Case Study Problem: Xenon Pastries faces a problem handling larger orders as Christmas Day approaches. With an estimated 15% increase in customer demand, this is the most significant increase in their daily orders since 2012. The management aims to maximize profit opportunities given the rise in customer demand.
ACA #1: Hire part-time workers to increase staff numbers and meet the overwhelming seasonal increase in customer orders. Currently, Xenon Pastries has a total of 9 workers who are responsible for the accommodation of orders, preparation, and delivery of products, and addressing customers’ inquiries and complaints. Hiring 2 – 3 part-time workers can increase productivity and meet the daily order volume.
Disadvantages
ACA #2: Increase the prices of Xenon pastries’ products to increase revenues . This option can maximize Xenon Pastries’ profit even if not all customers’ orders are accommodated.
Case Study Problem: Delta Motors has been manufacturing motorcycles for ten years. Recently, the business suffered a gradual shrink in its quarterly revenues due to the increasing popularity of traditional and newly-developed electric bikes. Delta Motors seeks a long-term strategy to attract potential customers to bounce back sales.
ACA #1: Develop a “regular installment payment” scheme to attract customers who wish to purchase motorcycles but have insufficient lump-sum money to acquire one. This payment scheme allows customers to pay an initial deposit and the remaining amount through smaller monthly payments.
ACA #2: Introduce new motorcycle models that can entice different types of customers. These models will feature popular designs and more efficient engines.
1. how many alternative courses of action (aca) can a case study have.
Sometimes your instructor or teacher will tell you the required number of ACA that must be included in your case study . However, there’s no “standard” limit to how many ACA you can indicate.
As mentioned earlier, the case study’s ACA aims to enumerate all possible solutions to the problem. It is not the stage where you state the “final” action you deem most appropriate to address the issue. The case study portion where you explicitly mention your “best” alternative is called the “Recommendation.”
To help you understand the point above, let’s return to our Delta Motors example. In our previous section, we have provided two ACA that can solve the problem, namely (1) developing a regular installment payment plan and (2) introducing a new motorcycle model.
Suppose that upon careful analysis and evaluation of these ACA, you came up with ACA #2 as the more fitting solution to the problem. When you write your case study’s recommendation, you must indicate the ACA you chose and your reasons for selecting it.
Here’s an example of the Recommendation of the case study:
Recommendation
Introducing new motorcycle models that feature popular designs and more efficient engines to entice different types of customers is the most promising alternative course of action that Delta Motors can implement to bounce back its quarterly revenues and keep up with the competitive market. This creates a strong impression on the public of the company’s dedication to promoting high-quality motorcycles that can withstand changes in consumer preferences and market trends. Furthermore, this action proves that the company is continuously evolving to offer a variety of alternative models to suit everyone’s tastes. With proper promotion, these models can rekindle the company’s popularity in the automotive and motorcycle industry.
Written by Jewel Kyle Fabula
in Career and Education , Juander How
Jewel Kyle Fabula is a Bachelor of Science in Economics student at the University of the Philippines Diliman. His passion for learning mathematics developed as he competed in some mathematics competitions during his Junior High School years. He loves cats, playing video games, and listening to music.
Browse all articles written by Jewel Kyle Fabula
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What is a business case, business case template, how to write a business case, key elements of a business case, how projectmanager helps with your business case, watch our business case training video.
A business case is a project management document that explains how the benefits of a project overweigh its costs and why it should be executed. Business cases are prepared during the project initiation phase and their purpose is to include all the project’s objectives, costs and benefits to convince stakeholders of its value.
A business case is an important project document to prove to your client, customer or stakeholder that the project proposal you’re pitching is a sound investment. Below, we illustrate the steps to writing one that will sway them.
The need for a business case is that it collects the financial appraisal, proposal, strategy and marketing plan in one document and offers a full look at how the project will benefit the organization. Once your business case is approved by the project stakeholders, you can begin the project planning phase.
Our business case template for Word is the perfect tool to start writing a business case. It has 9 key business case areas you can customize as needed. Download the template for free and follow the steps below to create a great business case for all your projects.
Projects fail without having a solid business case to rest on, as this project document is the base for the project charter and project plan. But if a project business case is not anchored to reality, and doesn’t address a need that aligns with the larger business objectives of the organization, then it is irrelevant.
The research you’ll need to create a strong business case is the why, what, how and who of your project. This must be clearly communicated. The elements of your business case will address the why but in greater detail. Think of the business case as a document that is created during the project initiation phase but will be used as a reference throughout the project life cycle.
Whether you’re starting a new project or mid-way through one, take time to write up a business case to justify the project expenditure by identifying the business benefits your project will deliver and that your stakeholders are most interested in reaping from the work. The following four steps will show you how to write a business case.
Projects aren’t created for projects’ sake. They should always be aligned with business goals . Usually, they’re initiated to solve a specific business problem or create a business opportunity.
You should “Lead with the need.” Your first job is to figure out what that problem or opportunity is, describe it, find out where it comes from and then address the time frame needed to deal with it.
This can be a simple statement but is best articulated with some research into the economic climate and the competitive landscape to justify the timing of the project.
How do you know whether the project you’re undertaking is the best possible solution to the problem defined above? Naturally, prioritizing projects is hard, and the path to success is not paved with unfounded assumptions.
One way to narrow down the focus to make the right solution clear is to follow these six steps (after the relevant research, of course):
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Use this free Business Case Template for Word to manage your projects better.
You’ll next need to rank the solutions, but before doing that it’s best to set up criteria, maybe have a scoring mechanism such as a decision matrix to help you prioritize the solutions to best choose the right one.
Some methodologies you can apply include:
Regardless of your approach, once you’ve added up your numbers, the best solution to your problem will become evident. Again, you’ll want to have this process also documented in your business case.
So, you’ve identified your business problem or opportunity and how to reach it, now you have to convince your stakeholders that you’re right and have the best way to implement a process to achieve your goals. That’s why documentation is so important; it offers a practical path to solve the core problem you identified.
Now, it’s not just an exercise to appease senior leadership. Who knows what you might uncover in the research you put into exploring the underlying problem and determining alternative solutions? You might save the organization millions with an alternate solution than the one initially proposed. When you put in the work on a strong business case, you’re able to get your sponsors or organizational leadership on board with you and have a clear vision as to how to ensure the delivery of the business benefits they expect.
One of the key steps to starting a business case is to have a business case checklist. The following is a detailed outline to follow when developing your business case. You can choose which of these elements are the most relevant to your project stakeholders and add them to our business case template. Then once your business case is approved, start managing your projects with a robust project management software such as ProjectManager.
The executive summary is a short version of each section of your business case. It’s used to give stakeholders a quick overview of your project.
This section is meant to provide general information about your projects, such as the business objectives that will be achieved and the project plan outline.
First, you have to figure out what you’re trying to do and what is the problem you want to solve. You’ll need to define your project vision, goals and objectives. This will help you shape your project scope and identify project deliverables.
The project scope determines all the tasks and deliverables that will be executed in your project to reach your business objectives.
Here you can provide a context for your project, explaining the problem that it’s meant to solve, and how it aligns with your organization’s vision and strategic plan.
Depending on what kind of project you’re working on, the quality requirements will differ, but they are critical to the project’s success. Collect all of them, figure out what determines if you’ve successfully met them and report on the results .
It’s time to create the project plan. Figure out the tasks you’ll have to take to get the project done. You can use a work breakdown structure template to make sure you are through. Once you have all the tasks collected, estimate how long it will take to complete each one.
Project management software makes creating a project plan significantly easier. ProjectManager can upload your work breakdown structure template and all your tasks are populated in our tool. You can organize them according to your production cycle with our kanban board view, or use our Gantt chart view to create a project schedule.
Your budget is an estimate of everything in your project plan and what it will cost to complete the project over the scheduled time allotted.
Make a timeline for the project by estimating how long it will take to get each task completed. For a more impactful project schedule , use a tool to make a Gantt chart, and print it out. This will provide that extra flourish of data visualization and skill that Excel sheets lack.
Project governance refers to all the project management rules and procedures that apply to your project. For example, it defines the roles and responsibilities of the project team members and the framework for decision-making.
Have milestones for check-ins and status updates, as well as determine how stakeholders will stay aware of the progress over the project life cycle.
Have a plan in place to monitor and track your progress during the project to compare planned to actual progress. There are project tracking tools that can help you monitor progress and performance.
Again, using a project management tool improves your ability to see what’s happening in your project. ProjectManager has tracking tools like dashboards and status reports that give you a high-level view and more detail, respectively. Unlike light-weight apps that make you set up a dashboard, ours is embedded in the tool. Better still, our cloud-based software gives you real-time data for more insightful decision-making. Also, get reports on more than just status updates, but timesheets, workload, portfolio status and much more, all with just one click. Then filter the reports and share them with stakeholders to keep them updated.
This is a very important section of your business case because this is where you explain how the financial benefits outweigh the project costs . Compare the financial costs and benefits of your project. You can do this by doing a sensitivity analysis and a cost-benefit analysis.
Research your market, competitors and industry, to find opportunities and threats
Identify direct and indirect competitors and do an assessment of their products, strengths, competitive advantages and their business strategy.
A SWOT analysis helps you identify your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The strengths and weaknesses are internal, while the opportunities and threats are external.
Describe your product, distribution channels, pricing, target customers among other aspects of your marketing plan or strategy.
There are many risk categories that can impact your project. The first step to mitigating them is to identify and analyze the risks associated with your project activities.
ProjectManager , an award-winning project management software, can collect and assemble all the various data you’ll be collecting, and then easily share it both with your team and project sponsors.
Once you have a spreadsheet with all your tasks listed, you can import it into our software. Then it’s instantly populated into a Gantt chart . Simply set the duration for each of the tasks, add any dependencies, and your project is now spread across a timeline. You can set milestones, but there is so much more you can do.
You have a project plan now, and from the online Gantt chart, you can assign team members to tasks. Then they can comment directly on the tasks they’re working on, adding as many documents and images as needed, fostering a collaborative environment. You can track their progress and change task durations as needed by dragging and dropping the start and end dates.
But that’s only a taste of what ProjectManager offers. We have kanban boards that visualize your workflow and a real-time dashboard that tracks six project metrics for the most accurate view of your project possible.
Try ProjectManager and see for yourself with this 30-day free trial .
If you want more business case advice, take a moment to watch Jennifer Bridges, PMP, in this short training video. She explains the steps you have to take in order to write a good business case.
Here’s a screenshot for your reference.
Today we’re talking about how to write a business case. Well, over the past few years, we’ve seen the market, or maybe organizations, companies or even projects, move away from doing business cases. But, these days, companies, organizations, and those same projects are scrutinizing the investments and they’re really seeking a rate of return.
So now, think of the business case as your opportunity to package your project, your idea, your opportunity, and show what it means and what the benefits are and how other people can benefit.
We want to take a look today to see what’s in the business case and how to write one. I want to be clear that when you look for information on a business case, it’s not a briefcase.
Someone called the other day and they were confused because they were looking for something, and they kept pulling up briefcases. That’s not what we’re talking about today. What we’re talking about are business cases, and they include information about your strategies, about your goals. It is your business proposal. It has your business outline, your business strategy, and even your marketing plan.
And so, why is that so important today? Again, companies are seeking not only their project managers but their team members to have a better understanding of business and more of an idea business acumen. So this business case provides the justification for the proposed business change or plan. It outlines the allocation of capital that you may be seeking and the resources required to implement it. Then, it can be an action plan . It may just serve as a unified vision. And then it also provides the decision-makers with different options.
So let’s look more at the steps required to put these business cases together. There are four main steps. One, you want to research your market. Really look at what’s out there, where are the needs, where are the gaps that you can serve? Look at your competition. How are they approaching this, and how can you maybe provide some other alternatives?
You want to compare and finalize different approaches that you can use to go to market. Then you compile that data and you present strategies, your goals and other options to be considered.
And then you literally document it.
So what does the document look like? Well, there are templates out there today. The components vary, but these are the common ones. And then these are what I consider essential. So there’s the executive summary. This is just a summary of your company, what your management team may look like, a summary of your product and service and your market.
The business description gives a little bit more history about your company and the mission statement and really what your company is about and how this product or service fits in.
Then, you outline the details of the product or service that you’re looking to either expand or roll out or implement. You may even include in their patents may be that you have pending or other trademarks.
Then, you want to identify and lay out your marketing strategy. Like, how are you gonna take this to your customers? Are you going to have a brick-and-mortar store? Are you gonna do this online? And, what are your plans to take it to market?
You also want to include detailed information about your competitor analysis. How are they doing things? And, how are you planning on, I guess, beating your competition?
You also want to look at and identify your SWOT. And the SWOT is your strength. What are the strengths that you have in going to market? And where are the weaknesses? Maybe some of your gaps. And further, where are your opportunities and maybe threats that you need to plan for? Then the overview of the operation includes operational information like your production, even human resources, information about the day-to-day operations of your company.
And then, your financial plan includes your profit statement, your profit and loss, any of your financials, any collateral that you may have, and any kind of investments that you may be seeking.
So these are the components of your business case. This is why it’s so important. And if you need a tool that can help you manage and track this process, then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager .
Start planning your projects.
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News, tips and features from the Library.
Everyone has goals, be that for lifestyle, health, work or study. These goals give you focus, generate new habits and keep you moving forward in life. However, life is tough, particularly at the moment, so the thought of setting goals can sometimes feel overwhelming. This post will take you through how creating an action plan will help you clarify your goal journey; exploring what your goal is and why you’re setting it, what it will take to achieve, and how you will motivate yourself to reach your destination.
The examples we will focus on will be for study goals, however you can apply this method of goal setting to any aspect of your life.
Before embarking on your shiny new goals, take some time to reflect on your previous goals. Which goals have you successfully achieved? Why were they a success? Is there anything you would do differently this time? Is there a common theme in the goals that you didn’t achieve, such as a lack of purpose?
Ask yourself ‘why’ you are setting this new goal, doing so will help you stay focused and give you meaning and purpose for this potentially challenging journey that you are embarking on.
Your goals need to be SMART:
What is your goal and how can you make it SMART?
EXAMPLE : Your goal is to hand in your dissertation early this summer. This goal, as it is, may feel daunting and unachievable, so how can we make it SMART?
Use our Goal Setting Template to get you started on your SMART goal:
An action plan is a flexible checklist or document for the steps or tasks that you need to complete in order to successfully achieve the goal(s) you have set yourself.
This could be written in a notebook, diary or using the Action Plan Template we have created that you can print off and use. It’s important that you get out your pen and actually write your goals down on paper. Research has shown that this will engage the left-hand, logical, side of the brain – basically telling your brain that you mean business!
Use our Action Plan Template to put your SMART goal(s) into action:
There are always going to be challenges and events that may disrupt your goal, but instead of letting that obstacle derail you, plan for it.
Look at your study goal and identify what the obstacle(s) will be.
EXAMPLE : You want to submit your dissertation in early, but there’s a big family birthday coming up and a Uni field trip planned. So, get your action plan out and make sure these events are accounted for and plan your studies around them.
There is nothing more satisfying in life (well apart from popping bubble wrap) than crossing or checking items off a to-do list – it’s that sense of accomplishment, feeling like you are finally getting there, which in turn reduces stress. So remember to break down your goal into small attainable actions and checklists, and for big projects, such as a dissertation or research project, you might have multiple checklists on the go. Just think of the satisfaction you will feel when it’s all done!
This a very personal aspect of goal setting, but an important one.
To boost your motivation we recommend that you choose a reward for all your successful hard work, but select something that’s in relation to the size of the goal – maybe a piece of cake for getting a First Class degree is a bit out of proportion! Add this reward to your action plan and remind yourself of your incentive on a regular basis. It will keep you motivated when you feel like giving up.
EXAMPLE : If you hand-in your dissertation early you will treat yourself to a night out with your friends before you go on holiday.
You made this goal for a reason – it’s something that you really, REALLY want to achieve, so if your plan isn’t working, change it! Take some time to reflect on what’s working or not working in your action plan, be that daily, weekly, or monthly. Consider – How are you progressing? What changes can you make to bring you closer to your goals? It hard to keep on track when you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere, so are there any quick wins to give you a sense of accomplishment?
EXAMPLE : It’s late at night, you’re tired and struggling to write your dissertation conclusion. Your self-given deadline is in a days time and you are starting to doubt that your goal is achievable – maybe you need to postpone the holiday?
What you need to do is pivot your method – this isn’t working, so what can you change to still achieve your goal? Maybe leave the conclusion for the morning when you feel more awake, but spend the next hour focusing on your reference list so you can tick that off your action plan instead.
Your SMART goals can be about anything and should be quite simple to plan. There’s lots of help online on using SMART goals, but working your way through the acronym for your particular goal is an excellent start. Don’t forget to use our Goal Setting Template and our Action Plan Template to help keep your goals manageable and reduce that feeling of overwhelm with your studies.
P.S. I had to set myself a SMART goal for writing this blog post and my reward was a very tasty lunch ❤
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Court adds seven cases to next term’s docket.
The Supreme Court on Monday added seven new cases to its merits docket for the 2024-25 term, including a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. (That case is covered in a separate story .) In a list of orders from the justices’ private conference on June 20, the court agreed to take up a wide variety of issues, ranging from the interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to compensation for civilians called up for active-duty military service.
Just a few weeks after the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the Supreme Court agreed to take up a case by survivors of the Hungarian Holocaust seeking compensation for the seizure of their property by the Hungarian government.
The issue at the center of Republic of Hungary v. Simon is the interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally bars lawsuits against foreign governments in U.S. courts but carves out an exception – known as the “expropriation exception” – when (among other things) the lawsuit involves property taken in violation of international law and there is a commercial connection between that property and the United States.
The plaintiffs allege that the Hungarian government took their property, sold it, put the proceeds from the sales in the general state treasury, and then later used funds from the treasury in connection with the country’s commercial activities in the United States.
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., agreed that these allegations were enough unless the Hungarian government can show otherwise, while a federal appeals court in New York ruled that the plaintiffs needed to show a connection between the funds from the expropriated property and the commercial activity in the United States. On Monday, the justices agreed to weigh in.
In United States v. Miller , the justices agreed to decide a complicated bankruptcy question that arose after All Resort Group, a Utah transportation firm, filed for bankruptcy in 2017. The bankruptcy trustee attempted to reverse a 2014 payment that the company had made of approximately $145,000 to the Internal Revenue Service to cover the personal tax debts of two company officials. It relied on state law that allows four years to recover fraudulent transfers.
Federal bankruptcy law allows bankruptcy trustees to reverse transfers that a bankruptcy debtor made before filing for bankruptcy if they would be invalid “under applicable law” outside bankruptcy by one of the debtor’s actual creditors. In ARG’s case, the trustee pointed to a debt owed to a former employee, who had sued the company for discrimination and won. But the federal government contended that sovereign immunity would have barred the former employee from suing it to recover the tax payments that ALG had made to the IRS. The question that the justices agreed to take up on Monday is whether a bankruptcy trustee can reverse a debtor’s tax payment to the United States when no actual creditor could have obtained relief.
In Feliciano v. Department of Transportation , the justices agreed to weigh in on whether a federal civilian employee who is called to active military duty during a national emergency is entitled to receive differential pay – compensation for the difference between his civilian pay and his military pay – even if his duty is not directly connected to that national emergency. The question comes to the court in the case of Nick Feliciano, an air traffic controller who was called to active duty in the Coast Guard, where he manned a vessel in and around the Charleston, S.C., harbor.
In Stanley v. City of Sanford, Fla. , the justices will consider a question arising under the Americans with Disabilities Act: Does a former employee lose her right to sue over discrimination in the provision of benefits that she earned while she was employed? The question comes to the court in the case of Karyn Stanley, who worked as a firefighter for the city of Sanford, Fla., for more than two decades before Parkinson’s disease forced her to retire. She filed a lawsuit under the ADA alleging that the city’s benefits policy discriminated against disabled retirees, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that she was not a “qualified individual” protected by the ADA because she was not currently employed by the city.
In Seven County Infrastructure v. Eagle County, Colo. , the court agreed to decide whether the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to examine the environmental effects of proposed actions by the federal government and inform the public of the environmental issues that it considered when making its decisions, requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the immediate effects of the action that the agency has authority to regulate. The question comes to the court in a challenge to the scope of an environmental review by the Surface Transportation Board of a new rail line in Utah.
And in Dewberry Group v. Dewberry Engineers , the justices will consider whether, when a plaintiff obtains an award of the “defendant’s profits” in a lawsuit brought under the Lanham Act for a trademark violation, that award can include an order for the defendant to turn over the profits by a separate corporate affiliate that is not part of the case.
The justices declined to hear the case of James Broadnax , a Black man who was convicted and sentenced to death for the robbery and shooting death of two men, Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler, both of whom were white. At his trial in Dallas, prosecutors used almost half of their peremptory strikes – for which no explanation is required – to remove all seven of the potential Black jurors from the jury pool. (The judge later returned one of the Black jurors to the jury.)
In 2016, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office disclosed a spreadsheet that its prosecutors had used during jury selection to track the race of potential jurors – and in particular, to highlight all of the prospective Black jurors. Five years later, the office disclosed handwritten notes from jury selection about the one of the Black jurors – mentioning that that the prosecutors’ “[o]nly concern” was the parallel between Broadnax’s age and race and that of the juror’s son.
After the Texas state courts rejected Broadnax’s efforts to obtain post-conviction relief, Broadnax came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to take up his case. Arguing that [r]eview is necessary here because the newly disclosed evidence establishes that a DA’s office with a long and notorious history of racially discriminatory jury selection continued to flout this Court’s direction,” he argued that the new evidence establishes “multiple” violations of the Supreme Court’s 1986 landmark decision in Batson v. Kentucky , holding that prosecutors cannot use their peremptory challenges to exclude potential jurors based on their race.
In a brief unsigned order and without any explanation, the justices turned down Broadnax’s request. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated that they would have reversed the state court’s decision.
The addition of seven new cases to the court’s docket brings the total number of cases granted for next term to 23. The cases granted on Monday’s order list will be argued in the fall, with a decision to follow sometime next year.
This article was originally published at Howe on the Court .
Posted in Capital cases , Merits Cases , Cases in the Pipeline
Cases: Stanley v. City of Sanford, Florida , Broadnax v. Texas , United States v. Skrmetti , United States v. Miller , Feliciano v. Department of Transportation , Republic of Hungary v. Simon , Dewberry Group, Inc. v. Dewberry Engineers, Inc. , Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado
Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Court adds seven cases to next term’s docket , SCOTUSblog (Jun. 24, 2024, 10:29 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/court-adds-seven-cases-to-next-terms-docket/
3 focus points for building a stronger business case to prospects.
Julie Thomas, President & CEO of ValueSelling Associates and a noted speaker, author and consultant.
To sell to the C-suite, adding value is essential. It sounds simple, but execution can be tricky. As a sales leader, you must guide your team to craft a compelling business case by emphasizing return on investment (ROI), cost of inaction (COI) and competing initiatives. When your sales team helps customers build this case, they’ll achieve greater success and establish themselves as trusted advisors.
I’m sure your sales team understands a business case is vital to justify actions such as initiating projects, making investments or allocating resources. Building a tailored business case is the next step and involves examining the specific circumstances and financials of each customer, including volume, throughput and measurable outcomes. To do this most successfully, sales professionals can implement the principles of value selling to ensure the business case they present is timebound, measurable and effectively mapped to the business issue an individual client must solve.
When we train B2B sales teams, I often see confusion between the value proposition and value selling. To make the distinction, the value proposition is the company’s “big promise” to the marketplace, but that’s not the same as value selling. Value selling is a sales professional’s ability to take that broad promise of their product or service and sit down with an individual client to quantify the specific impact on the client’s business. It might seem like a small distinction, yet our research shows it’s often the difference that wins the deal.
Value selling aids in the creation of a tailored business case by translating your company's value proposition into measurable, quantifiable outcomes for the customer. It answers the question, “What tangible benefits can we expect from this investment?” This customer-centric approach not only strengthens the business case but also positions your sales team as valued collaborators.
Biden loses train of thought and corrects himself repeatedly in debate with trump, biden’s debate performance torched—even by trump foes—over weak voice and verbal stumbles: ‘hard to watch’.
To make a business case more effective, include specifics about ROI and COI, and understand the impact of other initiatives that could compete with your company’s proposed solution. Let’s delve into how these can be included in the business case.
Understanding ROI is crucial: Will the benefits outweigh the costs? For example, at our company, we show clients how investing in a proven sales methodology yields measurable revenue increases. ROI can also encompass cost savings, such as replacing multiple software solutions with one platform to cut expenses.
However, ROI alone isn't sufficient. The change must be significant and address a pressing problem. Sales leaders should guide their teams to ask, “Would they use our product or service if it were free?” If customers don’t see the value, they won’t buy it. Sales professionals must help prospects connect the dots, drawing a straight line of acknowledgment and confirmation from the business issue to the underlying problems and ultimately to your solution.
When building a business case, use realistic numbers to drive decision-making. While ROI calculators can be helpful, the figures must be believable to create urgency. Overstated savings can backfire, diminishing trust and urgency.
Recognizing the COI is also essential to craft a compelling business case. COI represents the losses incurred from not taking action or delaying decisions when opportunities arise or problems persist. This concept, also known as opportunity cost, is a powerful motivator for decision-makers.
A classic example is Kodak , where engineer Steve Sasson invented the portable digital camera in the 1970s, but the company allegedly didn't fully develop the technology due to concerns about impacting film sales, the company’s bread and butter. When Kodak's digital camera patent expired in 2007, they subsequently filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced significant losses for their inaction.
Encourage your sales team to identify and quantify these costs clearly to understand the potential negative consequences of maintaining the status quo. Whether it’s market share erosion, lost revenue opportunities or increased operational inefficiencies, illustrating COI can drive home the necessity for change. By doing so, your team can effectively motivate clients to move forward with confidence, positioning themselves as trusted resources in the decision-making process.
Help your team understand that even in non-competitive scenarios, their proposals compete for internal funding against other initiatives. Senior management often compares investments across departments. For instance, if the VP of Operations proposes software to automate shipping, the CFO or COO will weigh this against other requests, such as the VP of Sales wanting to hire more staff. Your team needs to build cases that highlight your solution’s superiority and strategic value. They must ensure their proposal stands out against other internal priorities as well. Help them understand that winning in their category is just the first step—they must also make a strong case for securing capital in the boardroom.
Building a robust business case is pivotal for your sales team's success. Guide your team to have meaningful conversations with clients to uncover metrics that demonstrate increased returns and hidden savings. Encourage them to think like an executive and review financial statements, annual reports and relevant news. For privately held companies, investor plans can provide valuable insights.
Aligning sales efforts with the customer’s strategic goals adds value at every step of building a business case. Instill confidence and illustrate clear, quantifiable benefits for your prospects. This value-selling approach helps your team secure the necessary buy-in to win the deal and ultimately create customers for life.
Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?
President Joe Biden's performance in the first debate Thursday has sparked a new round of criticism from Democrats , as well as public and private musing about whether he should remain at the top of the ticket.
In the modern era, a national party has never tried to adversarially replace its nominee, in part, because knows it would most likely fail. The issue came before both parties in 2016, but neither took action.
Party rules make it almost impossible to replace nominees without their consent, let alone smoothly replace them with someone else. And doing so would amount to party insiders’ overturning the results of primaries when Democratic voters overwhelmingly to nominate Biden. He won almost 99% of all delegates.
And at the moment, there’s no known, serious effort to push him off the top of the ticket.
Still, the Democratic National Committee's charter does make some provisions in case the party’s nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. So how would it work?
The only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be for Biden to decide to withdraw, which he has sworn off repeatedly during other bumpy stretches of his campaign.
He could do so while serving out the rest of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968.
If Biden were to drop out before he is scheduled to be formally nominated in August, it would create a free-for-all among Democrats, because there’s no mechanism for him or anyone else to anoint a chosen successor.
It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Biden’s won 3,900 of them. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention.
Because Biden's opponents all won effectively no delegates throughout the Democratic nominating process, there'd be a virtual clean slate heading into the convention, and the decision would most likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden.
Biden would have some influence over his pledged delegates, but ultimately, they can vote as they please, so candidates would most likely campaign aggressively to win over each individual delegate.
However, there's a potentially important wrinkle: Democrats plan to formally nominate Biden virtually ahead of the late-August convention to sidestep any potential concerns about ballo t access in Ohio, where a technical quirk has complicated things
Democrats decided to plan a virtual nomination for Biden after Ohio Republicans balked at passing pro forma legislation that would allow Biden to be on the ballot, even though the convention falls after a state deadline. But while Republicans passed a law to shift the deadline, Democrats decided to move forward with a virtual nomination nonetheless.
There’s no evidence the party would entertain a change without Biden’s consent. But even if it did, there’s no mechanism for it to replace a candidate before the convention, and certainly no way for it to anoint a chosen successor.
If large swaths of the Democratic Party lost faith in Biden, delegates to the national convention could theoretically defect en masse. Of course, they were chosen to be delegates because of their loyalty to Biden and have pledged to support him at the convention.
But, unlike many Republican delegates, Democratic delegates aren’t technically bound to their candidate. DNC rules allow delegates to “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them,” providing some wiggle room.
The party’s charter does include provisions to replace the nominee in the event of a vacancy. The measure is intended to be used in case of death, resignation or incapacitation, not to replace someone who has no desire to step down.
That was the measure that Donna Brazile, then the interim DNC chair, considered invoking after Hillary Clinton collapsed two months before the 2016 election, she wrote in her memoir .
In her memoir, released a year later, Brazile wrote that she was worried “not just about Hillary’s health but about her anemic campaign ... so lacking in the spirit of fight.”
“Perhaps changing the candidate was a chance to win this thing, to change the playing field in a way that would send Donald Trump scrambling and unable to catch up,” she wrote, adding that aides to other would-be candidates contacted her, including then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff.
But after less than 24 hours of consideration, Brazile realized the idea was untenable without Clinton’s cooperation and likely to only divide her party further. “I could not make good on my threat to replace her," she wrote.
Current DNC Chair Jaime Harrison is a longtime Biden ally who serves, essentially, at the pleasure of the president. And the national party has certainly given no indication it’s anything but fully behind his re-election.
To fill a vacancy on the national ticket, the chair can call a “special meeting” of the full DNC, which includes about 500 members. On paper, at least, all it takes is a majority vote of those present to pick new presidential and vice presidential nominees. But that process would most likely be anything but smooth and be filled with behind-the-scenes jockeying and public pressure campaigns.
If a vacancy were to occur close to the November election, however, it could raise constitutional, legal and practical concerns. Among other issues, ballots have to be printed well in advance of the election, and it might not be possible to change them in time.
If Biden were to relinquish the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris would automatically become president — but not the Democratic Party’s nominee. Nor would she necessarily be the nominee if Biden withdrew from his re-election bid while he remained in the White House.
She might be politically favored, but party rules give the vice president no major mechanical benefit over other candidates.
Biden’s delegates wouldn’t automatically transfer to Harris, and the convention holds separate votes on nominees for president and vice president. So she would still need to win a majority of delegates at the convention.
If the top of the ticket were vacated after the convention, she would still need to win a majority of votes at the special meeting of the DNC.
That is all, at least, under current party rules. But a vacancy at the top of the ticket is the kind of dramatic moment that might lead party leaders to revisit them in the name of easing the transition. Harris has some close allies in key places at the DNC, including a co-chair of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. But nothing would be likely to happen without a fight.
Ben Kamisar is a national political reporter for NBC News.
Alex Seitz-Wald is a senior politics reporter for NBC News.
Research/Study Research/Study
Special Programs Climate & Energy
Written by Allison Fisher , Ilana Berger , Evlondo Cooper , Jack Wheatley & John Knefel
Published 06/28/24 6:18 PM EDT
On June 28, the Supreme Court upended 40 years of precedent by overturning Chevron deference , a decision that will restrict federal agencies' regulatory abilities that will also make it easier for corporations to challenge environmental protections, climate action, and rules that protect workers and regulate drugs and financial practices, among other issues.
Undoing Chevron deference has been a central goal of the conservative legal movement and corporate lobbyists for decades, with right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation arguing that “the modern administrative state creates a pervasive system of consolidated power that weakens the checks and balances carefully constructed by the United States Constitution.” Now, Heritage has joined with over 100 other conservative organizations to organize Project 2025 , a comprehensive transition plan to guide the next GOP presidential administration with policy proposals and staffing recommendations. In response to the Supreme Court ruling finally overturning Chevron deference, multiple Project 2025 partners joined right-wing media figures and climate deniers in celebrating the decision.
For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.
The surgeon general says parents should be aware that using the platforms might harm adolescents’ mental health..
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.
From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise and this is “The Daily.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
A rising tide of mental health problems among teens has sent parents, teachers, and doctors searching for answers. This week, the nation’s top doctor offered one. Today, I talk with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy about his plan to take on what he sees as a central threat facing American teens, social media.
It’s Friday, June 21.
Dr. Murthy, nice to see you.
Hey, Sabrina, it’s good to see you, too. You can call me Vivek, by the way. I’m very informal.
Vivek, OK, well, being the nation’s top doctor, I’m inclined to call you doctor, but we can go with Vivek.
Yeah, I’ll tell you, Sabrina. I still think of Dr. Murthy as my dad, so.
Aha, interesting. So you are the country’s surgeon general, and we’re talking to you today because earlier this week, you made a pretty big announcement about the dangers of social media for young people. And you suggested a potential fix for it.
You actually announced this move by writing an op-ed in “The New York Times.” But before we get to that fix that you’re proposing, let’s talk about the problem. When did you start thinking of this as an issue that you should be focused on?
Well, I first started seeing the roots of the youth mental health crisis during my first term as surgeon general. This was during 2014 to ‘17. I was traveling the country listening to communities in big cities and small towns, and I was hearing often about these struggles that young people were having with loneliness and isolation, with depression and anxiety. Over the course of two terms, I have seen this ratchet up with the pandemic pouring fuel on a fire, but a fire that was already burning before the pandemic arrived.
And what specifically were you hearing? I mean, was there a patient you saw or was it something that happened to a friend or your own family that made this problem especially real for you?
Well, actually, there have been a series of things that made it real. One is my own experience personally. As a young person, I struggled a lot with my mental health, with feeling alone and isolated. I was very shy and introverted as a child. And at that time, I thought I was the only one who was struggling. It was only years later, Sabrina, that I actually realized a lot of my classmates were struggling too.
But then I think about the conversations I had as surgeon general, and I heard some stories I expected but many I did not. I remember stopping at a college, and one young woman said to me, I feel like I’m on this campus surrounded by thousands of other students, but nobody really knows me. And I feel like I can’t be myself, and I feel all alone.
I think about the moms and dads who have come to visit me, who have talked about how social media is impacting the mental health of their kids. The one mother whose son was also shy and introverted and struggled a lot with his mental health, was being bullied and was having a really difficult time. And then the algorithm on his social media platform started suggesting to him that he take his own life and started directing him as to how to do that. And he ultimately followed his directions and took his own life.
I heard just countless stories like this of young people who are struggling, parents who are struggling, as well. And those are stuck with me. And those go along with the many statistics we now have that demonstrate that we are indeed living in a profound mental health crisis.
OK, so you’re noticing this problem or this looming problem, and you’re hearing these really tragic stories. How did you go from that kind of anecdotal information gathering to actually studying this issue more closely, to inspect this as a potential health hazard?
Well, once I started hearing those stories and hearing them at such volume and consistency, they’re what really compelled me to dig more deeply into the data and to try to understand what is driving this deeper mental health crisis? It turns out it’s not just one thing. Loneliness and isolation are contributing. The experiences of violence and the fear of violence, particularly gun violence, are contributing to the daily stress and strain that so many families are going through right now. But it turns out, again and again, the issue of social media kept coming up.
So when I decided I needed to dig into this more deeply, I began, essentially, a research project with my team to understand more deeply what is the data telling us about social media and youth mental health? And the data tells us that there is, in fact an association between social media use among young people and the mental health harms that they are experiencing.
The second thing, though, that we know, and this is very important, is we know a lot based on what young people are telling us themselves. 6 out of 10 adolescent girls talk about being approached by strangers on social media in ways that make them feel uncomfortable. A third of young people say they’re staying up till past midnight on their devices. A lot of that is social media use. But nearly half of adolescents are also telling us, on these studies, that using social media makes them feel worse about their body image.
And I want to just caveat this by saying there are still open questions. We want to know more about which populations are most deeply impacted by social media, both positively and negatively.
We want to know what types of use of social media seem to contribute to the most harm and the most benefit. These are really important questions to address, and we should be investing more research in understanding them.
I want to return to something that you said, which is that there’s an association between social media use and mental health problems among young people. So this is a point of dispute within the scientific community, right? There are some studies that show that these two things are associated, in other words, that there’s some relationship there, but there really isn’t much evidence that one actually causes the other, that social media is the reason for the rise in mental health problems.
One of my colleagues, this week, talked to the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association, and she was asking about whether the time a child spent on social media contributed to poor mental health? And he said, and I quote, “the results have been really mixed with probably the consensus being that, no, it’s not related.” What is your response to that?
Well, I think — look, it’s important to look at the research question broadly. What we’re trying to understand, first and foremost, is the answer to the question parents are asking us, which is, is social media safe for my kids? And if you ask researchers, what is the data, tell us about safety, where is the data that tells us these platforms are safe? That data is not there.
So there’s not evidence of safety. There is growing evidence of harm. There is data showing an association between social media use and youth mental health harm. Now, where there are debates and discussions, in the research community, is how big is that association? Is it bigger for boys versus girls? And it seems like it is bigger for girls. Does it differ based on your socioeconomic status, based on other indicators? And those are important questions to debate.
But one of the things that you learn in medicine and in public health, when you’re faced with the real-world problems, is that you have to assess when you have enough information to act, recognizing that you want to continue to get clarity that will continue to hone your approach as time goes on.
To give you an example from a clinical circumstance, if I have a patient in front of me whose blood pressure is dropping rapidly and who is in danger of losing their life, I have to rapidly assess what are the potential causes of that. There could be many different reasons. I’ve got to quickly assess it, and I’ve got to move forward with treating it. And I keep gathering data along the way.
But the risk of inaction, of saying, hold on, let me not take action here, until every question I have is answered, the risk of that is the patient’s life. And that is literally what we are seeing taking place right now. It’s not to say that there aren’t kids who are having some benefits, but the measure of whether we should take action or not is not are some kids getting benefits from social media or not? That is not the threshold.
I lay out in my advisory last year, that there are certain benefits, but getting some benefits does not justify forcing kids to endure significant harms. We can make social media safer. We should so that kids can get the benefits without having to sustain the harms.
So I want to talk more about the warning advisory that you issued last year. As you said, the moment when you first started to act on this. Basically, your thinking was that there were these findings on social media and mental health. They seemed to be related. You were raising the alarm, and you called on parents, on tech companies, and on lawmakers to do more to protect young people. Why did you take that approach?
Well, because I think to address the harms of social media does, in fact, require all of us to ask the question, what can we do to protect our kids? And we all do have a role and responsibility here. But I do think up until now, the vast majority of the burden of managing the harms of social media has been placed almost entirely on the shoulders of parents and kids alone.
Now, think about this for a moment. Because the platforms themselves are designed by some of the best product engineers in the world, supported and resourced by some of the wealthiest companies in the world, and informed by cutting-edge brain science, ultimately to maximize how much time our kids are spending on the platforms. And to tell a parent, who didn’t grow up with these platforms, that they should somehow manage these rapidly evolving tools and keep their kids safe when they don’t even understand the full extent of harms here, that is both unreasonable and unfair. And that is why in the advisory I issued, I called on a number of other players to step up.
And what did you hope would happen after you issued your report last year?
Well, my hope was that a few things would happen. Number one, that policymakers would respond and would come together to start putting in place the kind of safety standards and data transparency requirements and privacy protections that we need. My hope also was that parents and young people would feel seen, would recognize that they’re not alone in their struggles. And finally, I wanted platforms to know that they also have a role here that they still have an opportunity to fulfill.
Social media has been around for nearly two decades. There’s been plenty of time for platforms to make the experience of young people safe, sufficiently safe. It’s one thing to say we’re implementing safety measures. It’s another thing to actually provide evidence that those measures are working to keep our kids safe.
So now we come to this week when you decide to put forward your suggested fix to the problem, and that is a warning label.
Which is something we’re used to seeing on cigarette packages, Surgeon General’s Warning. How exactly would a warning work in practice? I mean, which social media platforms are we talking about, and what would it look like in your ideal scenario?
So a warning label would be a digital warning. It would pop up at a regular basis when individuals used social media. There are important details of what that warning label looks like, what kind of font size it is, what are the literal wording of the warning label, does it have graphics associated with it, what part of your screen does it appear on? Those questions are typically answered in a scientific process that takes place after Congress authorizes a label.
Lastly, it’s important for people to know that there is data about warning labels and their effectiveness. We have now decades of experience with tobacco and alcohol warning labels. And what they tell us, particularly from tobacco, is that these labels, when done right, can be effective in increasing awareness and changing behavior.
But what gave you the idea to propose this? Is it a reflection of any frustration that not enough has been done after you issued your report last year?
Well, it’s a reflection more of the fact that we all have to look at every tool we have in our toolbox and use them to help address the harms that we may be seeing here with social media. And in our case, a surgeon general’s warning is one of those tools.
I want to be very clear that a warning label, in my mind, is not the entire fix to the harms that social media poses to our kids. I still firmly believe what I stated last year in my advisory and what I called for this week in the op-ed, which is Congress ultimately needs to make social media safer. And the way to do that is by putting in place measures that protect kids from harmful content and from manipulative features that lead them to excessive use. That is what Congress has to do. Alongside that, a warning would help parents and kids understand the risks that we see.
But let me separately say that if you’re asking, am I frustrated or concerned that there hasn’t been enough action? Absolutely yes. Look, I think all of us should be deeply concerned about how long it has taken for us to ultimately take action to make social media safer. We’ve got to do better. And that starts, ultimately, with the platforms as well as with Congress stepping up to take action.
We’ll be right back.
I wanted to ask you, Dr. Murthy, about the benefits, actually, because we’re talking that this is a complicated problem, but that there are benefits, of course. You know, social media can be particularly helpful for marginalized kids, people maybe who don’t have access to a supportive group of people around them, that it is meaningfully good in their lives. So how do you think about putting a warning label, kind of, just in a blanket way on all social media platforms in that respect?
So, I think about a warning label is providing people with information about their risk of harms. Now, risk of harm doesn’t mean that every single person is harmed. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t benefits, as well. That’s true with tobacco. It’s true with alcohol. And we have warning labels on both of those products.
But what it does mean is that there are significant risks that people should be aware of. And when it comes to special populations and groups of people and individuals who are helped by social media, we also have to look at the full picture there. Think about LGBTQ youth for a moment.
We do know, that in some cases, social media can be a way for LGBTQ youth to find community, to find support that, in some cases, they may not have in person, right? That can be positive. But what is less mentioned, is the fact that LGBTQ youth are much more likely to be bullied and harassed on social media compared to straight youth.
So how do we put that together? How do we balance those? The bottom line is, that we can’t assume, as I worry we have been doing in some of the debate around this, that because there are some benefits, that justifies all the harms, that it means we shouldn’t talk about the harms.
People have compared this moment in social media to moments in America when new media arrived on the scene and created a kind of social panic or say, new things arrived on the scene and created a kind of social panic TV, video games. That these things would be dangerous for kids. That these things would be bad for kids growing up and for their brains and all of that. What do you say to that criticism that maybe right now we’re just in the midst of another moral panic about this because we don’t quite understand it yet? What do you say to that?
Well, I think it’s an important question to consider. We want to make sure our responses are appropriate to the gravity of the situation. But in the case of social media, there’s something here that is fundamentally different from some of the other technologies that have cropped up and created temporary moral panics, whether that was TV, radio, even going way back, the printing press and books.
What’s different here, is that social media has fundamentally transformed childhood in a way that these previous technologies did not. When TV came onto the scene, I wasn’t bringing my TV into my bed and watching it throughout the night. I wasn’t able to be contacted by strangers through the TV in ways that would lead to bullying and exploitation. I didn’t have my personal data stolen because I was watching TV in ways that also could lead to exploitation and abuse.
All of these things are very unique to social media and the pervasiveness of it, the fact that young people can now carry it in their pockets and have 24/7 access to it, that has fundamentally changed the game. And this point is just important to underscore. Adolescents are not little adults. They are fundamentally in a very different stage of brain development.
And in that stage of brain development, their impulse control hasn’t developed as much. They are more susceptible to social comparison and social suggestion. So the things that, even to us adults, might seem as just willpower questions, you might just say it’s a balance. Just draw a few boundaries around your use of social media, no problem. One would argue it’s quite hard for adults to do that, by the way, but especially for young people, this is exceedingly hard.
And Sabrina, I got to say that, for me, and I know for many others, this is very personal. I’m a father of two young kids who’s watching them grow up you faster than I would like every day and who’s seeing the world coming at them rapidly. And I know I’m not alone as a parent.
And I think about the day when they come up to me and ask me if they can have a social media account. I think about what’s going to happen when their friends are bullied and harassed online. How are they going to respond? Are their friends going to feel comfortable talking to them about it? These are the questions that all of us have to grapple with as parents.
How old are your children?
My kids are six and seven now, and even though they’re young, I will say that a couple of years ago, when my daughter was in preschool, she came home one day and asked us about posting a picture on social media.
That’s how early it’s coming at us.
And what did you say to her?
We said no, and she went on her way, and she was fine. But this is going to happen more and more. It’s happening earlier and earlier to kids. And parents are out there trying to manage this all on their own. There’s no manual for how to manage social media for your kids. There’s no set of ideal practices for how to tailor your kid’s needs to the evolving nature of social media.
That’s actually why I believe that parents need to also come together and support one another around taking a set of shared rules so that not only is it easier for us, but it’s easier for our kids. When we tell our kid, for example, as my wife and I are planning to do for our kids, that we are not going to consider them being on social media until at least after middle school, it will be helpful to us if there are other parents in our friend community and our school community who are doing the same because then we can say, no, you’re not the only one, but Bobby and Mary and Jack are also waiting until after middle school.
And are there other parents who want to do the same to wait until after middle school? Or are you guys outliers?
Well, so this is what has been fascinating, obviously, even in our own school community. In the last few weeks alone, there has been more conversation in our school about how to manage technology for our kids. And there are many more parents than I had even realized, in our school, who want to wait until later. But the reason many don’t is because they want to assume that everyone is just doing this. They don’t want their kid to be left out. So this is a collective action problem.
But many of them are also unsure how to manage some of those harms or may not even be sure what the harms are. And there’s a lot of pressure too. The number of parents I talked to who say, my child came up to me and said, if you don’t let me open up an account on social media, I’ll be the only one —
— in my class. I’ll be left out. Do you want me to be more lonely? And if you’re a parent facing that, of course you don’t want your child to be lonely. So I really feel for parents because our kids shouldn’t be alone in this, and we shouldn’t be alone either, as parents, in managing social media.
So as the daughter of parents who decided that their child should not have a television, I can identify with those kids who say, I feel more lonely.
You’re not part of the conversation. You can’t participate in the games because you don’t hear, and you don’t see, and it is difficult. It’s the hardest thing for a parent, right? Are you worried that could happen to you that your kids — you would somehow kind of deepen the loneliness? I mean, you yourself were a lonely child growing up, you said. How do you think about this?
Well, this is why I think it’s so important for us to build this broader movement together, to reengineer the relationship that our kids have with technology. Because imagine if we delay the age at which kids start using social media. Imagine even after they use social media, if we build tech free zones in their lives, in their days to protect sleep, in-person interaction, physical activity, and learning. Think about what we would do and could do with that time.
I think about the school in Indiana that I went to, which had put in place restrictions around the use of social media and phones during class time. And they said that what they noticed was kids started playing games together in the library, and in the hallway, they were talking more. The volume in the hallways went up. And this has been one of the most striking things to me about the college tours that I’ve done. I remember college as a time where the most noisy place on campus was the dining hall.
Because everyone was coming together to talk about what they did. It was just you could barely hear yourself think.
These days, when I go to college campuses, and particularly the dining halls, it’s quiet because people are on their devices, they’re listening to music on their iPod, they’re on their laptops. And one of the most chilling questions that I got on the college tour, again and again, from kids, was how were we supposed to build connection with one another when the culture isn’t for people to talk to each other anymore? Just think about that for a minute.
They’re saying the culture is not for people to talk to each other anymore. We have to rebuild the spaces where people can talk to each other, where our kids can talk to each other, where they can discover things together, where they can agree and disagree together, but where they can do that in a way that helps them build healthy relationships, negotiate disagreement, and build friendships.
So let’s say that Congress goes along with this, and warning labels start to appear on social media online. We’re now almost 20 years since the advent of the smartphone. 2007 was the first iPhone. I remember getting one. Entire generations have formed their habits around these devices.
And as we’ve discussed, there have been some real benefits, but also there are some steep societal costs.
Someone, I read somewhere, put it that our kids are now this giant human, real-time, real-life laboratory of what all of this is going to mean. So is a label actually going to unwind that? Is it too late to unwind this?
I don’t think it’s too late. I think about smoking in our country. In 1964, when the first Surgeon General’s Report on Tobacco was issued. At that time, 42 percent of Americans smoked. There were advertisements everywhere for smoking that kids could see. It was just seen as part of the culture.
And there were people, at that time, who said, the notion that you’re going to get people to stop smoking just seems unrealistic. But the combination of not just a report but all of the action that that report helped to promote and unleash community education programs, advocacy from parents, legislation from Congress and from state and local legislatures. Together, over the years, that helped us take us from 42 percent to below 12 percent. That helped us save countless lives.
So is it going to be easy to change and re-engineer our relationship to social media and to make social media safer? No, it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be complicated. But I firmly believe that, as a nation, America can do hard things. We’ve done hard things before. And what better time than on this issue when what’s at stake is the mental health and well-being of our kids?
Do your kids know what your job is?
[LAUGHS]: My kids now know that I’m the surgeon general, but I don’t know that they know what that means. They know that I wear a uniform. And they know that I do a lot of interviews and talks, but I’m not sure that they entirely know what my day job is. They just know it has to do with health.
In my house, when you ask who’s a doctor in the house —
— my kids point to my wife. And we often have to remind them that, hey, daddy’s a doctor, too. So [LAUGHS]: it’s one of the humbling things about being a parent, and I love it.
Do they know anything about what you did this week?
They know that I was doing a lot of media because they saw me on TV here and there when they were walking past their grandparents’ television. But they don’t really know, otherwise. They don’t really know what — really, what social media is, at this point. But that is going to change any day now. It’s coming.
Do you think that, potentially, what you’re doing now means that they will be more protected?
I hope so, yeah. I mean, we do the work we do, as parents, I do the work I do, as a dad, not only because I want to serve, but because I want the world to be better for my kids.
And that’s what guides me here too.
I want my kids to grow up in a world where the technology and the tools that are in front of them help them and don’t harm them. I want them to grow up in a world where we are more connected with one another, where they can build friendships, and they can seek out other kids who may be struggling with loneliness and help them feel less alone and know that there’s somebody who’s got their back.
If I’ve learned one thing, in my life, it’s that we really do need each other. My wife and I, as much as we love our kids, we can’t make sure the whole world is safe for them by ourselves. We can’t make sure that they grow and encounter healthy levels of adversity just on our own. This is something we’ve got to do together as parents.
And so I do hope that the work that I do will have some small contribution to making the world better for them. But I also know that to fulfill that hope, it’s going to take all of us working hand in hand and keeping our North star clear, which is, ultimately, taking care of our kids. Because as a dad, I just don’t know what’s more important than that.
Dr. Murthy, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much, Sabrina. I really appreciate the chance to talk with you about this. [MUSIC PLAYING]
You can hear more discussion of the surgeon general’s social media recommendation on this week’s episode of “Hard Fork.”
Here’s what else you should know today. On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld a tax on foreign income that helped finance the tax cuts that President Donald Trump imposed in 2017 in a case that many experts had cautioned could undercut the nation’s tax system. The vote was 7 to 2, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and by the court’s three liberals. The ruling avoided what many feared could have been fiscal chaos by upholding, for now, the structure of the income tax system.
And Donald Sutherland, the actor who played a laid-back battlefield surgeon in the film “M*A*S*H” and a soulful father in the movie “Ordinary People,” died on Thursday, in Miami, at the age of 88. Sutherland was known for his wide range. He had the ability to both charm and unsettle, to reassure and repulse. Across six decades, starting in the early 1960s, he appeared in nearly 200 films and television shows. Some years, he was in as many as half a dozen movies.
A quick reminder to catch a new episode of “The Interview” right here tomorrow. This week, Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer about why she wants to meet one of the men convicted of plotting to kidnap her in 2020.
I’d like to understand what drove this group of people to undergo this exercise to try to kidnap me and kill me. I want to understand it. What is happening —
You think there’s something to understand?
Maybe. Maybe there’s not. But I’d like to see.
Today’s episode was produced by Lynsea Garrison, Rob Szypko, Alex Stern, and Rikki Novetsky. It was edited by Lexie Diao and Michael Benoist, contains original music by Dan Powell and Chelsea Daniel and was engineered by Alison Moxley. Special thanks to Ellen Barry. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.
That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you on Monday.
Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise
Produced by Lynsea Garrison , Rob Szypko , Alex Stern and Rikki Novetsky
Edited by Lexie Diao and Michael Benoist
Original music by Dan Powell and Chelsea Daniel
Engineered by Alyssa Moxley
Warning: This episode contains mentions of bullying and suicide.
A rising tide of mental health problems among teenagers has sent parents, teachers and doctors searching for answers. This week, the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, offered one: social media.
Today, Dr. Murthy discusses his proposal to require platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to include warning labels, like those that appear on tobacco and alcohol products.
Dr. Vivek H. Murthy , the U.S. surgeon general.
Dr. Murthy cannot unilaterally impose warnings on social media; the action requires approval by Congress .
Read a guest essay by Dr. Murthy: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms .
There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.
We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.
The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.
Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.
An earlier version of this episode misstated one of Donald Sutherland’s most notable roles. He starred in the film M*A*S*H, not the television series that followed.
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An action plan is a detailed outline that breaks down the steps necessary to achieve a specific goal. Here are the typical components of an action plan. 1. Objective or Goal. The cornerstone of your action plan is the objective or goal. This should be a clear and concise statement outlining the desired outcome or result.
Example Action Plan. Goal: Increase sales by 20% within the next 6 months (By January 1st, 2025) Actions: 1. Improve online presence a) Revamp website design - Due October 15th b) Optimize website for SEO - Due November 1st c) Post regularly on social media (1x/week min) - Ongoing. 2.
Read: 8 steps to create a contingency plan to prevent business risks Action plan vs. project plan. A project plan is a bit more complicated than an action plan. Project plans are blueprints of the key elements your team needs to accomplish to successfully achieve your project goals.
The fundamentals to getting an action plan together for any project follow these four project planning basic steps: 1. Define Your Project Goals. There's a difference between project goals and project objectives. Project goals refer to the high-level goals that the project will achieve.
An action plan is designed to guide your way to accomplishing your goals. It turns your vision into actionable goals and steps. And it helps you stay focused and motivated. From an individual employee in an organization to larger departments can make use of action plans to steer their way towards completing their goals.
Create an action plan on Canva Docs and keep the momentum going until you reach the finish line. Your doc will empower the team to do all the steps needed to achieve project success. An action plan is a document that lists the steps needed to reach your goal. Create an action plan with our free templates and examples.
2. Create a list of actions. Next, create a list of tasks you need to complete in order to reach your goal. This process entails dividing your main goal into smaller objectives. By doing so, you can make the final goal seem less overwhelming and move closer to it in an organized, step-by-step manner.
Edit and Download. 10. Sales Action Plan. Create a colorful sales action plan using this template. It will help you explain how you will operate and manage the sales process to skyrocket your sales. Set goals to manage your inventory, project sales, expenses, timeline and many others.
Provide a detailed, step-by-step plan of action that considers the resources required, timeline, and expected outcomes. Example of a solution or intervention for a case study: ... Visual aids will make it easier to grasp key concepts and make your case study more engaging and enjoyable. It breaks up the text and allows readers to identify key ...
An action plan, also sometimes referred to as a plan of action, helps order project tasks in a sequential and timely manner to achieve a goal. Project managers and individuals can use action plans to achieve their work and personal project goals. Developing an action plan clarifies the goals to be achieved, the teams and service providers to ...
Case study examples. While templates are helpful, seeing a case study in action can also be a great way to learn. Here are some examples of how Adobe customers have experienced success. Juniper Networks. One example is the Adobe and Juniper Networks case study, which puts the reader in the customer's shoes.
Your case study should have an attention-grabbing headline, great visuals and a relevant call to action. Other key elements include an introduction, problems and result section. ... Planning & Preparation: Highlight your goals for writing the case study. Plan the case study format, length and audience you wish to target.
While, as its name implies, this section comes at the beginning of your case study, write it last. First, craft the rest of your document, then pick the most important bits and compile them into the introductory overview. 2. Explain the problem in question. "Adam caught a flat tire. In the middle of the desert.
Explore 10 case study examples and learn how to create your own. ... Another highlight is a brief section detailing the future course of action, conveying that the journey of success is ongoing with additional feature enhancements. ... Collaborative work management platforms like ClickUp can help you plan and execute your case study project ...
Action Items. Continue face-to-face marketing effort as capacity for growth allows. Hire new personnel as required by growth demands. Transfer all day-to-day activity management to new managers. Establish Executive Reporting structure and regular meeting agenda. Critical Success Factors: Management Team Development. Succession Plan.
If you're ready to get started, follow this step-by-step guide. 1. Identify your project goals. First, figure out what your desired outcome is. Start to think about the goal from a big-picture perspective. Define what your goal is and from there, you'll be better equipped to put together an action plan template. 2.
4. Track your progress. The best part of having an effective action plan involves witnessing your progress. Once you set goals, brainstorm tasks, and put them in a document, print out your list and put it somewhere visible. As you complete each item, tick them off one by one.
Yin (1994) defines case study as an empirical research activity that, by using versatile empirical material gathered in several different ways, examines a specific present-day event or action in a bounded environment. Case study objective is to do intensive research on a specific case, such as individual, group, institute, or community.
5. action plan: goals based on the argument specific steps realistic short- and longterm steps responds to major risk of plan Tips for a successful case analysis: Your reader does not want a transcript of your thinking or a lengthy summary of the case. Your reader wants the product of your thinking.
Here are the steps on how to write the Alternative Courses of Action for your case study: 1. Analyze the Results of Your SWOT Analysis. Using the SWOT analysis, consider how the firm can use its strengths and opportunities to address its weaknesses, mitigate threats, and eventually solve the case study's problem.
TOOL 11: SAMPLE CASE STUDIES & ACTION PLANST. S & ACTION PLANS Case Study 1 - Salem Selam is a 17 years old wom. n living in rented accommodation in Beirut. She lives with her moth. r, father, five sisters and three brothers. Salem is unable to spe. k and needs assistance with her daily care. Her mother, Amani, and her two younger sisters ass.
13. Financial Appraisal. This is a very important section of your business case because this is where you explain how the financial benefits outweigh the project costs. Compare the financial costs and benefits of your project. You can do this by doing a sensitivity analysis and a cost-benefit analysis.
Identify the key problems and issues in the case study. Formulate and include a thesis statement, summarizing the outcome of your analysis in 1-2 sentences. Background. Set the scene: background information, relevant facts, and the most important issues. Demonstrate that you have researched the problems in this case study. Evaluation of the Case
Learn how a large manufacturing client increased employee interest and participation in their 401(k) plan.
Use our Action Plan Template to put your SMART goal (s) into action: 4. Plan for obstacles. There are always going to be challenges and events that may disrupt your goal, but instead of letting that obstacle derail you, plan for it. Look at your study goal and identify what the obstacle (s) will be.
(That case is covered in a separate story.) In a list of orders from the justices' private conference on June 20, the court agree. Breaking News. Cases. ... requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the immediate effects of the action that the agency has authority to regulate. The question comes to the court in a challenge to ...
Selling On Value Vs. Your Value Proposition. I'm sure your sales team understands a business case is vital to justify actions such as initiating projects, making investments or allocating resources.
Still, the Democratic National Committee's charter does make some provisions in case the party's nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is ...
Horace Cooper of the National Center for Public Policy Research posted that "Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal agency power in Chevron case." He added, "Make no mistake, having a ...
Warning: This episode contains mentions of bullying and suicide. A rising tide of mental health problems among teenagers has sent parents, teachers and doctors searching for answers.