Introduction

Strategic Planning Specialist explores the factors that drive strategic success and failure, and how to harness them for personal and career success.  It is designed for those who are not directly involved in strategy formation, but who wish to understand how strategy impacts the success of their company, and how to apply and lead strategic thinking within their own team.  It provides a perspective and vocabulary for strategic decision-making that enables participants to understand and support the strategic direction of their organisation, and at the same time enhance their own career success. 

Goals

Participants will learn:

• The principles of successful strategic thinking and action
• The principal models of strategic theory and the history of strategic thinking
• How to identify strategic moves by competitors
• How to contribute to strategic success in daily actions
• Why and how their own organisation undertakes strategic change
• How to apply strategic thinking to their own job and that of their team

TRAINING OBJECTIVES

• This programme will enable you to:
• Understand how strategic thinking has developed and evolved over the past fifty years
• Comment effectively on strategy and its implementation within your own organisation
• Differentiate strategy from tactics
• Link strategic decisions to Return on Capital (ROCE) through Value Creation and Market Focus
• Learn the key models and vocabulary to “talk strategy” effectively with others
• Link daily actions and team performance to headline strategy
• Recognise some of the key factors that lead to changes in strategy
• Create your own personal strategy for success

Training Methodology

This programme is an interactive mixture of lecture, discussion groups, team activities and practice on case studies. It provides the latest instructional technologies to enable the delegate to learn and apply the skills and techniques used in the programme.

TRAINING SUMMARY

• Understand the process of formulating, planning and implementing strategy
• Develop strategic thinking skills
• Understand the different types of strategy within an organisation
• Develop strategic management abilities to enable delivery of best value or return on invested capital
• Relate action plans to strategic initiatives and individual performance
• Create conditions that foster achievement of strategic goals within the firm when conditions change
• Understand an alternative approach to competitive strategy
• Recognise and communicate the drivers for strategic change within your organisation
• Create your own personal strategy for personal and professional success

Target Groups

This programme is suitable for any professional who is required to make strategic decisions, and anyone who wishes to learn the principles of strategic thinking and how to apply them in their own job and their own career

Program Content

Day 1 : Strategy Concepts

• Recognise how strategic thinking has developed and how it influences strategies within your organisation
• Understand the importance of vision and values to communicating strategy in organisations
• Identify the key strategies for every organisation
• Distinguish between the process of creating strategy and the content of strategy

Day 2 : The Evolution of Strategic Planning and Strategic Thinking

• Follow the progression of strategic thinking in business, anticipate where strategy may next develop
• Identify the different conceptual frameworks from which strategic thinking has developed and identify which are active in your organisation
• Recognise the commonalities that exist in different approaches to developing and implementing a strategy
• Articulate the conceptual framework of strategy that your organisation uses today

Day 3 : A Process for Creating and Updating Strategy

• Recognise different approaches to creating and updating strategy within an organisation
• Identify the applicability of a particular approach with the characteristics of a firm and of the environment the firm faces
• Match different processes to specific issues or situations that could develop in your firm
• Strategy in the organisation
• Connect the relationship between strategy formation and implementation and day-to-day activities
• Recognise how strategy is created and implemented at multiple levels of the organisation

Day 4 : Strategies for Growth, Profitability and Value Creation

• Articulate the link between growth and profitability in public and private sector organisations
• Understand the key factors that make the difference between strategic success and failure
• Relate Action Plans to strategic initiatives and individual performance
• Create conditions that foster achievement of strategic initiatives within the firm when strategy changes
• Recognise and communicate to others the drivers for strategic change within your organisation
• Use insights from past experiences with business and personal change to support the process of strategic change in your company

Day 5 : Engaging your Organisation in Strategic Thinking

• Ask strategic questions that relate your work to the organisation’s direction and strategic initiatives
• Formulate strategic hypotheses that suggest directions for the firm to consider
• Explore the strategic conversations you want to have when you return to your workplace