Group Case Presentations

Group Case Presentations
25 % of grade

A Video Example of a good presentation (Cray Computing Case)

The study groups will be the basis of this presentation--but since we have 12 presentations (2 for each of 6 cases) some groups will have to be rearranged. In Class 3 we'll assign cases to groups--I'll draw group numbers from a hat and the first 12 groups can choose a case. People from the groups that don't get a case must join one of the groups that do. If someone asks to join one of the 12 groups for the case presentation, the groups must agree, unless they have already accepted another "new" member.

Each group will have the responsibility of presenting one of these five cases: Lincoln Electric (February 17), Jerry Sanders (March 2), Xerox (March 16), Aventis (March 31), Business Networks (April 13), and Ogilve & Mather (April 14). For class 3 you should know your preferences, in case your group is one of the 12 that get picked to choose a case. Your prefered case may be gone by the time you are selected, so have more than one case in mind.

Presentations are in the form of a consulting report to the board of directors of the organization that is the subject of the case. Members of the presenting group should wear business attire and all members of the group must speak in the presentation. The presentations should follow the form of an analysis of the case, and will therefore include:

1. Identification of the key performance gap(s).
Typically this occurs by asking two questions: What are our goals and what are the gaps between our current performance and those goals?

2. Root cause analysis. What are the causes of our gap?

3. Solution building. Of the available alternatives, what should we do?

4. Action planning. How do we do it?

Besides these critical elements, groups are free to choose the most effective presentation format. Each group's presentation will be no longer than fifteen minutes. It will be followed by up to ten minutes of questions from the audience (representing the board). Remaining class time will be used for a broader discussion of the case by all class members.

The instructor and the class will evaluate the presentations using a standardized form which will be filled out after every presentation. The form appears here.

All group members receive the same grade for the presentation. The grade is a weighted average of the responses to the final question on the feedback form, "overall grade." The instructor’s rating on that question will account for 40% of the group’s grade, and the average of the ratings of other class members will account for 60% of the group’s grade.   When calculating the grade I use an algorithm that excludes outlier evaluations, so students who rate strategically (e.g., to try to hurt the scores of other groups) will simply waste their evaluations.

Here are some other helpful hints I’ve derived after watching dozens of case presentations:

•   Don’t substitute style for content. Sometimes an original presentation format is refreshing. However, emphasis on overly fancy power point slides, video or sound effects is often an indicator that the group doesn’t have their priorities firmly fixed on the content.

•   If you choose someone in the audience to stand in as the decision maker in order to direct your presentation to, choose a classmate, not the professor.

•   Manage the length of the presentation. Every group has more than fifteen minutes of material they want to present, but prioritizing and editing is key. Presentations that exceed the fifteen minute time limit usually have organizational problems and are less-well received by the audience. Two common problems of long presentations are that they repeat case facts, and that the group has not sufficiently practiced the presentation. You can avoid these by practicing and checking all of your statements to make sure they add value for the class and do not merely rehash case facts.

•   It’s your analysis we care about, not what actually happened in the case. Sometimes groups are lead astray by follow up work on what happened to the company or to the characters in the case, which results in arguments which aren’t supported by the case that everyone else has written and prepared.

•   Prepare responses for likely questions.