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 Process of Coaching a Team

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

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.