Unit 4 – Discussion Board 

 Instructor’s Comments:

This outline is to be on unit 5 IP.  You will want to choose ONE company to write about (from the fast-food industry).  This outline should be 1-2 pages long.  You can copy and paste it into the discussion board area.  I understand that the format will be lost, but the content is what counts.  Please remember to include two DETAILED peer responses.  Students take your feedback to heart to please make sure that you spend a good amount of time providing this feedback requirement.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

Company of choice in fast food industry (should be nationwide company)

1. Introduction
   1. History of the company
   2. Current CEO
   3. Amount of locations
   4. Goals for the paper (what are you going to be writing about in this paper)
2. Mission statement
   1. Actual mission statement of the company…
   2. What I liked about?
   3. What I did not like about it?
   4. What I would change about it?
   5. When did it come to existence?
3. SMART Goals with deadlines (3 goals you want the business to achieve in the future) (https://fitsmallbusiness.com/smart-goals-examples/, https://www.thebalancesmb.com/elements-of-a-smart-business-goal-2951530, https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm)
   1. __
   2. __
   3. __
4. Industry analysis (https://www.franchisehelp.com/industry-reports/fast-food-industry-analysis-2018-cost-trends/, https://www.statista.com/topics/863/fast-food/, http://www.historyoffastfood.com/)
   1. __PAST
   2. __PRESENT
   3. __FUTURE
5. SWOTT Analysis
   1. S
      1. __
      2. __
   2. W
      1. __
      2. __
   3. O
      1. __
      2. __
   4. T
      1. __
      2. __
   5. T
      1. __
      2. __
   6. Perceptual map (Examples in chat #4, no actual map for unit 4 DB please)
      1. LABEL POINTS (TWO OF THEM)
         1. Listen to chat which provides several examples of label options
      2. Competitors that will be plotted in the map (including your company of choice)
   7. Conclusion
      1. Recap of the paper (use a sentence at the most)
   8. References (5-10 of them that can be transferred to unit 5 IP next week)

Unit 5 – Discussion Board 

 Primary Discussion Response is due by Friday (11:59:59pm Central), Peer Responses are due by Tuesday (11:59:59pm Central).

Summative Discussion Board

Review and reflect on the knowledge you have gained from this course. Based on your review and reflection, write 400-600 words on the following:

• What were the most compelling topics learned in this course?
• How did the discussion debates help you advance your considerations of the topics within this course?
• What approaches could have yielded additional valuable information?

Responses to Other Students: Respond to at least two of your fellow classmates with at least a 100-word reply about his or her Primary Task Response regarding items you found to be compelling and enlightening. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following questions:

• What did you learn from your classmate’s posting?
• What additional questions do you have after reading the posting?
• What clarification do you need regarding the posting?
• What differences or similarities do you see between your posting and other classmates’ postings?

Unit 5 – Individual Project 

For this assignment, select a real company in the fast food industry. 

You have just been hired by (your selected company) as its new vice president of strategic planning. The corporation’s performance in recent years as well as the changes with business and economic conditions will be a central focus of your new job.

Given the size of the corporation and the fact that it is in a highly competitive industry, the chief executive officer (CEO) to whom you report has already given you permission to hire a staff of recent Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates to assist you in your efforts. You recently completed the interviewing and hired four people with minimal real business experience.

In coming months, you and your team will be creating a completely new—and, presumably, more effective—strategic plan. You plan to begin by holding a kick-off meeting with your team.

Deliverable Length: 1,000–1,250 words

To feel confident that all of the employees in your strategic planning team understand all that you have taught them, you require each to prepare a streamlined version of the key elements of a strategic plan. You require each employee to prepare the following sections of a strategic plan for the corporation’s next 3-5 years:

• Mission and Vision Statements (Simply copying from an existing real company is unacceptable.)
• Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound (SMART) Goals and Objectives
• Industry Analysis
• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, and Trends (SWOTT) Analysis
• A Perceptual Map
  • Choose any criteria that you think are important to plot.
  • Explain why you picked the criteria.

Your task is to create a plan, following the same parameters, which will be the sample standard that your employees’ submissions should match.

Please submit your assignment.

For assistance with your assignment, please use your text, Web resources, and all course materials.

Other Information

Instructor’s Comments:

Please remember that this assignment is worth 200 points!!!  You will need to have a minimum of 1,000 words (but most students overachieve to about 1,500).  You are to pick ONE company to write about for this assignment (from the fast food industry).  For the first section, the mission and vision statement can be taken from a company in that industry.  The statement can be included, explained, and personal ideas are to be shared.  For example, do you like the statement?  Was there anything surprising about it?  The second topic is the SMART goals.  I will post an announcement pertaining to this topic for you to review.  For the industry and SWOTT analysis, you can do this in paragraph format (will help you achieve the minimum word count).  The last topic is the perceptual map.  I have downloaded to the learning material some examples of these maps.  You can either put the map together through your computer or you can hand draw it and scan it into your paper.  ***The perceptual map should have an explanation included as to why you included the material within the map.  There should be roughly 10 sources at the end of the paper.  I would recommend having titles for each of the topics that you are covering in the paper (will help it look more professional).

Please use this link to help with the APA formatting for sources:

http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-book

Here is some great ideas on what to include in your final paper:

https://www.umflint.edu/library/how-select-research-topic