What is a Business? What does/should it do?

How does it do it?What are businesses looking for

in an employee?

Simplified

Basic Answers• A business is a group of people working together with a set of processes

to accomplish a specific goal in a specific and, often, dynamic market. These groups and processes are constrained and/or guided by dynamic organizational and governmental rules and structures.

• The end goal in business is to produce the correct product such that value to the customer of a product, as seen by the customer, is greater than the value provided by the competitions’ product, and is priced such that other stakeholders can be satisfied, including a profit sufficiently large to satisfy owners in the short and long term.

• Profit is obtained by producing and selling the correct product ethically and legally.

• What do employers want in an employee:– Specific Discipline Skills, Solid Analytic and Communication Skills, Productivity,

Proactive worker/learner, Teamwork, Integrity, Can do Attitude

Words Defined • Process: a structured, measured set of activities designed to

produce a specific output. • Product: good and/or service (tangible and intangible

characteristics) • Correct Product: Provides more value to your targeted customer

than your competition at a price that provides enough revenue to satisfy the wants and needs of the other five stakeholders. Have to be stakeholder centric to achieve this balance.

• Value: what a person gives up for what they receive. Time, money, effort…

• Six Stakeholders: Owners/stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, environment.

Organized HowPorter’s Value Chain

Alternative View

Correct Productto Customer

Finance

Information Systems

Marketing

Accounting HRM R&D/Engineering

Operations Mgt: Production & logisticsSCM

High Level Management

Original by Tom Bundi: Tom is an U of I business alumni who started his career working for Boeing as a process manager. He took that knowledge and was buying, fixing, and then selling companies. He was very successful.

Success Rests On• Having the correct adaptable Mission, Vision, and Strategy

(MVS). (high level goals)• Being able to operationalize MVS better than we did

yesterday• Basing MVS and operationalization on tools that define and

‘formas’ that mitigate risk.– Risk is driven by variability, therefore theory and tools that

define, leverage, or help eliminate variability– Risk/variability/ambiguity increase in a firm as you get

closer to product production, the customer, or the environment

– Formas: doing things by form

Questions to Answer in order to Achieve Continuous Improvement Relative to a Goal Related to Obtaining the Correct Product

• Where are we?• Why are we there?• Where do we want/need to be?• How should/do we get to where we

want/need to be? • Is it worth going to where we want to go?