Master

Introduction

Hello Professor Welsh, can you please introduce yourself? 

Case Coaching Series

Can you please tell us what this series is about? 

The videos are about the coach and the team working together. I think we're much more successful when the coaches and the team members all trust one another about where they're going and the idea that practises are primarily about building trust building teamwork and assisting the team members in developing knowledge skills that will help them in the resolution helping them in the presentation phases and competitions pieces.

As I always tell my team, I think those are teams that are going to put together a competitive case and leave it in the judge's hands. And if they can leave it in the judge's hands at that point, we really have no control, so I'm satisfied with my teams. I think you're going to be successful if you arrive at a competition as a team, including not only the team members but the coach or the coaches that are associated with this.

The approach I've taken with teams over the last 15 or so years, because again, a lot of the coaching has been focused in those last 15 years, when I think about it there's a lot of trial and error that's happened, a tonne of failures but at the same time we've had a tonne of success accompanied by a tonne of learning.

I believe that case coaches should kind of understand the approach that I've taken and maybe be able to aid them a little bit because I know that I have learnt from many other coaches and that many of those have provided me with really useful expertise. In my opinion, it's also important to let kids see what the coach does and some of the thinking that goes on when you're engaged in that type of practice. If my students watch it, I think they'll begin to understand why I always tell them at the beginning of the process that I don't really care about the content; instead, I care that you show up and present me with something, and I can ask you questions about the content if you'd like. However, when we get to the debrief, we don't discuss the content at all. Then, as I believe teams move through this process of maturing from a group of individuals into a well-tuned team, ready for pretty much anything that the case competition organisers are ready to throw at them in terms of a case, I think teams get educated about not only how to approach the case but also how to go and find the knowledge and all of those pieces that they need to find.

The Process of Coaching a Team

Can you explain what is the process of coaching a team?

I've thought about it a lot over the years I've been coaching, and I think it's changed a bit thanks to a few co-team mentors I've had, one in particular, who's been coaching teams for, say, about 35 years, and who I've had the opportunity to work closely with over the last six or seven years, has been coaching teams for a very long time.  In my opinion, the key is to convince the team to trust the procedure and the concept of role-playing, in particular the idea that you act as a team while the judges act as judges, and how do you proceed?

The other aspect, in my opinion, is that students—and this happened to me a few weeks ago with a team—often believe that different case competitions require a different approach. To some extent that's true, but most competitions are really about developing some sort of strategy, whether it's a financial strategy, a marketing strategy, or a business strategy overall. Therefore, I strive to convince my teams that case competitions require the same general strategy; what differs slightly is the importance of the topics you need to emphasize. Therefore, the points of attention in a marketing case are a little different from those in a financial case or an accounting case, and so they move. The other thing, in my opinion, is that what you discuss varies depending on how much time you have for the presentation. A 30-minute presentation is not the same as an eight-minute presentation.

The structure and the flow are fairly similar, but you need to figure out how to get the judges' attention in the eight minutes you have left by focusing on the parts of your solution that are most crucial to the business and explaining how they will help you achieve the organization's vision. I believe that it largely involves telling the organization how to profit from the industry they are in. As an example, I  use the star region ambulance in Alberta with my business case students. This is a helicopter rescue service, and when I inquired bluntly about their business, I received comments such as "health care", "airlift", and "emergency transport". Eventually, someone spoke up and said "star air ambulance saves lives" was their line of work and some of their charity campaigns are all about that. As a result, they are dedicated to saving lives and making money through charity.

So, taking a step back, it's also important to fully explain the process to the team and make sure they get it. I worked with a team that was actually quite successful. They completed 33 practices and a case competition, and I don't believe they went through the process at all during that time. Nevertheless, they felt confident entering their first case in the competition because they could observe their competitors because they presented  first. However, after the results were announced, they were informed that they had lost. The next morning, they appeared, presented their case and followed the procedure. They then, if I remember correctly, finished in the top three and won all of their other cases. It really gave them the shock that, you know, we're not as good as we thought or what we're doing isn't as good as we thought and we need to change a bit. They have won all of their other cases by significant margins. They did a fantastic job on this piece, so I give them a lot of credit for that, but as far as the process goes, I consider it more of a three step process.

The first step is for the team to get to know each other. The team must be able to trust each other and trust each other in the process. That doesn't mean you have to like everyone on your team; rather, you need to be able to trust them and have confidence in their ability to complete their part of the case in a qualitative manner so that the team can work together successfully. In some of the other videos we will discuss the process in more detail.

The second step is to fully understand what information needs to be conveyed there, which is often difficult because the coaches are under pressure and we are under pressure due to our many other obligations, etc. According to many coaches, the first and second stages are frequently combined. I deliberately try to set up the first cases they do. Although they are given guidelines on how a presentation should be made, they are also free to make any changes they see fit. I don't really care about content as much as I do about how the band works together. However, the next action is what information should be transmitted? How should the structure be? Are there changes that need to be made due to different points of emphasis because the competition is for one type of strategy versus another type of strategy? Perhaps more importantly, what structure will allow you to tell a compelling story? After all, that's what you do when you compete in case competitions, right? I always tell my teams that the team with the best story wins.

The third step is really building the knowledge of the team to fill in the details, and as one of my mentors said, "The devil is in the details". It requires exposure to various industries, so working on various cases involving various industries, bringing back some of those industries later if you've had enough practice, developing the necessary toolkit, and learning the general context, like currency. I remember one year, according to the slide you looked at, my team missed the exchange rate of a currency by a factor of ten to a hundred, which left the judges very perplexed. If we talk about different nations, how does culture affect local issues there? We have a lot of competitions in Florida or Arizona or wherever so it's a really good idea to get to know the area so you can get an idea of ​​where the judges might be coming from in terms of what they think , their political biases, and stuff like that, so really building some kind of know-how.

I have participated in enough case competitions in Montreal and visited Montreal often enough to know what to advise my team to do in their cases since some things are well-regarded in the Montreal business world compared to what you see in cities like Seattle or Vancouver. It's a bit different in terms of local political circumstances, and local attitudes, so how do you play with that? For example,  it's probably very difficult if you're coming from Calgary, the oil capital of Canada, and you're going to Seattle where, in my opinion, there's not a lot of enthusiasm for oil, and do a case about oil companies. How should this be interpreted? I think these are the main components of the process of coaching a team, especially in terms of students. It is about  trusting what information has to be delivered and then really building a good knowledge base so that you can fill in the details for your case.

Tackling a Case

Can you talk about the process of tackling a case? Elaborate on different time periods such as 3 hours, 5 hours+ , 24 hours cases. 

First, make sure you have enough time to read the case. Reading times can vary from 10 minutes to 40 minutes depending on the competition cases. It's a bit difficult for the remaining components of a three hour case competition to fit in after a 40 minute read . Then I ask my teams to brainstorm, write down their ideas and how they'll get the money, just to kick things off and bring those ideas together in a tangible format. Therefore, you should write down your thoughts. That usually happens more when we have a shorter time frame, it just helps them organize a bit more. With some of our teams, we have particular questions that we ask them to answer during this brainstorming.

Then, in a fast-paced situation, you have to decide what to do next; but, in a longer case, you have some time to consider your options. At this point, the team really begins to divide. So I usually have one person doing the analysis, one person making the recommendations, and since this task doesn't take very long, they also tend to be my opener and closer and make sure that the teams stays on track. Then another person doing the implementation. There may be certain selection criteria that go with it, but the implementation is the most important because it's how you accomplished your solution that makes your judges decide if you have a great solution. 
Then, of course, you need finances. Another mentor once told me that "a plan without finances was just a pipe dream".a Therefore, having such financial statements is crucial.

The reason you save all this information is so you can then go back and double-check to make sure the items are there or the brainstorming questions have been answered. Also, I think it's helpful, and I frequently suggest using post-it notes because you can move them around and start building the general outline of the story. We do this in much longer cases because there are fewer restrictions on the resources you can use in the three-hour case competitions, which makes them a bit more difficult. As a result, longer cases tend to be a bit more organized.Then going into the different moments, I think the teams eventually realize, and I hope that realization comes pretty quickly is that there's no time to practice doing something right because it takes three hours, so you have to learn to get by without practice while you build your confidence. A lot of our teams at our school are coming to competitions like JDC West for their first competition, and I think that's a really good thing because it builds them and develops them over the three hours. I think that's what makes those longer periods successful for us because they come from being okay because of the self-confidence and not the practice confidence.

Furthermore, I believe the other issue is that recently Covid has allowed a lot of internet access during these types of tournaments. Once we get back in person, we'll see how it goes. But again, Internet management is an important aspect of this. My usual guideline is to avoid using the internet until absolutely necessary, because once you've read the case, which will take you about two and a half hours, it won't leave you much time to loose.

After that, the process doesn't change much except that after the brainstorming everyone can leave and do a bit of research before coming back and deciding which direction they're going to take. I believe the next category is five hours or more, not as long as 24 hours or more. The important thing here is that you have time to do research. Most of these contests are open to whatever resources you can use. There's often time to practice, but I've still had many teams over the years that waited until the last minute. Again, it boils down to "yes, we have our deck of slides as we head into our presentation. We're trying to figure out what we're going to say with it.

Then, in terms of 24+ hours, taking breaks is crucial. A few years ago, I entered some students in a 36-hour tournament, and I don't think they took a single break. They entered the meeting very unmotivated, and while I think they had a great idea, the crew just lacked enthusiasm after working nonstop for 36 hours. I frequently explain to my teams that in a longer case after five or six or eight hours you probably have your solution and then it's about reinforcing that solution. What the judges anticipate is that as you have more time and can therefore substantiate your idea a little better by studying your project more, you will have to give more information.

Finally, there are those that last several days where teams are allowed to speak with their coach or other people. These terrify me because I am constantly afraid d of saying anything that alters the notion of team or makes them doubt their own idea. This, in my opinion, is mainly because it helps their concentration and keeps them guessing. As a coach, I don't really want to influence them on what they do until we've had a chance to talk about the solution. After all, if they've built something they believe in, let's go and support it.

Working as a Team

What is the process of working as a team?

As a coach, the first step is to build the team. So, as I mentioned, I did this last week as we were building teams, and I think the number one thing I'm looking for is soft skills. Do they have the ability to communicate? Do they speak with passion? Do they have the ability to supervise or be supervised according to the student? If the case involves an engineering-related company, can this particular group of students handle it? If so, do they have the required skills? The other half, in my opinion, look at their past experiences, as if they were athletes or former athletes, because they generally understand how a team works. Much of it is just a matter of intuition and waiting to see how things turn out.

There are instances where it hasn't, but for the most part it does, and the key is to assemble a team that will be cohesive and have a likable personality. I believe that likeability is a crucial factor in today's competitions because all of the teams are amazing. If you can be a little more likable than another team, the judge may give you a slightly higher score. I believe this is the reason why the first few practices are less about the content and more about how well your team works together and how you divide the work among various computers, tools, and guidelines. How do you make a team of four people and their four personal computers operate together, as opposed to, say, JDC West, where you have one computer, or John Wilson's MBA, where you have two computers? Since the behaviors alter when I enter the room and they don't actually practice as they typically do, I think a significant portion of it results from talking to the students and team members as they are debating the issue. I have a great opportunity because of our outstanding alumni, and in some competitions, alternate team members are permitted. In these situations, alternate team members act as sort of an ambassador for the coaching process and receive insights. I believe that because they are perceived as peers or more like peers, the team will act as they normally would, especially when an alternate key member is present because you never know what they may be thrown into.

So, I think that's important. Then, I think the other issue that kind of comes up—and I believe I was asked this over the weekend as we were wrapping up our student interviewS: "What makes a combination of a proper team,?”— and I think it is that combination of required skills and experience that fit on personality, and I know with JDC West we have team captains, me and the godparents that are really putting the teams together, and then we introduce them to the alumni coaches. I believe that's what I was teaching my four executives: inform them that this is their team unless they had strong objections to it.

In terms of what it looks like at JDC West this year, I believe undergraduates and graduates are somewhat different, but I still look for a willingness to learn in both, to be adaptable, and to communicate passionately, accepting failure and looking to improve. Undergraduates frequently form friendships, and I believe this is where they diverge from graduate students, especially MBA students, who occasionally seem to struggle in this area. Instead of using this as an opportunity to work together only, they view it as a chance to expand their networks and make new friends. They don't necessarily think that building friendships is important, but rather have in mind that they work together to serve a purpose. In an undergraduate situation, if friendship does not workout, often team members quit the team. In a graduate situation with MBAs, I think the team members stick it out. However, I know of former MBA team members who absolutely hate each other and hate each other to this day. However, it really becomes more about coachability and that sort of willingness to listen.

You're always supposed to sandwich your feedback, but I don't think I've ever done that. I may occasionally serve an open-faced sandwich, but a lot of it is the content of that sandwich. I also believe that a couple of other things that occur here are just with coaches. I believe students wonder how the coach and the judge will react. I believe that most judges' reactions to a solution will be very similar to a coach's, especially if they are familiar with the competition rights. Additionally, I believe that all of this comes together when it comes to creating a case culture and ensuring that the students understand what that entails. In Canada, Simon Fraser does a fantastic job at the undergraduate level, and the students benefit greatly from it. If we look at the MBA side of things, I believe that some schools, like those in Manitoba and Concordia, have done an outstanding job. There are also many other schools on the underground side, including those in Australia and Montreal, where my school, UBC on the West Coast, is located. I also believe that all of these schools have built excellent case cultures that are focused on particular case types.

The students who come to the coach have an understanding of how this is all going to appear, and I believe those things are almost very crucial in terms of that sort of process of working as a team.

Working with different personalities

How should we work with different personalities? 

Because there are so many different personalities on case teams, I think this is a really interesting question. Everyone wants to be the boss, therefore I was once again shocked last weekend when we interviewed a large number of kids and asked them what role they would play in a team. You guessed it: leader. So it's always unsettling to assemble a group of individuals who merely regard themselves as leaders. In reality, I believe, this involves juggling multiple leaders at once and convincing them to relinquish their leadership positions.

I believe you need the team to be fully functional. If there are three persons in the room, all three must contribute, and if there are four people, all must give. Therefore, the key to all of this is actually how I can support them in managing their egos. In order to control this, especially when one person's ideas aren't getting incorporated in the solutions—and I know for a fact that this can blow up completely—MBAs tend to keep score more than undergraduate students, so you know what you haven't accepted my proposal in weeks as a team.At a competition, we had a team where enough of the practises were, I believe, put toward it, but at one point in the competition, one person just sort of stepped back and said, "You know what, they haven't accepted my idea," and what we got as a presentation was a presentation of a few people who were putting one idea in and another person was putting another idea forth. I think the judges were just totally confused. I am aware that my associate coach was upset about what transpired at that competition.Therefore, I believe it's important to work with the team to understand each member's personalities and how they might begin to share the task.

Therefore, I believe that a lot of it involves chatting with the team about the process that occurred in the room, looking at the products they made in terms of some of their notes, and asking them if they checked anything off.Since we're sort of asking them to check off the ideas, I've found that fairly frequently what happens with this type of stuff is that some of those ideas get left in the room and it's really interesting. I believe it's a crucial component of it, and then I think we can speak a little bit about roles with that. In Q & A, if we ask them a question about something missing, the answer is always yeah, we talked about that, and the angry coach's response is why isn't it in your presentation.

Roles in the Team

Developing Roles in the team

This component is crucial because it allows students to assume individual leadership. The four candidates for a John Wilson MBA competition will typically do the opening and closing remarks, the analysis, which involves moving from the macro to the micro environment, the numbers, and the implementation. Somewhere between analysis and implementation, hopefully there is a recommendation. Somewhere between the analysis and the implementation, we hope that there’s a recommendation.  What I believe is happening here is that it allows each student to sort of develop their thoughts and take charge of a certain aspect of the case, which forces them to, in my opinion, speak up. Most importantly, it forces them to interact with the other people in the room, notably the person who handles the numbers, and they end up becoming leaders in that field. Early on, the numbers guy must be able to sort of conduct some preliminary calculations and inform the team that this will work or else, this won't work, and they need to figure that out rather quickly since it is a matter of time. 

I want to reiterate the idea of having the team communicate ideas on paper, a whiteboard, an electronic whiteboard, or whatever else is appropriate, and having each individual be a different color. Therefore, when we use paper sheets and at John Molson's, everyone has a different coloured marker, and they check off what they have assumed responsibility for. I believe that way, everyone has the chance to take leadership in that role.

The other aspect of this is that with many of the teams, I will initially rotate students through these positions, so they get a more complete idea. I realize that as a coach, you won't assign me to be the numbers person, but I spent the day doing numbers, so I am aware of the pressures that our numbers person or people face. Another occasion when I'm just going to say, "You know, maybe let's tweak this around a little bit and see what happens" is when something doesn't seem to be working well. Check to verify if that functions and if it aids in the regular operation of the key.

Dealing with Conflict

Dealing with Conflict on the team. 

I think this is one of the most difficult pieces as a coach and I think I wasn't very good at this at the beginning and I don't think a lot of coaches are very good at this at the beginning. The biggest thing with this is that I really don't start the debrief session early on in the practice schedules. Instead, I let the students answer the question: what went wrong?  If no one responds, I'll select a few individuals and we'll sort of start talking about what actually happened in the room and how it went. I'll ask them to bring up any disagreements or problems they noticed, and we'll attempt to turn it into an open debate. So as I said, I normally go around the class and have each student sort of talk about it individually. Often I find we don't even get to the point where we get through each individual before there’s a group discussion about how we can fix this or if I can. In my opinion, many teams excel at doing this. I try to get them to have the discussion on their own and I become an observer in the background. 

An example of this was when we were in Budapest and an incredibly strong team had a conflict during the central european case competition. They knew they would come in last as soon as they ended their presentation, and we went to get the official word of our loss.We had dinner on a riverboat that evening on the Danube, so we just took the long, difficult route there since the riverboat was stopped and not moving, giving us time to talk individually about what went wrong and what we didn't do. By the time we arrived for dinner, the crew had a pretty clear understanding of what had gone wrong or broken during the process.Then, we were quite fortunate because the following day was the social and cultural celebration, and we spent the entire day on a bus, moving through central Hungary for about 14 hours and so the team had time to bond. Then, for the second case, they showed up,  executed the plan, no misunderstandings, and they completely crushed  it. I believe that living the experience of losing together and have time to communicate afterwards helped them grow and develop a solid base. Some of them are still really close friends. 

My role here as a coach is to select case competitions that allow us to do this. For me as a coach, I  prefer case competitions with multiple cases that are judged separately instead of just one overall winner. This way, each case winner gets lots of feedback from the judges, and it's especially helpful when the coach can be present to help them interpret it for their upcoming case or whatever they're doing moving forward. I also like the concept of live cases where the company is the judge. The company judges are very familiar with the situation and, in my opinion, provide that nice feedback in terms of, "Yes, this fits with our situation. You recognise what our company is about those types of things". Finally, and most importantly, the competition has to have some sort of social or cultural aspect to it. It's good to have a few academic judges in there because they can sort of push the team a little bit in terms of some of the theoretical side. In addition, you can also go outside, explore, have some fun, celebrate, and go learn a little bit about the area you're in. A couple of the competitions we attend on a regular basis include the Central European Competition in Budapest, which does an excellent job of this whether it is in person or online. It ends with a social event where everyone gathers in their homes and cooks based on a few rules. There’s the McDonough Business Strategy Competition at Georgetown University, where they have in the past gone bowling on the first day and spent the second day wandering around the mall and some of the places like the Capitol Building or the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.  before you really start, and they also have a fabulous party for both and their separate parties for both the faculty and the students at the end of the competition. My favorite part of this is that we frequently go to these places before the competition even starts. I believe that both of these organizations handle students and teachers in a really positive way. So choosing those competitions, in my opinion, also helps with that; if there was a dispute during the period, there may be possibilities to address it more fully while you are at the competition. 

Presenting a good story

How do you present a good story? 

Students believe that the beginning and end of the case should be the focus of a good story. It’s the whole case. Since the judges will be listening to your eight or thirty minute presentation, it is crucial to have something that will connect with them or draw them in at the beginning.

This year, I had a marketing team and one of the girls used a personal connection to each of the cases they did. It was something like, "We did a case on an online glasses company and if you wear glasses, you got experience with the product”. You can use this as an example. 

We do a lot of wine cases for some reason, so asking students questions like, "Have you ever bought wine or drunk wine? What motivated you to buy that particular bottle?" helps them establish some credibility with the judges and, in my opinion, makes them more likable. However, you have to be careful with that sort of opening piece because it needs to establish a connection, but after that, you want to make sure you wrap it up and revisit it.  An example of this is when we were in Seattle one year and my team discussed how a typical millennial makes an investment decision. The team they were up against was in a case involving ESG and climate change, and they had opened with a much more emotional piece, tying it to the forest fires that were occurring in Australia at the time.  As a result, being in Seattle at the time made it much more emotional for some people.

I've advised my teams to approach the project as a story, similar to a book you're reading. What occurs in that book? Usually, a tale begins with an exciting element that draws you in, and then it flows and comes to a satisfying conclusion. The middle contains interesting, tedious sections. The other aspect is that the author wants you to pick up their next book because that is how they make their living, so how are they going to end it on some kind of exciting, engaging note? Think about it as “our decision or our solution is going to give THIS impact as a Business.”

The next thing to do is to explain what your recommendation is. This advice came from a guest coach we had at a competition one year; he basically told every team he watched that year that, despite his advanced age, he enjoys being engaged right away and enjoys using a digital camera because it provides instant gratification.

Therefore, if I know what the recommendation is, I know that when I sit there and judge cases these days, if people don't tell me what they're doing right away, my mind starts to wander, and if you finally tell me what you're doing, like seven minutes into the case, you might get me back, you might not.  

The other piece is that most teams will open the floor to questions at the end of their case. In most competitions, questions will arise regardless, so I often ask my teams, "Who really wants questions at the end of your case? Why are you asking for them?" In a texas-style case, however, those questions will arise during the presentation, thus there won't be any time left for questions. I make an effort to have my teams end on something thrilling, but I'm not always successful. Don’t put up that question slide. Don’t put up that thank you slide. A really interesting last point would be anything that would link my role as a business manager or owner to your solution. And as soon as you have the opportunity, thank me personally by saying "thank you" out loud. Going back to the beginning, you might come off as more likeable. 

The purpose of this is to help you establish connections with the judges by weaving a narrative throughout your presentation. And in one case, we specifically targeted a judge who we knew would preside over the case. We did some background research on that judge and discussed how she related to the case. I believe it worked really well because we were able to secure that judge's services for both the preliminary and final rounds.

We got lucky and got her for the preliminary round, and I think it really helped us. On the other hand, at one of my first competitions, we told this fantastic story at the beginning, and I think it engaged everyone. At that competition, there were two presentations: a preliminary presentation that lasted 30 minutes, and an ending presentation that lasted 10 minutes. However, the girl who was finishing off misunderstood the timing signals for when she was supposed to stop. She didn't finish the story at the end, but it was really cool because as the three of us left the auditorium, people gathered around us and inquired about what had become of the character we introduced in the first story. The judges also approached us after the award ceremony that evening and the dinner to inquire about what had become of those who weren't in our preliminary entry because they had heard the story. So I'm assuming the story worked. 

Therefore, think about how do you keep everybody engaged? Since most of you are students, and already sit through lectures, consider how much of the lecture you actually pay attention to and participate in after the first 15 seconds. What do you want to hear as an audience member?

About Case Comp Coaching

Can you please summarize in a minute what we spoke about today? 

Video 11 - What is an encouragement that you can give to students as they listen to this series? 

Video 12- Students who are scared to present