MBA Learning Teams and Playing in Position

It has been interesting contrasting a day to day work environment with my MBA learning team as we work through a new venture group project.....

One thing has become very obvious. Anybody that believes that there is automatically a common agenda because people work together, in a working environment, is potentially making a serious error of judgement.  Working inside my learning team has taught me a couple of things.

Stakeholder Interests Have to be Balanced

One of the things that I have been trying to do is understand exactly what is required when doing due diligence on a company, whether it is well established or a startup.

Part of that evaluation is undoubtadly understanding why the organisation exists, what the problem is that it solves, and whether its value proposition resonates, but there is another dimension which is equally important - how it approaches the management of its various stakeholders.

While I was researching the topic I came across this article by Charles J. Fombrun on Forbes.com about How To Restore Your Company's Reputation which describes why some organisations have suffered because they have paid more attention to short term financial results than longer term value.  The article identifies 7 key indicators that need to be addressed: