useful docs

[Rutger Zonneveld]

Hi! Thought I would forward the attached doc again about writing cases and teaching notes in case other people had forgotten about this one like me - quite a useful read.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Celia Moore <cmo...@london.edu>
Date: Sat, Jul 27, 2013 at 7:38 AM
Subject: India IA: Group 2/Akshaya Patra Details
To: Fiona Gauthier <fgauthier....@london.edu>, Pierre Mulotte <pmulotte....@london.edu>, Rutger Zonneveld <rutgerz.e...@london.edu>, Safeya Almqtri <salmqtri....@london.edu>, Steve Olugbile <solugbile....@london.edu>
Cc: Jordana Blanchet <jbla...@london.edu>, Mariana Santagada <msant...@london.edu>

Hello Group 2!

I'm Celia Moore, faculty member in OB, and will be your faculty lead for your project with Akshaya Patra for this International Assignment.

In this email I will outline the basic project scope that I have outlined at Akhaya Patra for you, and what is coming up next. It should prepare you for what's coming next.

YOUR CORPORATE CONTACT

Your contacts at Akshaya Patra are  Anuradha Goswani <anuradha...@akshayapatra.org>  and Pournamy Prasad <pourn...@akshayapatra.org>. You can start by contacting them to introduce yourselves. They are expecting to hear from you. You can ask if they prefer that you keep them both in the loop, or whether they would prefer that you mainly contact one or the other of them.

PROJECT SCOPE

You will be undertaking your assignment at Akhaya Patra, a large and impressive NGO that feeds over 1 million Indian children a healthy lunch, daily (http://www.akshayapatra.org/). 

This project scope is slightly different than some of the others (though all are unique in their own way), and I think it will be a very interesting project. Akshaya is an exceptionally impressive organisation, with operations that manage to source ingredients for, cook, and delivery more than 1 million meals to Indian children every day. There has been a Harvard case written about their operations (attached), which provides a general overview of the organisation. However, this case does not go into detail about the human resource capacity of the organisation, and what accounts for its success. 

This project will involve writing a new case about Akshaya Patra, focused on the internal levers of its success. The case will be published and available through the European case clearinghouse, and you will all be authors on the case and teaching note. (Teaching notes provide some direction about how to teach the case in practice). 

I would like your team to focus on the following questions while interviewing the leaders and frontline personnel at Akshaya:

• What are the organisational qualities that account for its success? What role does leadership, employee engagement, operational savvy, and trustee support play in their success? How does each of these elements play into it?
• What are the biggest internal threats to their sustained growth and continued success? How should they build internal capacity to mitigate these threats?
• What can for-profit organisations learn about managing growth and succeeding under cost pressures from Akshaya Patra?

I also attach a brief document on writing cases that I have found helpful when I started writing cases a few years ago. I think this is an exciting way for your team to really get to know an Indian organisation well and why it is successful. I am really looking forward to this engagement.

YOUR PRE-ARRIVAL DELIVERABLES

1. You need to choose a faculty liaison and a company liaison. This does not mean substantially more work for either person. It is just useful to have one person be the official point of contact with the company, and another with the faculty, so communication is a little more streamlined. Please complete the form below by Monday 29th July to notify the Programme Office of who from the group will be assigned to these two roles:  http://forms.london.edu/form.asp?id=16969. 
2. After discussing your scope with your team, the faculty liaison should contact the company to further clarify the scope, and begin setting the interview schedule. The interview schedule is best taken care of before the students come to Bangalore so that they can hit the ground running when they are there. When the liaison person contacts the company, you should ask for any information you would like about the company (e.g., annual reports, press articles, internal presentations or documents that convey the company's goals and practices). These will help the team familiarize with the company and prepare well before we come to Bangalore. In particular, meetings with senior leaders should get on the calendars as soon as possible (by August 10-16). Typically these are the first meetings of the week, on Monday morning.
3. Ensure your company contacts are invited to the welcome dinner (Sunday, August 25). They have already been invited, but a second reminder/invitation from you helps reinforce the importance of it. This is a chance for you to get to know your company contacts informally before an intensive week begins. 
4. Complete the pre-work (attached). This assignment is not intended to be stressful. It is more to ensure you keep up with your own planning and help with your own clarity about the project, rather than create something that is formally evaluated. Handing it in will receive the full 10%. It is about working through a document that will require planning to be undertaken, so we arrive in Bangalore knowing where we stand.
5. If you would like to schedule a conference call with your faculty member, please let us know and we will be happy to do that. If not, we will be meeting with each of our teams on Sunday afternoon or evening, August 25, to ensure the week starts well (and we're sure it will).
6. Familiarize yourself with the Workbook. Iif you haven't received it already, you will imminently from the program office. This workbook is the sum total of your required reading for this course. It explains the approach we will be taking with the week, and provides many helpful instructions, checklists, and information about how to organise a high quality engagement.
7. Finally, design a team contract. This helps make explicit understandings and expectations regarding how work will be shared in the team, and how any nascent conflict will be managed. Instructions for how to do so are from page 42 onwards in the workbook.

If you have any questions about logistics, please let Jordana or Mariana (cc'd here) know. Any questions about the company or scope, ask me.

 

I look forward to meeting you all in person in August!

Best regards,

Celia