Programs

How You Will Benefit

• Understand the difference between operational management and strategic thinking
• Understand what is strategy and how strategic thinking can add value to your organization
• Learn a structured, four-step approach to strategic thinking
• Learn how to apply this approach to different types of organizations – commercial and non-commercial – and to different levels within organization -corporate level, business unit level, functional level
• Understand where mission and vision fits into strategic thinking
• Understand the challenges of strategy execution and the key requirements for successful strategy execution

What You Will Cover

What is Strategic Thinking? Strategy?

• Strategic thinking – formulating strategies that contribute to the success of the organization
• But what is strategy?
• Exploring the concept of strategy in different contexts – military context, sports and games, commercial businesses, public sector and non-profit organizations
• Understanding the situations where strategy is required as opposed to just plans or tactics
• Defining strategy as deliberate choices or decisions to achieve success for the organization within the context of such situations
• But decision on what? What are the key questions to answer in formulating strategy?

Formulating the Strategic Questions to Answer

• Understand that the strategic questions to answer are different for different types of organization (commercial, public sector, non-profit) and for different levels within an organization (corporate, business unit and functional levels)
• Applying the three-step method to identifying the relevant questions to answer in formulating strategy for an organization and for a unit within that organization
• Applying the method to commercial and non-commercial organizations
• Once the strategic question to answer have been identified, fourth step is to find the best answer to these questions – how to do this?

Answering the Strategic Questions

• The Issue Analysis technique as a structured approach to answering the strategic questions identified
• Five key steps in the Issues Analysis technique
• Applying the Issue Analysis technique to answering strategic questions for commercial and non-commercial organizations

Some Strategic Analysis Tools to Help Answer the Questions

• External analysis – customer analysis, competitor analysis, industry structure analysis
• Internal analysis – skills and assets, core competence analysis

Mission and Vision

• What are they? Where do they fit in? What is their value?
• Key elements of a good mission statement and good vision statement
• Differences between a mission and a vision statement
• Framework for creating a mission statement

Strategic Thinking at the Functional Level

• Understanding the role (mission) of the functional unit in support of the overall strategy of the organization
• Applying the same four-step process for formulating strategy at the functional level as at the corporate or business unit levels

Strategy Execution

• Understanding the challenge of strategy execution
• Understanding the key requirements for successful strategy execution
• Assessing your organization on these key requirements

Who Should Attend

Any manager who has been focused largely on operations and now wants to take a more strategic view of his or her responsibilities.