Watch the Stephanie Kelton’s lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS9nP-BKa3M

Then answer the following questions:

1. What is the typical political narrative about the national debt? Provide examples about the political narrative from the beginning of Stephanie Kelton’s lecture or from additional news research (provide links). What does Stephanie Kelton say about the debt?

2. What is the biggest mistake in our thinking about the debt according to Stephanie Kelton? Why is the government budget different from a household budget? Why is deficit spending different from household spending?

3. What are the 5 big questions and their answers? List each separately.

4. What did you learn about the image above from Kelton’s lecture?

5. What policies do you think are more important than the question of how we will pay for it? Think big. How should the U.S. be using our labor and natural resources? Pick at least two big social or political issues that you care about or that affect your family.

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After doing a proper research on whole foods and how they work. Please answer the 4 questions: each question one paragraph. feel free to bring in any outside materials that you find helpful to further the discussion as well (you MUST include links to additional articles or videos). Read the questions before your research.

Competitive Analysis
Competitive advantages can be built on a variety of factors, but those that are sustainable are typically built on some distinctive competence possessed by a firm and which are difficult for others to copy, or some first-mover advantage that cannot again be replicated. Among the issues we will discuss are the multiple sources of sustainable advantages — those that are highly tangible and those that are less so — and the risks inherent in entering business that may not offer the same advantages.
Case: Whole Foods
1. What are ‘natural foods’? Is ‘natural foods’ a good business definition? What opportunities do natural foods offer producers, distributors, retailers?
2. What is Whole Food’s Strategy? How has it adapted over time?
3. What challenges does Whole Foods face in 2006?
4. What would you advise CEO John Mackey to do to sustain Whole Foods’ lead?

1-Read and Make a summary of the author paper– no less than 125 words

What you agreed with, did not agree with and why – no less than 125 words

Minimum of 2 sources from the literature in addition to course

This discussion will begin with a brief explanation of why organizations need a strategic direction. Next, the process of developing, executing and maintaining a strategic direction is discussed. The advantages of strategic thinking are included with an example. The decision models utilized throughout these processes are included as well as the benefits.

Globalization has created additional and enhanced competition amongst organizations (Kaplan & Norton, 2006). This additional competition requires top organizational management to establish a clear strategic vision for the company. The strategic vision is an organizational management activity that is utilized to establish an overall direction. A strategic vision requires an organization to focus time and resources, strengthen operations/logics, ensure that the workforce and stakeholders are collaborating and actively moving toward goals and evaluates and refines the organization’s direction in response to ever changing environments (pp. 101-109).

Process

Developing a strategy that provides organizational direction is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, defines the customers it serves, what it produces and why it does it, while focusing on the way forward. This means, the effective articulation of the organizational strategy provides direction as well as the progressive actions needed to move toward defined success.

This process is similar to the project management lifecycle. In the following paragraph both the strategic process development and project management lifecycle are synthesized. These processes follow similar routes through initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control (Kenny, 2003). Linking the lifecycle and strategic process assists with explaining this discussion topic.

Setting the organization’s direction through strategic planning begins with the following generalized steps. First, the organization needs to initiate an open and honest analysis or assessment with the goal of understanding the current/future of internal and external environmental factors (Kenny, 2003; Rumelt, 2011). Next, strategy formulation occurs when a high-level strategic outline is developed as well as a basic plan is documented (Rumelt, 2011). At this point, the strategy execution takes place. This is when the high-level strategic outline is translated into an operational plan with action items. Finally, evaluation and sustainment is undertaken. This is conducted through monitoring and controlling strategic processes. This means conducting continuous refinements and evaluations of organizational performance, culture, communications and other strategic management areas (pp. 97-105).

Advantages of Strategic Thinking

The processes assist with the creation of a strategic vision, which provides multiple advantages to an organization. Firstly, the organizational vision provides a broadly shared sense of organizational direction and meaningful purpose (Rumelt, 2011, p. 113). The importance of providing direction is because few organizations have achieved success by being all things to all customers/stakeholders. Meaningful purpose challenges the organization as a whole to achieve a market leadership position by adopting a vision greater than resources and competencies would normally allow. This results in the establishment of a framework for the missions that require the organization to reach for higher and higher goals.

Without an organizational vision, the individual business branches could pursue isolated goals in which some employees do not identify or understand. For instance, goals such as attaining a 15% increase in customer satisfaction scores would not be a goal shared by the research and development (R & D) branch. Also, without a vision, an organizational goal could be interpreted differently by individual stakeholders.

A clear and concise strategic vision connects goals to the organization’s underlying values and will make it more understandable about how to achieve each particular goal. Therefore, a strategic vision is vital for developing a strategically focused organization and direction within the entity (Kaplan & Norton, 2006). Finally, a clear and concise organizational direction leads to enhanced com­munication, participation and commitment by the workforce.

Decision Model

There are several decision models that aid this process of developing a strategic vision. For the initial/assessment phase, the Rumsfeld matrix and the Black Swan Model assists with developing the known and unknowns, which could be opportunities (Krogerus, Tschäppeler, Piening, & Earnhart, 2017, pp. 84 & 112). In the planning phase of vision development, the Pareto principle assists with focusing efforts toward the majority of the challenges (p. 104). In the execution phase, the Black Box Model may seem to be an odd choice. However, during execution, the strategic direction is focused on accomplishing the goals, so the organization just needs to move toward the strategic vision. The complexities of the development are no longer as important (p. 118). Finally, the monitoring and controlling phase decision model is the Hard Choice Model. This is the process of evaluating processes and making refinements based on information provided (p.74).

Using multiple decision models throughout a process are both useful and harmful. It is useful in that the decision models are specific to the situation being addressed. This aids in focusing a team’s efforts to developing a decision. On the other hand, multiple decision models hinder the process. This is because the team can be easily confused by which model to use and when. To overcome this, communication and clear instruction are required.

Conclusion

A clear and concise strategic vision is utilized to establish an overall direction for an organization. The development is similar to the project management lifecycle of a project, which is defined as the initiation, planning, execution and monitoring/control process groups. In this developmental process, fundamental decisions and actions shape and guide what an organization is, defines the customers it serves, what it produces and why it does it, while focusing on the way forward. This requires several decision models to initiate, plan, execute and monitor the impacts brought on by the strategic direction that will affect the organization. When accomplished properly, an organizational vision provides direction and meaningful purpose to the entire entity.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (2006). How to implement a new strategy without disrupting your organization. Harvard business review, 84(3), 100.

1. In the spreadsheet below, create a Data Table in which the duration is computed as a function of the coupon rate (coupon = 0%, 1%, … , 11%). Comment on the relation between the coupon rate and the duration.

1. 
   
2. What is the effect on a bond’s duration of increasing the bond’s maturity? As in the previ- ous example, use a numerical example and plot the answer. Note that as N → ∞, the bond becomes a consol (a bond that has no repayment of principal but an infinite stream of coupon payments). The duration of a consol is given by (1 + YTM) / YTM. Show that your numerical answers converge to this formula.
3. “Duration can be viewed as a proxy for the riskiness of a bond. All other things being equal, the riskier of two bonds should have lower duration.” Check this claim with an example. What is its economic logic?
5. Replicate the two graphs in section 20.5.