In your culminating project, you will be asked to draw upon the theoretical perspective(s) that you have received in class to make sense of your Capsim experience.

• Morgan McCall made clear that management is best learned in situ. While your college education provides you with tools that you can try out in the work world, experience is important. Thus, the Capsim simulation.
• Linda Hill talked about the chaotic nature of management and the misconceptions that one has before he/she sits in the manager’s seat for a while.
• Daniel Goleman reminds us that good managers are resonant people,… They deal with the stress, manage relationships and compose themselves so that they are an asset (not a distraction) to the functioning of their unit. (They do it with a smile on their face, too.)
• John Kotter says that while positional power can be used to get things done, it can be overplayed with decreasing effectiveness. Nothing beatsdemonstrated expertise and a good relationship with others. While a Theory X approach may have worked in previous times (and I even have doubts about its effectiveness in the 1950s and 1960s), do I model a Theory Y management style? By my style, do I exhibit a low lid? Do I stifle creativity by my approach? This has been a recurring theme through a number of sections.
• And what about the ultimate test, which is to understand and work toward improving customer utility through a strategic focus? And organizing your work toward that end? Operational excellence, product excellent or customer intimate?
• Repenning helps us understand the importance of framing questions without baking in the answers and then approaching the challenge in a way that makes the team able to achieve quick, successive victories.
• Good managers start with a self-appraisal,… Do I have the discipline and focus that is conjured up by the image of the hedgehog? Do I model the characteristics of a manager that Abraham Zaleznik identifies? Maybe more important is your answer to the question, “Am I really called to this stuff?” Is this what I really want to do? We do need great artists, nurses, teachers and morticians. Clayton Christensen helps us get a handle on this topic.

So, now it is time to strut your stuff. You get to do 3, one page papers. Choose 3 of the aforementioned themes/perspectives and apply your understanding of them to your experience in the Capsim simulation. Begin each one-page paper with a paragraph that clearly explains the theoretical perspective. Then, apply it to your specific experience. Finally, draw your conclusions. Write in such a way that an uninitiated person could understand both the theory and its application.