Toolbox Exercise – Coat of Arms and Mission Statement

 NOTE REGARDING TOOLBOX EXERCISES – These exercises are meant to be cumulative in nature. Each week we will perform an exercise that will serve as the foundation for your Strategic Plan and Final Presentation. Your frame of reference for these exercises should be the shoe company you manager on the Business Simulation Game.

One of the challenges that your team may have with this exercise is how to complete it in a virtual environment. No doubt, it would be a lot easier if we could all be together with a flip chart and a box of markers. That said, one of the purposes of this exercise is to have your team figure a way around this constraint in order to complete a deliverable. Dealing with constraints of this sort is something that teams do every day!

There are a myriad of technical solutions that you can use to complete this exercise. You can have the record keeper open a PowerPoint presentation in which the members pass around results from searches for images on the internet. Everyone can do their own PowerPoint which is submitted to the facilitator who makes the final decision. Each member can also be assigned a particular quadrant of the Coat of Arms.

A technical solution that's really neat is called Prezi. This is a free, online software in which all team members can openly collaborate. If you're interested in checking it out, please go to http://prezi.com. No matter what you choose, remember to work with the end in mind. You're building a Coat of Arms and Mission Statement for your shoe company. Here's what your team needs to do.

Using the Coat of Arms image found below and on your Virtual Team Page, use whatever technology your team agrees upon to insert appropriate images as a representation for the below questions. IMPORTANT – ensure that you do not use images that are protected by copyright law. Microsoft clipart is generally open for use.

·         What is your company's reason for being?

·         What product or service does your company sell?

·         What is your company's scope of operations?

·         What are some unique characteristics of your company?

·         What sort of ethics are embodied by your company?

·         Who is your company's customer base?

·         What is your company's name?

·         Create a Mission Statement for your company that embodies your Coat of Arms.

·         Upload or link your Coat of Arms and Mission Statement to your Company's Discussion Page.

·         Your team's facilitator should upload the agreed upon Coat of Arms and Mission Statement to this assignment.

Download the Coat of Arms template image.