Tag archives for B301
Academic Bookshelf – Bookshelves Abound = #Shelfie 05
The Bookshelves Abound series continues with the Academic Bookshelf. This one of the five bookshelves on the upstairs landing. It sits next to the window at the top of the stairs and is next to the new bookshelf, the one the new books go on until I have time to read and shelf them properly. Academic Bookshelf The thinnest upstairs bookshelf is the academic bookshelf, which has a lot of university textbooks on it The Academic Bookshelf is so titled because most of the books on it are from various university courses that I've studied. It doesn't have every single academic book that I own on it. There just wouldn't be room, even if I cleared the games from the academic bookshelf. Working from the top, here's a run down of what you can find on the academic bookshelf Games The…
Six Steps to an Awesome Open University Assignment
“Academics are like ” Like almost everything in life there is a knack to doing well in an Open University assignment (and this probably carries through to other kinds of assignments to). Knowing your stuff will get you a pass, but putting these tips into practice will turn that into a good pass, or even a distinction. This is my experience and things I've picked up from tutors and other students over the course of six modules from Level 1 through to Postgraduate. OU tutors are busy people and they are following a marking scheme. Mostly they are looking to find out how well you've passed the Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA) or End of Module Assignment (EMA). So you need to make it as easy as possible for them to give you the best mark possible for the work you've done.…
Mintzberg’s 5Ps & Whittington’s 3Ps
I noticed that a number of the people visiting my blog are looking for strategy material. So I've trawled my unpublished archives and have put together some short posts on strategy topics. Here's one on looking to explain two ways of defining strategy. Mintzberg's 5Ps and Whittington's 3Ps. The main thing to bear in mind, with both Mintzberg's 5Ps & Whittington's 3Ps, is that they're not a process tool for producing strategies. However, they are both excellent tools for analysing and evaluating strategies. That is definitely worth doing if you have to devise strategy. Before you release a strategy you need to robustly take it apart to ensure that it is fit for purpose. If you find it weak then it isn't yet ready for prime time. Mintzberg's 5Ps Henry Mintzberg has described five ways of looking at strategy as plan, ploy, pattern, position and…
Book review – Strategy Bites Back by Henry Mintzberg
Strategy Bites Back: It Is A Lot More, And Less, Than You Ever Imagined by Henry Mintzberg My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read this as pre-reading before studying Strategy with the Open University. It was very clear and easy to read, explained things ownderfully, made me laugh in places, and was genuinely useful in getting my head round what strategy actually is. The book is a series of short articles, put into language most people can read rather than the drier academic style or cringeworthy business speak that these sort of books are often written in. This is a plain english text that works. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand strategy, read this before trying anything else (and as a second reading I would go for Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why…
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Book Review – Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
If you have to read about strategy this is a very good place to start your understanding of strategy. I've got several years of experience in government doing strategy and I've studied it academically as well. So I'm applying a wide evidence base, and this is a good book about strategy. This is the first book that I've seriously highlighted, mainly because it struck a chord with me and seemed to be full of sensible advice about the characteristics of both good and bad strategy. I can see myself using some of the content at work to help me and my colleagues develop better strategies and avoid some of the pitfalls. Unlike a lot of the strategy books I have read this one is intended for a wide audience and has very readable language (some of the academic works disappear…