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9128 OU5 - The Start of B885
After I had been at the OBS for a year or so, we started development work on various electives for the MBA. As I said earlier, we had already managed to rush out the first year foundation course -- which was very well received. The next mandatory course, which was corporate strategy being developed by David Ash, was something of a nightmare though. It was running late on every front and in fact missed its first target launch date. As a result, we ended up with a lots of very dissatisfied and worried students; who were wondering how they could complete their MBA. In particular, we came under a great deal of pressure at residential schools from the students on them.
Back to the electives though, these were parcelled out to the most obvious candidates -- the specialists in the Business School. Well that's not quite right for, since there weren't that many of us in the Business School, most of the courses were actually led by people from the rest of the University; though they did add on new members of the Business School as they were recruited.
I was quite keen to do one of these courses. However, the courses were really meant be cross-functional -- though in practice most the turned out not to be. In this context marketing, which was seen as my baby, had no place. Eventually, after much pestering from me, Andrew tossed me a bone He asked me to bring together a team to consider another elective. He implied that I probably wouldn't get the chair of it, but at least it gave me something to do.
The title of this new course, which became B885, was set in stone as 'The Challenge of the External Environment'. The slight problem was that none of us knew what this meant -- not even Andrew. I later found out that, the day before he tossed it to me, he had been visiting Unilever and had asked them what courses they thought were important. They had said "...well one of the new things we want to look at is the challenge of the external environment." In this way are major decisions made! When I asked for guidance, Andrew waved me away with statement "Let's have your ideas." Of course, that suited me down to the ground. He gave me a completely free hand.
Accordingly I did two things. First I recruited what was probably the biggest course team that OBS ever had seen; there were something like 30 of us on it. Thus, I didn't just recruit from within OBS but went out to the other faculties - in particular social sciences and technology - and recruited their best academics to join. In practice this wasn't too difficult. OU academics loved being in at the first stages of a new course. It meant they could mould it to their own prejudices. Regrettably that is usually not enough to keep them on to do the writing and production, but all I wanted anyway was to pick their brains -- and this I was able to do very successfully.
Thus, every three to four weeks or so, we had a meeting of this new course team; or at least the proposed course team since it hadn't yet been agreed. With so many of us, the only place we could meet was in the church hall opposite the Business School. Despite there being 30 of us on this course team, we got on very well together and the atmosphere was both very friendly and productive.
In this manner we spent the first year thrashing out what the course should be about. This was in the good old days, when a typical course in the area took three years to develop.
The last year was actually getting it out of the door in terms of printing and distribution. The middle year was the writing and production of the course. The first year was the creative year, when everyone talked and talked and talked. The people who arrived later in the OUBS could never understand this. They only saw the need for the latter two years. The reality was that the first was the most important year. That first year was when you got your head round the subject and worked out what the shape of the course would be. In the case of B885 were very fortunate, in as much as we actually had 3½ years to deliver.
The second leg of my work was doing in-depth interviews with the leaders of large organisations, typically the CEOs of the multinationals. In this way I met the CEOs of multinationals such as Esso, Booker, Chef & Brewer and ICI. Basically, my intention was to find out what they wanted a course called the challenge of the external environment –whatever that might be - to be about. We had already realised that, in essence, it was the external interface with marketing, covering the STEP functions; Sociology, Technology, Economics, Politics. Indeed, in the team we had fairly quickly divided the course down into these four blocks.
The fascinating thing which emerged from these interviews, however, was that almost all the CEOs - when talking about the external environment - actually talked about the future. To them the external environment equated with long-range planning.
Published initially with a reader and then the whole of the first part of the course as trade books by Sage
This, then, was the perspective which was to take over the course; that of long-range planning and in particular of scenario planning. This was something of a surprise, but we all became fascinated with this and -- as I say -- it permeated all the course. Most important of all, it permeated the TMA's, the Tutor Marked Assignments (essays) which the students were to produce as a major contribution to the marks they received. As such this, as much anything else which contributed to students passing or failing the course, made scenarios the central focus of the course.
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