A640.4.4.RB- Developing a Case (Post-Analysis)

First and foremost I must say that I did not anticipate taking Cases in Leadership, a case study course, as my last elective and final course prior to capstone. But here I am and almost at the half way mark. This week we were challenged in developing a case study based on the readings and our own experiences.

Without exaggeration, when a student reaches this point they are about five hundred assignments in which includes discussions, blogs, papers, case studies, concept maps, quizzes,, presentations,  literature reviews, and team projects. Maybe a hodgepodge of a few other things, too. This being said, I have reached the point where I have discussed my current organization at length, beyond length actually, and have hit a wall with that so I wanted to dig into material that is a littler fresher and untapped.  A renewed resource of inspiration helped a limited amount.

In light of the exercise of building my own case study this week I felt a post-analysis of my trials and tribulations was in order. The following are my unfiltered thoughts and reflection of the ordeal.

As my name is Casey it is very difficult to write “case” over and over and leave off the “Y” so writing a case study and not a Casey study was a typing challenge in itself.  I think it was such a great idea at the Graduate level to have us developing cases but I underestimated how difficult I found it.

I wondered if building a case would help me in my understanding and analysis of cases in the future. Unfortunately for me that is a resounding no. In math there is a concept called “FOIL” first, outer, inner, last for the proper order for tackling equations. As you become more advanced you are called upon to reverse FOIL. With FOIL you have to figure out how to work the problem and reverse FOIL means that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men have to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Full disclosure, I am subpar with mathematics so I just figured out how to do the other types of problems better and skip what did not work for me personally. I haven’t thought of reverse FOIL since my first year of college so imagine my surprise that I felt like it was haunting me again. I am not sure that doing a case study in reverse helped me in the way that one might expect. I do not feel like I understand case analysis better. Forget helping out reverse FOIL, my brain now needs those king’s horses and men to help me put it back together again.

I hit a major writer’s block and everything was suddenly so incomprehensible as if I had never read a case study ever in my life. I think another problem was that I wanted to write the most stellar case possible right out the gate for my first try. I wanted to write the Hunger Games of case studies but instead it was more like when I tried to write my first poem in third grade. It takes practice and it takes work to become accomplished.  

Some issues with relevant to development is that it requires having a vision. Just like the creation of any art such as music or writing in other genres, if you do not have a voice or a point of view the case is not going to have any impact. Cases need to be relatable to real life situations that could be encountered in an organization and also needs to have a learning outcome. What is it that this case is saying? In reading this problem what are you learning? What is it important and why do you need to know how to handle it? There also needs to be a connection to real theory not an unfounded idea.

Bottom line I think that what I realized is that making a case study is harder than you think. I flopped around like a fish out of water before getting a full paragraph on the page. If anything I will have a matured appreciation when I read an interesting and well-written case from this point forward. It is one thing to do it but it is another to do it well.