Capstone project for Communication & Leadership
Twenty minutes with the managing director
You have 20 minutes with Mangrove Market's managing director to win funding for one bet from your earlier capstones, such as expiry dates at receiving, the cycle-count module, Mangrove Plus or the AI assistant for store managers. The head of store operations opposes the bet, finance has not yet seen your numbers, and the festival season starts in two months. Write a two-page decision memo with the ask in the first lines, a pre-mortem and a clear statement of which parts are one-way and which are two-way doors. Build a five-slide, answer-first deck with action titles. Map the stakeholders and plan how you will work with the head of store operations through her interests. Prepare and rehearse answers to the five toughest questions the managing director is likely to ask. Close with a 90-day plan for the PM who will own the work after approval.
What you hand in
- A two-page decision memo: question title, the ask, recommendation, options on the same criteria, pre-mortem, door types, gates and a review date
- A five-slide answer-first deck whose titles alone tell the story, plus an appendix list
- A stakeholder plan: map with stance, interests, measures and influence lines, the interests worksheet for the head of store operations, and a DACI for the main decision
- A question bank with the five toughest questions, a one-sentence answer and the evidence for each, rehearsed aloud
- A 90-day plan for the owning PM: listening tour, early win and what they will own by day 90
Check your work
Tick each item when your project meets it. Be strict: this is the rubric the reviewer uses.
- Someone who reads only the memo's first paragraph knows who decides, what exactly, and by when
- The options table includes today's way of working and judges every option on the same rows, including reversibility
- Money is labelled as sales or margin, with a low, base and high case and the cost to compare it with
- At least one one-way part of the bet is turned into a two-way door or moved to a later decision
- The top pre-mortem reasons visibly change the plan, each with an owner or a warning sign
- The slide titles are full sentences that tell the whole story when read alone
- The plan for the head of store operations names her interests and how she is measured, and offers an option that serves both sides with a test agreed in advance
- Each tough-question answer is one sentence with one fact, and unknowns are answered with a date instead of a guess
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Model answer
The model answer opens once your capstone passes the review, so you can compare your work with an outline of a strong submission.
Hand in your capstone
Your links are checked automatically, then the work is scored against the rubric above, item by item, with comments. A pass counts toward the course certificate and shows on your profile.
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