Wendy is currently attending a short course at the Harvard Business School. The course, ‘Driving Corporate Performance’, is for senior financial executives. Wendy has been keeping us up-to-date with what’s happening:

The above is a picture of the lecture theatre with Professor Robert S. Kaplan surrounded by students at the end of a presentation. They have an exact replica in Shanghai – even to the same timber. Interestingly, each row has a special name, may of which are drawn from baseball. The front row are called the ‘worms’ (as in trying to get into the professors good books, then the ‘flowers’ ( I presume above the worms). I am sitting in the middle row, which is called the ‘power’ seat (as we can eye-ball the Professors). The next ones are called the ‘warning track’ (being almost to the boundary) and lastly the sky-deck – as when you sit there, you feel as though you can control the room. This last one is the most popular row, followed by the worms.

Yesterday, Professor David Collis put forward an easy way of understanding the Hierarchy of Corporate Statements:

Mission: Why we exist?
Values: What we believe in?
Vision: What we want to be?
Strategy: What will be our competitive game plan?
Balanced Score Card: How we will implement that plan (From Professor David Collis, Harvard Business School, July 2020)