Course Description

 

What is strategy? What is strategic management?

'A strategy is a cohesive entity of programmes, projects and policies that concentrate and fuse corporate resources to enable an organisation to gain and sustain its competitiveness and capabilities for self-renewal.'

'Strategic management is the planning and delivery of the programmes and projects by harnessing resources that, within a measured timespan and in accordance with agreed performance criteria, will enable an organisation to fulfil its business objectives.

 

 

Course Objective

 

 To define and to demystify the concepts of ‘strategy’ and ‘strategic plans’, but also to demystify the strategic process - as part of ‘Helicopter Thinking’

To break it down step-by-step, providing a toolkit for each key stage

To illustrate it through some well chosen and highly stimulating case studies - and to distil the lessons from this

To apply it to some of your own management issues - through planning the analysis, option generation, choice and implementation phases of strategy

To put this within the overall context of the organisation and of the change and influencing process generally

To give you a lot more confidence in managing your role strategically within your organisation

 

Organisational Impact

 Much better decision-taking and time and resource allocation - leading to better organisational and individual performance

 Use of a well proven planning process

 More effective implementation

Personal Impact

 Increasing career flexibility (vertically and horizontally)

 Accelerated thinking speed and problem resolution for all difficult dilemmas

 Far greater motivation and proactivity

Competencies Emphasised

 ‘Helicopter’ (visionary) thinking

 Creativity

 Strategic influencing

 Strategic leadership

 Problem-solving

 Prioritisation

 Implementation

 Change management

 Imagining the future

 Business analysis

 Strategic team working

 Strategic presentation skills

 

Who Should attend?

 

This seminar is designed for professionals from any industry who may find it hard to take a ‘bigger picture’ view of business issues - both within and outside of the strategic planning process. Typically you will have some experience of planning but present and future job challenges imply that you need to step up to a new level of competence in this area, or simply in strategic thinking generally.

Course Outline

 

Day 1: Strategic Thinking and Analysis

 What is strategy/strategic planning?

 What are the main conceptual frameworks?

 External analysis - understanding and analyzing business attractiveness - ‘PEST’ factors, growth drivers, competitive forces, market dynamics

 Benchmarking your own strategic position/competitor analysis

 Mini-case on importance of external analysis

Day 2: Internal Analysis and Fusion of Analyses into Strategic Options

 Overview of day one

 Internal analysis: financial and non-financial – the balanced scorecard concept

 Mini-case on importance of internal analysis

 Fusion of analyses into strategic choices - SWOT and the strategy matrix

 The framework of a strategy: avoiding 'paralysis by analysis'

Day 3: Scenarios and Strategic Innovation

 Review of the tools used so far

 Putting a strategic plan together – the 5-page framework

 Strategies for alliances and joint venturesExercise on one’s own influencing skills

 First-phase work on the main case study

Day 4: Global Strategy and the Management of Internal Communication

 The essence of gobalisation and global strategy

 How to build and manage a strategic planning team

 Communicating strategy through the organization

 Second-phase work on the main case study

Day 5: Strategic Implementation and Getting the Value Out of Strategy

 Final-phase work on the main case study and group presentations

 Effective execution - converting rigorous analysis and planning into action

 Strategic planning of your own career

 Summary of the corporate and individual value of strategic thinking