Leading Through Strategic Planning & Innovation: Developing Deliverable Strategies

Introduction:

Effective strategic leadership is primary to the future success of any organization. This starts with defining a clear strategic vision – setting out the leadership team’s strategic intent for the organization and its various businesses. This then needs to be translated into an agenda for action – not merely a ‘strategic plan’ but a set of guidelines or a road map setting out where the business needs to go and empowering managers at all levels to make the multitude of decisions that they need to make in the clear understanding of where the business is heading.

In this course, both strategic leaders and first-line professionals will participate in how to develop, implement and structure the changes necessary to make a new strategy, vision or mission work efficiently in today’s dynamic environment. It will focus on the development of the core strategies and plan to make the organization reach its vision or targets, and then will drills deeper into the organization to develop techniques that get the workforce “on-board” with the changes and have them participate in working out the problems and implementing the new strategies.

Targeted Groups:

• Head of departments
• Managers among all managerial levels
• Supervisors and Team leaders
• Strategic Planning department
• Employees who want to gain new crucial skills to improve their career path

Course Objectives:

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

• Develop the three key strategic agendas for leaders: Intellectual, Managerial and Behavioural.
• Enhance and improve their own and their organization's strategic thinking and ability to envision powerful strategic futures.
• Generate and support effective strategic thinking at all levels in the organization.
• Identify the most efficient balance of Operational Excellence and Breakthrough Strategic Performance.
• Identify crucial strategic issues and opportunities.
• Prioritize issues based on their capacity to enable real value creation.
• Lead and motivate teams and businesses in diverse, turbulent and complex environments.
• Encourage their people to think differently and workout new initiatives and innovate.
• Motivate people towards the strategic ‘light on the hill’!
• Change their environment to support your new strategic initiatives.
• Find new approaches to old problems in their organization strategies.
• Implement a plan using all the resources at their disposal.
• Interpret the internal and external forces shaping the future
• Develop an effective strategic roadmap through a clear vision and statement of strategic intent
• Identify the competencies and capabilities of strategically agile and effective organizations
• Command respect
• Develop a culture or climate that supports your initiatives

Targeted Competencies:

• Analytical strategic thinking
• Strategic visioning
• Communicating strategic
• Effective implementation planning
• Displaying strategic leadership
• Strategic leadership 
• Motivating and influencing people.
• Make the changes necessary to advance your plan
• Develop new behaviors in your people

Course Content:

Unit 1: Understanding The Strategic Environment:

• Understanding the strategic leadership agenda – intellect, management and behaviors
• Recognizing and interpreting forces in the strategic environment
• Understanding strategic inflection points and strategic scenarios
• Analyzing and prioritizing strategic issues
• Formulating strategic vision and expressing strategic intent
• Developing a strategic roadmap

Unit 2: Understanding Strategic Models And Paradigms:

• The strategic journey – common models and frameworks for strategic thinking (from Ansoff to Hamel via Porter and Mintzberg)
• Recognizing strategic horizons and using the 7S framework
• Recognizing and developing the characteristics of strategic agility
• Understanding and leveraging strategic competences and skills

Unit 3: Effective Strategic Implementation:

• Strategic implementation tools and frameworks
• Structures and systems for strategic agility and performance
• Monitoring and adjustment
• Measurement, analysis and knowledge management

Unit 4: Strategic Leadership:

• Preparing for the future
• Effective styles and practices for strategic leadership
• Recognizing, analyzing and developing the strategic leadership styles used by you and others
• Developing inspiration and motivation
• Communicating the roadmap and gathering support

Unit 5: Driving Strategic Performance & Success:

• Transforming the organization to enable strategic success
• Balancing the focus on performance and strategy
• Spreading leadership capabilities throughout the organization
• Maximizing organizational learning and knowledge transfer to embed strategic success

Unit 6: Promoting a Creative Environment at Work:

• Innovative leadership for excellent performance
• The Critical mass for change and innovation
• Innovation VS Constant Improvement
• How a leader creates a climate of innovation
• Innovation and current business breakthroughs

Unit 7: Gaining the Participation of the Workforce:

• The G.E. “Workout” Strategy
• Developing creative solutions for strategies
• Gaining the “Buy-In” from the workforce
• Overcoming Charts
• Dealing with Organizational “Drift”

Unit 8: Leading on The Creative Edge:

• Developing creative potential in people and teams
• Understanding creative people
• Convergent & divergent thinking skills
• Motivating creative individuals at work
• Incubating ideas
• Interacting creatively
• Converting expenses to assets using creativity

Unit 9: Creating a Motivating Climate for Higher Productivity:

• The Ten keys elements to setting up new missions
• Setting goals and targets creatively
• Creating a “Sense of significance”
• Rewarding performance
• The Four-Steps “Pygmalion” theory
• Generational Motivators

Unit 10: Driving Strategic Change:

• Managing the change process
• Kotter’s change management techniques
• Communicating with a sense of urgency
• The downside of change
• Creating a climate of constant change
• Successful techniques for changing people