Systems Thinking for Starbucks: Improving Business Performance

In the Assignments for this module, you will assume the role of a consultant who has been asked by the upper management team to evaluate an organizational performance problem within an organization. You will present your findings in the form of a written report with an executive summary presented as a PowerPoint presentation. The organization for this evaluation will be one of your choosing, and it should be one with which you are familiar. This organization could be where you currently work or where you have worked in the past.
After selecting an organization with which you are personally familiar, you are to present your evaluation and recommendations in a detailed business report. Additionally, you will prepare an executive summary of your findings to be presented as a PowerPoint slide deck to the organization’s upper management team.
Part 1: Business Improvements (4–5 pages)
Analyze some of the basic details about the organization. At a minimum, the basic details should include: the industry and products/services the organization offers, the overall operational and financial health of the organization, and a qualitative or systems diagram summary of how the organization operates to fulfill its commitments to customers.
Analyze what you believe to be the fundamental physical, policy, or market constraints that are preventing your organization from moving to the next level of performance. Be sure to clearly identify each primary constraint and provide a detailed argument and evidence for why you think each is a primary constraint to organizational performance. Be sure to support your response with appropriate concepts from performance management and/or systems thinking.
For each of the fundamental physical, policy, or market constraints that you identified as preventing your organization from moving to the next level of performance, justify a specific recommendation for how to elevate, support, and potentially eliminate the constraint.
Using the concepts of throughput accounting and Theory of Constraints accounting measurements for each of your recommendations, evaluate how the primary metrics of T, I, and OE would be affected and why the recommendations would make sense from a performance measurement perspective.
Identify the major stakeholders of the organization. Illustrate how the organization’s actions do or do not effect positive social change for these stakeholders (explain in detail).
Through a systems thinking lens, apply improvements to the organization to positively effect social change.
From a systems perspective, evaluate the organization’s performance in terms of diversity and inclusion.
Assess whether there is a relationship between ethics and inclusion (explain and substantiate your position). Recommend what improvements can be implemented to positively impact both.
Defend recommendations you would make to the upper management team to support personal mastery at both the individual level and the organizational level, being sure to include your rationale. (Consider all major stakeholders: employees, customers, and the community.) Provide specific examples to support your position.
Compose your personal vision. (Note that this personal vision goes far beyond traditional goals and objectives and should focus on purpose). In what ways does your personal vision relate to your ability to lead positive social change within your organization, your community, or more broadly?
Executive Summary Presentation (1–2 slides)
Develop an executive summary of your overall evaluation to be presented to the upper management team.