As the course begins, share a brief autobiography and your expectations of the course.  If you have dissertation topic in mind, feel free to provide a glimpse of your potential research. After completing the readings for the week please use your experience to answer all of the parts below relating to Module 1: Share a time when you solved a complex problem with a successful outcome. What is an organizational frame and what does it allow a manager to accomplish? What is reframing and why is it an important skill for managers?

Does planning pay off for todays organizations?

Create a Group Control System Step 1 Form into groups of three to five students. Each group will assume that another student group has been given an assignment of writing a major paper that will involve research by individual group members that will be integrated into the final paper. Each group member has to do his or her part. Step 2 Your assignment is to develop a list of rules and identify some statistics by which to control the behavior of members in that group. Brainstorm and discuss potential rules to govern member behavior and consequences for breaking those rules. Step 3. first, select the five rules that you think are most important for governing group member behavior. Consider the following situations that rules might cover: arriving late for a meeting; missing a meeting; failing to complete a work assignment; disagreements about desired quality of work; how to resolve conflicts about paper content; differences in participation, such as one person doing all the talking and someone else talking hardly at all; how to handle meetings that Start late; the use of an agenda and handling deviations from the agenda; and any other situation that your group thinks a rule should cover that your group thinks a rule should cover.

Why might it be a bad decision to hire someone for a key startup role based only on the fact that the person is close family or a friend? What are the potential tradeoffs to the business?

Identify and use relevant concepts from this chapter as well as your own thoughts and analysis to diagnose the scandal at Wells Fargo. How could such a scandal have occurred in the first place? Who and what was at fault?

What are the three levels of planning, and what kinds of plans do managers develop at each level?

What other types of forensics software do you foresee a need for in the future? Do you think there are ethical issues in using forensics software, and why or why not?

What strategic analysis tools from the previous chapter would a manager use when planning a strategy for an existing business? What tools would be most helpful for a start-up business?