Case Analysis With Discussion: Building the Living Organization and Executing Strategy in Real Time—Mozilla Corporation

Case Analysis With Discussion: Building the Living Organization and Executing Strategy in Real Time—Mozilla Corporation

Keeping all the pieces of an organization aligned, keeping the people focused on the Soulful Purpose of the firm (and that includes the board of directors), is an ongoing and everyday activity. As Wolfe notes, “strategic planning is dead—long live strategy execution” (2001, p. 116). You will explore strategy execution through an analysis of Mozilla Corporation, which is a for-profit entity that is part of the Mozilla Foundation (another hybrid organization like Google.org/Google, which you studied in Week 1).

Bahrami, H. (2013).

People operations at Mozilla Corporation: Scaling a peer-to-peer global community

(University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business Case No. B5774). Retrieved from https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/pl/28623611/28636594/1bd30f72899f4d5b8aa6181dc3a136a0

Post responses to

at least two

of the prompts below for Part A:

Part A: Execution of Strategy at Mozilla

1. 1. How would you describe Mozilla’s cultural and organizational DNA? What, specifically, about the way Mozilla enacts strategy and executes its business plan provides it with such depth?
2. 2. What do you think are the lessons from Mozilla for other knowledge-based organizations, especially in terms of strategy execution and the involvement of people throughout the organization?
3. 3. In what ways is Mozilla more effective at executing strategy than Google.org (case from Week 1)? Why are they more effective?
4. 4. What are the critical challenges that Debbie Cohen faces as chief of people at Mozilla, specifically in terms of strategy execution and alignment? What should she do to meet these challenges, and why?

Part B: Getting Everyone to Participate in Strategic Thinking and Execution

Then, based both on the Mozilla case study and your general thoughts from this course, also respond to this question:

1. 1. Explain how the knowledge and effective practice of cross-functional strategic thinking can help individual stakeholders (people at all levels of the organization and others outside the organization) participate more fully in organizational efforts to improve long-term performance and overall stakeholder engagement.
2. Answers for Part A & B should be ½ single-spaced 2 pages, excluding references