an analysis of their business portfolio using a
Boston Consulting Group(BCG) matrix. Additional company-specific assignments were
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given by the instructor based on his knowledge of specific
issues confronting the
company that each student chose.
While this exercise met the primary goal of introducing key strategic management
concepts to the undergraduate students, the results were, frankly, pretty boring for the
instructor to read, and not very well-received by the students, according to their
comments in the course evaluation and also in exit surveys.
As a result of attending the Jesuit Business School Conference at Santa Clara in
2001, the instructor decided to try a different approach. Once of the participants there,
Fr. Greg Konz(then at John Carroll but now at Marquette), mentioned
a Personal
Analysis and Strategic Career Analysis assignment he gave to sophomore and junior
management majors. This assignment was modified into a Strategic Management project
for the seniors in the capstone class[Appendix 1] Students are required to:

conduct a self-analysis including strengths and weaknesses similar to a SWOT

develop a personal mission statement including personal, professional, and
spiritual aspects(as appropriate)

develop a simple “business plan” for the next five years of their life incorporating
personal, professional, and spiritual goals
They are also invited to, on their own, perform additional analysis as suggested by Fr.
Konz’s original assignment, to investigate specific career options.
At first, students are somewhat reluctant to analyze themselves. However, once
they are assured that the project will be graded based on thoroughness and the quality of
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the presentation rather than what they say( a few have “tested” this promise with some
pretty bizarre stuff), most of them seem to enjoy the exercise, and often mention it as a
rewarding experience in the course evaluation.
Those who have never
taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI)
are
encouraged to do it through the University’s Career Planning and Placement Center.
Many of them include “discoveries” they made about themselves by taking the MBTI in
the self-analysis.
Occasionally it has seemed appropriate for the instructor to share his experiences
with a similar assignment many years ago in order to assure the students that there is no
“correct” answer to the assignment. In particular, discussion of a personal tragedy in the
author’s extended family that led to a time of questioning the goodness of or even the
existence of a God seems to make the students feel more comfortable discussing their
beliefs, lack of belief, or questioning of their spiritual values.
The first time the assignment was given, several students were perhaps too
thorough in discussing their personal backgrounds. The instructor is not a psychologist,
psychiatrist, marriage counselor, or substance abuse counselor, and some of the stories
told were probably better kept private, rather than revealed in a paper. Thus, subsequent
classes have been told that if there is something they want to talk about, to include it, but
if they would rather not, they are free to say “there is something very personal that I
thought about as a result of this assignment but would prefer not to write down”. This
option has been invoked by at least one student almost every semester.
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Several student papers will be available for inspection(with names removed, of
course) at the CJBE conference.
The real purposes of the assignment are to help the
student develop some understanding of Strategic Management concepts while doing
some introspection and personal analysis. Hence, the instructor’s critique of the paper is
intentionally supportive and positive. But several common threads exist:

a majority of the papers fail to recognize any weaknesses beyond superficial
things(They are told: “If you don’t think you have any, you just identified one”)

“Being Happy” is usually one of the most important goals

a majority of the students are questioning their faith, and the university experience
has clearly fostered this development. A number of them “feel guilty” about this

ethical issues and “doing the right thing” are important to the vast majority of the
students. Since ethics was not even mentioned in the assignment(although ethical
issues are discussed in class) this seems very genuine

most of the students realize the potential tradeoff between being financially
successful and having “quality of life” and are already struggling with this
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Appendix 1
Personal Evaluation and Mission Assignment
This assignment is designed to help you perform a strategic analysis of a very important
organization: You, Inc. For the rest of your life you will be CEO of You, Inc. Thus, it
is important that you have a mission statement, strategic analysis, and business plan for
this organization. If you choose to do this assignment, rather than the strategy questions
distributed in class, you should perform steps 1,2, and 3 below. The remaining steps
go beyond the scope of this assignment, but would be necessary if you were to do a more
complete analysis including an analysis of your chosen career in financial analysis,
financial services, sales, etc.
1. Self-Analysis (Strengths/Weaknesses)
Aspirations
Education/Special Training/Certification
Experience
Knowledge/Skills
Values
Personality Traits
Spiritual Needs
Family Needs
Mobility
Job/Position/Company Characteristics Preferences
Limitations
2.
Develop a Personal Mission Statement.
personal, professional, and spiritual life.
The best ones include aspects of your
3. Develop a simple “business plan” for the next five years, but include personal and
spiritual goals(as appropriate) along with professional goals. Some of the items on
the next page may be helpful in developing your plan, so they are included although
they are not a part of this assignment.
Thanks to Dr. Gregory Konz, S.J. , Marquette University, for Parts 1 and 4-7 and
for providing the inspiration for this assignment.
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Personal Evaluation and Mission Assignment—page 2
These steps are recommended by Fr. Konz, who developed the assignment as a Personal
Analysis and Strategic Career Analysis. I am not asking you to do this—just giving it
to you as an interesting way to follow up the analysis for my class and convert it into a
career analysis if you want to. Since I think many of you have already done some of
this, I think it is more appropriate for juniors or sophomores than for you.
4. Environmental Analysis (Opportunities/Threats)
 Occupational Analysis
1. Occupational Options/Outlooks
2. Level of Geographic concentration of Jobs
3. Educational/Knowledge/Skills/Experience Requirements
4. Key Desired Personality Traits
5. Time/Travel Demands
6. Total Compensation (Starting, Average and Ultimate)

Industry Analysis (Identify the one of interest)
1. Define Industry SIC code
2. Markets
3. Size: Number of companies and Sales over past five years
4. Major Firms
5. Channels of Distribution
6. Degree of Vertical Integration
7. Analysis of Competitive Forces (strong, moderate, weak)
8. Critical Success Factors
9. Environmental Influences
10. Future Prospects (growth, decline, stagnation, et cetera)

Company Analysis (Select one or two of interest)
1. Reason for Selection
2. Brief Description of Ethical Standards/History/Culture
3. Human Resource Policies/Practices/Upward Mobility
4. Relative Compensation
5. SWOT Analysis
6. Long Term Strategies
7. Future Prospects
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Personal Evaluation and Mission Assignment—page 3
5. Career Strategy Analysis/Choice
 Identify Your Long-Term Objectives
 Career Options Available
1. Identify the strategic options that are opportunities of which you wish
to take advantage (occupation, industry, specific business or firm, job,
et cetera)
2. Identify the options that will allow you to avoid environmental threats
3. Provide the pros/cons of each strategic option in terms of the
information identified in your Self-Analysis and Environmental
Analysis
 Career Strategy Choice (explain rationale for choice thoroughly)
6. Implementation
 Identify and prioritize self-improvement, skill development and other
tasks/activities
 Categorize the above in terms of time frame (short, intermediate, or long-term)
 Identify all means that you plan to use to build on your strengths and to reduce
your weaknesses
7. Evaluation/Control
 Explain how you plan to monitor your progress toward your long-term objectives
 Indicate any contingency plans
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