Strategy crossword puzzle
Here's the crossword I gave my students today, exam prep
Learning is fun
This is something I learned quite late in life; probably my junior year in college. Basically, I learned it 10 years later than most. . . but I am making up for lost time quickly. I think learning is the best; after all, what else is there?
As a teacher, so many OKR
A teacher’s platform is hallowed ground. Somehow, I got, earned, snuck my way into a situation where 260+ students are putting their faith in me. That I will help them learn some strategy basics. That this will be useful for their recruiting. That this will be helpful in their life. Less input, more output. Get 3 jobs, turn 2 down.
If I were to brainstorm:
Know your stuff; through study, research, listening, and experience
Be organized; students’ live crazy hectic lives; moving every year, new apartment, new roommates
Put yourself in their shoes; what’s important, what’s relevant, what’s redundant, what’s pedantic, what’s dumb?
Create an community of learning, surround-sound learning. The days of radio broadcasts are gone
Prioritize; our brains want to conserve calories. “Do I really need to learn this?” “Just for the test, or for my life?”
Use frameworks – so useful, good starting places – are kitchen tools. Useful, when you use the right one
Customize – make it relevant to the individual, not the “average”. Don’t we teach “averages have no meaning?”
Be fair – this is a big one. Individual, useful, relevant, personal, and no favorites. This is hard, and important
Care – make crossword puzzles, Kahoots, study sheets, preWatch videos, Google Doc, WSJ discussion groups
One lovely thing about teaching. You have a lot of “at bats.” Didn’t work last class, or last semester, or last cohort? Revise, improve, and do your job.
What do we learn in strategy class?
So here is a crossword puzzle I made for my strategy class. Give it a try. Email me if you want the excel version you can type your answers into. jkstrategy AT consultantsmind.com
Across
1 Aspirational; when we grow up
2 Ambiguity; why are they so good?
3 What? _____? Then what?
4 Good hiring; get the right people on the ___
5 Patents make it difficult to ____
6 What’s your edge? Your ____ advantage?
7 More valuable the more people use it
8 Jim Collin’s Good to Great; acronym for thinking big
9 Tarrifs ___ competition
10 Mintzberg says about strategy (e.g., IKEA)
11 If PESTEL factors change, you need to _____
12 ____ cycle; one good thing leads to another
13 Copycat
14 As a seller, you want this
15 Can’t be all things to all people
16 Level 5; be humble, have drive
17 Moats around your business
18 Like kitchen tools; they’re helpful, but not the answer
19 How Apple wins at PC, tablet, phone, apps, headphones
20 Coke & Pepsi
21 If you only had 1 supplier for a critical part
22 Strategic planning is useful for setting _____
Down
1 Willingness _____
2 _____ Destruction
3 ___ of Activities
4 Coffee to Tea
5 Management is a ____
6 Business is like a ___ match
7 One of the PESTEL factors
8 Scenario planning
9 I have it, you have it, companies have it
10 Group of incumbents, with same suppliers, buyers
11 Without data
12 Can threaten profit by raising prices, limiting quality
13 The worst war between companies
14 Incumbents want ___ to be slow for new entrants
15 Lack of differentiation
16 Goes very well with #19 across
17 Porter’s Forces
18 Goal of strategy
19 So smart to call
20 Duopoly
21 Valuable, rare, (hard) to imitate, organized to capture