week8part1

Case Analysis With Discussion: Building the Living Organization and Executing Strategy in Real Time—Mozilla Corporation

Perhaps the most important challenge any organization faces over time is executing strategy effectively, and making strategic thinking a part of everyone's day-to-day life. All too often, strategy and strategic thinking is thought to be the exclusive domain of senior leadership (though they ARE the ones most responsible to see that there is a strategy!).

However, as you've seen through numerous readings in this course, and throughout your MBA program, the big-picture issues that strategy must deal with are just too voluminous, too complex, and too tied into the everyday work of everyone in the organization to leave it up to just a few people.

Keeping all the pieces of an organization aligned, keeping the people focused on the Soulful Purpose of the firm (and that includes the board of directors), is an ongoing and everyday activity. As Wolfe notes, “strategic planning is dead—long live strategy execution” (2001, p. 116).

This week you will explore strategy execution through an analysis of Mozilla Corporation, which is a for-profit entity that is part of the Mozilla Foundation (another hybrid organization like Google.org/Google, which you studied in Week 1).

To prepare for this Discussion:

• Review all required readings, including the Weekly Briefing, which provides additional guidance on how to complete the assignment.
• Review the case analysis. You may want to scan it multiple times.
• Identify and review all relevant readings from the MBA Capstone Program Bibliography.

By Day 3, post responses to at least two of the prompts below for Part A:

Part A: Execution of Strategy at Mozilla

1. How would you describe Mozilla's cultural and organizational DNA? What, specifically, about the way Mozilla enacts strategy and executes its business plan provides it with such depth?
2. What do you think are the lessons from Mozilla for other knowledge-based organizations, especially in terms of strategy execution and the involvement of people throughout the organization?
3. In what ways is Mozilla more effective at executing strategy than Google.org (case from Week 1)? Why are they more effective?
4. What are the critical challenges that Debbie Cohen faces as chief of people at Mozilla, specifically in terms of strategy execution and alignment? What should she do to meet these challenges, and why?

General Guidance: Your original discussion post for Part A should be ½ single-spaced page (cut and paste into the Discussion area), excluding references. Refer to the Week 8 Discussion 1 rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.

Part B: Getting Everyone to Participate in Strategic Thinking and Execution

Then, based both on the Mozilla case study and your general thoughts from this course, everyone must respond to this question:

1. Explain how the knowledge and effective practice of cross-functional strategic thinking can help individual stakeholders (people at all levels of the organization and others outside the organization) participate more fully in organizational efforts to improve long-term performance and overall stakeholder engagement.

General Guidance: Your original discussion post for Part B should be ½ single-spaced page (cut and paste into the Discussion area), excluding references. Refer to the Week 8 Discussion 1 rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.