Workshop on Advanced Strategic Management

Program overview:

Companies constantly have to adjust their strategy and be more and more versatile. Research shows that 70% of strategic plans end up being nothing more than an intention. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on management. Managers are asked to have strong vision and make strategic choices that have a big influence on the organization’s performance.

Competence in strategy formulation and management has become a distinguishing factor in the competitive business environment.

This 5 days’ program is designed to assist participants develop skills needed in setting the organization’s strategic direction. It will help participants refresh their knowledge of strategic planning and increase confidence in the use of corporate planning tools and approaches. This will include the ability to align the organization’s internal capabilities to unpredictable external factors, which is crucial for success.

For whom:

This program is designed for senior level executives who are saddled with the strategic direction of their organizations such as Chief Executive Officers, Directors, Company Secretaries, Chief Financial Officers, Heads of Department, Directors of Human Resources, Directors of Business Development, Strategic Advisors, Senior Managers and Project Directors

Learning objectives:

At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• translate the complexity of the environment into clear guidelines for the strategy;
• make the what, why and how explicit in a clear and robust vision;
• work with innovative strategic frameworks;
• settle on your strategic execution processes and optimize them;
• turn your strategic objectives into a set of KPI’s and use them as your performance measure;
• implement relevant technological trends into your strategy in a clever way;
• make your own organization versatile enough to respond to future changes; and
• match the talents of your organization with the strategy.

Course outline:

Day 1: Formulating Strategy to Achieve Vision

• Agree vision, mission, culture and values of organization
• Analyze where organization is now
• Decide where the organization wants to be, and by when
• Selecting best strategic options to get there
• Structures, Processes and Procedures
• Budget creation, monitoring and control
• Costing techniques and margin management
• Resource allocation and balancing priorities
• Creating systems to monitor effectiveness of implementation

Day 2: Measurement and Reporting

• Setting long-term goals and manageable short-term targets
• Building contingencies into the strategy
• Measuring at clearly-defined milestones
• Reporting and incorporating feed-back
• Stakeholder Identification
• Identify who affects or is affected by proposed strategy (stakeholders)
• Encourage stakeholder ownership through involvement in strategy creation
• Clarify benefits and implications for each group of stakeholders
• Turn resistance into support

Day 3: Systematic Strategic Communication

• Two-way communication for stakeholders to inform and

be informed

• Identify and use a variety of methods and channel
• Gain commitment through frequency of communication
• Leadership and Strategic Decision-Making
• Importance of leadership in implementing successful strategies
• High-profile leadership which inspires and motivates
• Decisive, speedy and consistent decision-making
• Persistent follow-through on all decisions to produce results

Day 4: Risk and Crisis Management

• Identify all risks, evaluate potential impact and mitigate accordingly
• Incorporate strategic flexibility for internal and external changes

and pressures

• Prevent issues becoming risks then turning into crises
• Create, practice and be prepared to implement crisis plans
• Prevent Failure of Strategies
• Recruit and retain people with appropriate skills, experience
• and track record
• Clarify and communicate roles and responsibilities
• Encourage creative problem-solving and constructive

conflict resolution

• Promote unity within teams and harmony between teams

Day 5: Skills for Success

• Communication, including: presentations, meetings, oral, listening,

and written

• Delegation to increase productivity
• Negotiation and influencing skills for a win-win for all
• Time management for minimum effort to produce maximum results

Training Methodology

Methodology: Lectures, discussions, exercises, case studies, audio-visual aids will be used to reinforce these teaching/learning methods.