Strategy and Strategic Planning

Introduction

A strategy is a frequently misunderstood concept which needs to be translated into everyday language, and its process demystified. A strategy is not merely about ‘achieving and keeping a sustainable competitive advantage’, but is about being genuinely creative. Strategic planning is very much not, therefore, an academic exercise, but is one which entails thinking through implementation and getting real value out of the process.

Objectives

By the end of this course participants will be able to:

• 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 distill 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 organization and of the change and influencing process generally
• To give you a lot more confidence in managing your role strategically within your organization

Target Audience

This seminar is Participants 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.

Management & Leadership Outline

The course covers the following topics:

Strategic Thinking and Analysis

• What is strategy strategic planning?
• What forms can it take?
• Evaluating strategic options - using state of the art processes
• A case study in the car industry
• Understanding market attractiveness
• Benchmarking your own strategic position competitor analysis

Strategic Breakthroughs and Implementation

• Understanding and benchmarking customer value
• Diagnosing strategic problems
• Strategic diagnosis, option evaluation, implementation, and change: a case study of a strategic review in the Luxury Health Resort Industry
• Applying implementation techniques and stakeholder analysis to issues in your role: the Mini-Strategy Process

Scenarios and Strategic Innovation

• Review of the tools so far
• Thinking future: using scenario storytelling to see around corners - at the corporate, business, project, individual levels
• A case study with competitor role-playing and scenario development in the carpet cleaning industry
• Checklists for being more creative

Strategic Influencing and Action

• Getting buy-in organizationally to strategies
• Becoming a more effective internal strategic influencer consultant - and also facilitating strategy running strategic workshops
• Exercise on one’s own influencing skills
• Using strategic project management to turn a strategic plan into reality

Getting the value out of strategy

• Business plans, business cases and putting a value on strategy - the business value system and value and cost drivers
• Exercise in the football industry to develop and put a value on options for a major football club - with a simulated meeting with its Chief Executive (influencing skills practice)
• Strategic options in your own career
• Action planning: translating these ideas into future practice through projects, through everyday work, and through process handover