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Schurz Communications and NASA: Defining Business Objectives and Mission Statement Development

Edgardo Donovan

Touro University International

MKT 599 – Strategic Management

Dr. Charul Shah

Module 1 – Case Analysis

Monday, January 23, 2006

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Schurz Communications and NASA: Defining Business Objectives and Mission Statement Development

Ex. 1 – Strategic Planning (CartoonStock.com)

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Dryden's Mission Statement

Conduct safe and timely flight research for discovery, technology development, and technology transfer for U.S. Aeronautics and Space Preeminence.

Mission Elements:

• Conduct aeronautical flight research in support of global civil aviation, revolutionary technology leaps, and access to space

• Support development and operations of the Space Shuttle and future access-to-space vehicles

• Conduct airborne science mission and flight operations

• Develop piloted and uninhabited aircraft testbeds for research and science missions

Ex. 2 – Mission Statement/Elements (NASA.gov)

Ex. 3 – Mission Statement (Schurz.com)

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Shurz Communications and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)

provide us with an opportunity to study two different objective oriented

organizational mindsets through their respective mission/strategic objectives and to

attempt to define strategic management in a broad sense. Shurz Communications

represents the mission statement of a medium size privately owned company that has

been operating for some time, has a long-term commitment to a set group of

customers, and is committed to improving its bottom line by leveraging synergistic

product offerings wherever possible. NASA represents a large government agency

with a multi-billion dollar budget, a considerable bureaucracy, a long standing series

of core competencies, and a mission determined mainly by the defense, scientific,

and political needs of the US government.

The Shurz mission statement comes across as vague given that its objectives

could probably apply to any private commercial organization. Although it outlines

the business focus of the company I have the feeling that this is more of an externally

projected statement rather than an employee motivational or evangelization

marketing tool.

The NASA mission statement demonstrates characteristics not uncommon for

large government agencies. Rather than an attempt to tailor the mission according to

a particular market, favorable operating conditions, and core competencies of the

agency it outlines a specific mission which is meant to be taken from the top and

implemented downwards (Rangan).

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In order to judge whether or not these examples of organizational strategic

thought can be improved we must strive to understand why they were written that

way by analyzing all past, present, and future factors that could possibly influence

success or failure of these entities. Clearly this could be a never-ending task so one

must work with the time available and without the years of experience gained by

corporate managers as trustees of their organization’s success. However, one can

only hope similarly as many strategic consultants do to perhaps provide a fresh

external perspective less constrained by the full immersion related pressures

experienced by top management.

In layman's terms strategic planning vis-à-vis running an organization is the

thought processes related to figuring out the best course of action while ensuring that

strategic planning get properly executed. Ideally they are two synergistic components

of an ever-present daily mental discipline. This mental discipline can be transformed

into a methodology if the organization is large and complex enough to demand it as

long as it is used as a means to an end towards operating success and not vice-versa.

Theoretically, thorough strategic planning would entail analyzing all past,

present, and future factors that could possibly influence success or failure of an

organization (Kotelnikov). In reality, people responsible with managing an

organization try to leverage their limited past experience, try to be knowledgeable of

the present, and hope for the best as they hesitantly try to make limited predictions

about the near-future. Some typical questions they may ask themselves may be:

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1. Do we properly understand our company's market position, resources, and

key leverage points?

2. If yes, in what new markets or existing markets can we profitably increase

market share or mind share?

3. Once we have isolated the proper markets, can we construct a detailed

customer profile?

4. Once that is done, can we interview potential users to understand their

expectations and priorities so that we can begin developing appropriate

design parameters?

5. If expectations seem reasonable, can we gain build a durable competitive

advantage through the deployment of a properly targeted product/service?

6. If so, do we have the financial, time, and talent resources towards

accomplishing this goal?

7. If not, do we have the means to acquire missing resources?

8. If yes, are there any precedents that can help us estimate risk?

9. Are we willing to incur the risk involved?

The benchmarks for success are different in every organization. Therefore, the

characteristics of what constitute best practices will vary. Some of the seemingly

more cynical business strategists of our time such as Andy Grove and Bill Gates

believe that only paranoid business leaders survive and have sometimes likened

business to warfare where destruction of the enemy’s ability to wage war is

paramount. They seem to believe that one of the most effective ways to appropriate a

bigger piece of the micro-economic business demand curve is to financially destroy

your competitors so as to force demand to be fulfilled through the surviving

companies (Grove/Wallace). Alternatively in the non-profit sector where the

organizational goal is to accomplish a set mission it may be advisable to start from a

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top level mission and working your way down to a strategy for non-profits (Rangan).

Other business leaders prefer to focus their mission on a set of non market related

core values such as Michael Dell who always professed the mantra of establishing

direct relationships with customers so as to better serve their needs while avoiding

the formation of an inefficient bureaucracy (Dell).

The discipline strategic planning is deeply integrated with a myriad of fields that

are commonly associated with the development of a viable short-to-long term

business plan. Trend forecasting is heavily relied upon in the early planning stages as

a way of understanding consumer culture so that a company has the best chance of

attempting to satisfy consumer tastes rather than trying to adapt the latter to their

business strategy thus avoiding instances of organizational marketing/ product

myopia. Once a viable demand is assessed, usually through a combination of focus

groups and historical customer adoption rates of similar products or services, an

extensive analysis of industry barriers to entry is performed. Barriers to entry could

be high labor costs in a particular manufacturing country, overwhelming market

share from competing forces, cannibalization risks, etc. If the risks or barriers to

entry are deemed to be surmountable a further study of the competitive arena may be

conducted in order to prepare for scenarios in which competition would try to stifle

the success of the venture in an attempt to protect their own market share. Usually

once the risks analyzed above are agreed to be acceptable a company will usually

mobilize towards creating an operational plan that would coordinate an integrated

approach from a product positioning, supply chain management, and advertising

perspective.

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The cornerstone of many business strategies revolve around pricing which can be

a good indicator of whether an organization is attempting to mount a low-pricing

early adopter approach designed to sell to a small but trend-setting customer base, a

guerilla pricing approach designed to pick off customers currently not the focus of

larger competitors, a flanking approach designed to price a product designed top win

away large chunks of second-tier customers from a larger competitor, or a full frontal

assault designed to compete both in price and quality usually at some economic loss

so as to win away large portions of an industry leaders customer base. (Trout/Reis)

Ex.4 – Strategy Matrix (Kotelnikov)

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People are more often beings who all see the inter-relations within the various

components of a business strategy according to their own world view and often

through the prism of the corporate culture they work in. This is reflected even in

academia where just in the US there are over ten different schools of thought related

to strategic management among prominent business schools (Kotelnikov). In the

same manner that it is impossible to predict a demand curve for a particular product

or service there is no industry wide methodology that companies use to make

strategic considerations within the larger context of their overall business plan.

Ex. 5 – Differing Strategic Objectives (CartoonStock.com)

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"While academics and consultants keep focusing on these narrow

perspectives, business managers will be better served if they strive to see the

wider picture. Think of growing your business as growing a perfect human

being – in all his or her complexity and integrity. Think of this human being as

a multi-skilled sportsman who is to win various competitions, both

individually - a 100 m sprint run, a tennis tournament, and a chess match –

and as a team player – a relay-race, safari rally, and football. He is also to

live a harmonious family, social and cultural life, grow his children and

support his elders... Clearly, narrow strategies aimed at perfecting different

functions of this person – body-building, thinking-building, or personality-

building – would not create a perfect man. The same is also correct for the

business strategy development in the new era of systemic innovation where

good in parts is no good at all. The old linear and static approaches might

work well for the old era of slow, linear and incremental change. The

emerging era of rapid, systemic and radical change requires more flexible,

systemic and dynamic approaches to strategy formulation. (Kotelnikov)

Some of those who disagree with me believe that defining strategic management

in such wide parameters as I have done defeats the purpose and that this concept must

be defined within a standard, focused, and more rigid methodology that can be

summarized in three steps (Dess). To some a mission statement can only be a short,

succinct statement declaring what business you're in and who your customer is. By

offering this focus, it provides direction for future corporate development

(Birnbaum).

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Asides from providing students with an easy definition as a starting point to be

able to understand the concepts of strategic management and mission statements

restricting strategic management to a focused three point methodology does very

little in helping us understand why organizations do what they do or provide us with

a practical standard methodology for the conduct of all organizational affairs. This is

proven when we observe that similarly to people all organizations behave in a unique

way and that methodologies must be adapted to the culture of each organization in

order to have the best chance to succeed. Even if we were to think of strategic

planning as an adherence to universal values that are widely recognized to foster

success such as perseverance, vision, customer service, profitability, and efficiency

we would not be able to account for the successful organizations engaged in strategic

planning on a daily basis lacking some of the latter qualities.

Thorough strategic planning and management are not always directly

proportional to commercial success. The former cannot ever be considered a

scientific process because it will never be able to account the role timing and chance

play in business affairs. Organizations are run by people who sometimes behave

illogically or achieve success by accident or fail despite proper planning and flawless

execution.

Shurz Communications and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)

provide us with an opportunity to study two different objective oriented

organizational mindsets and to attempt to define strategic management in a broad

sense. These organizations manifest two different strategic mindsets through their

respective mission statement and strategic objectives. The former represents the

mission statement of a medium size privately owned company that has been

operating for some time, has a long-term commitment to a set group of customers,

and is committed to improving its bottom line by leveraging synergistic product

offerings wherever possible. The latter represents a large government agency with a

multi-billion dollar budget, a considerable bureaucracy, a long standing series of core

competencies, and a mission determined mainly by the defense, scientific, and

political needs of the US government.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Works Cited

NASA. Dryden's Mission Statement. NASA.gov, 2006

CartoonStock.com. Strategic Planning. CartoonStock.com, 2006

CartoonStock.com. Differing Strategic Objectives. CartoonStock.com, 2006

NASA. Logo NASA.gov, 2006

Schurz Communications. Logo Schurz.com, 2006

Birnbaum, Bill. Mission Statement Fundamentals. BirnbaumAssociates.com, 2006

Kotelnikov, Vadim. Ten Major Strategic Management Schools: A Comparative Analysis.

1000ventures.com, 2006.

Grove, Andy. Only the Paranoid Survive. Simon and Schuster, 1995

Wallace, James – Erickson, Jim. Hard Drive – Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft

Empire. Harper Collins, 1993

Ries, Al – Trout, Jack. Marketing Warfare. Bantam Books, 1978

Dell, Michael. Direct from Dell. Harper Business, 1999

II. Works Consulted

Kotelnikov, Vadim. Ten Major Strategic Management Schools: A Comparative Analysis.

1000ventures.com, 2006.

Grant, Lorrie. Wal-Mart doesn't plan to toy much with prices ; Last year's cuts hurt other

retailers and left giant thinking it slashed too much. USA Today, 2004.

Foust, Dean. Things Go Better With...Juice; Coke's new CEO will have to move quickly to

catch up in noncarbonated drinks. Business Week, 2004.

Brady, Diane. A Thousand And One Noshes; How Pepsi deftly adapts products to changing

consumer tastes. Business Week, 2004.

CartoonStock.com. Strategic Planning. CartoonStock.com, 2006

CartoonStock.com. Differing Strategic Objectives. CartoonStock.com, 2006

NASA. Logo NASA.gov, 2006

Schurz Communications. Logo Schurz.com, 2006

Sloan, Alfred. My Years at General Motors. Doubleday, 1963

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Grove, Andy. Only the Paranoid Survive. Simon and Schuster, 1995

Gates, Bill. Business at the Speed ot Thought. Warner Books, 1999

Wallace, James – Erickson, Jim. Hard Drive – Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft

Empire. Harper Collins, 1993

Cobbold, Ian – Lawrie, Gavin – Issa, Khalil. Designing a strategic management system using

the third-generation balanced scorecard: A case study. International Journal of Productivity

and Performance Management, 2004

Rangan, Kasturi. Lofty Missions, Down-to-Earth Plans. Harvard Business Review, 2004

Mintzberg, Henry. The fall and rise of strategic planning. Harvard Business Review, 1994

Dess, Gregory. Strategic Management . McGraw-Hill, 2005

NASA. Strategic Management Process. NASA.gov, 2006

Schurz Publications. Strategic Goals. Schurz.com, 2006

Ries, Al – Trout, Jack. Marketing Warfare. Bantam Books, 1978

NASA. Dryden's Mission Statement. NASA.gov, 2006

Rangan, Kasturi. Case Study of Writing Business Objectives: Wiping Up the Credit. Harvard

Business Review, 2004

Birnbaum, Bill. Mission Statement Fundamentals. BirnbaumAssociates.com, 2006

Donovan, Edgardo. Full-Life-Cycle Web Presence Management. EddieDonovan.com, 2006

Donovan, Edgardo. Front End Web Development Process. EddieDonovan.com, 2006

Dell, Michael. Direct from Dell. Harper Business, 1999