Course Outline

Module 1: Fundamentals of Strategic Planning

Defining strategy

• Components of strategy
• Discovering why strategies fail
• Clarifying your organization’s mission, vision and core competencies

The benefits of strategic planning

• The need for strategic planning
• Assessing tools and processes for strategic planning

Module 2: Developing the Strategy

Ensuring organizational capabilities are appropriate for the strategic environment

• Analyzing how competitive and other environmental factors shape strategy
• Determining the impact of operating and remote environments
• Assessing the external environment for individual departments
• Identifying your customers and their needs

Assessing external forces

• Analyzing your operating and external environment
• Initiating a SWOT analysis
• Prioritizing opportunities and threats
• Categorizing the external environment with checklists

Auditing internal capabilities

• Identifying strengths by business function
• Recognizing vulnerabilities
• Expanding the SWOT analysis

Module 3: Identifying Strategic Options

Evaluating factors for choosing strategy

• Mapping strategies to product or market life cycle
• Aligning strategies with capabilities of the organization
• Choosing strategies to meet stakeholder expectations

Selecting appropriate strategic models

• Identifying sources of competitive advantage
• Implications of growth and diversification strategies
• Global strategies for sourcing, operations and marketing

Module 4: Formulating Your Strategic Plan

Considering strategic planning approaches

• Issue-centric, Entrepreneurial and Holistic planning
• Assessing organizational readiness

Building the plan

• Key components of a strategic plan
• Operationalizing the strategic plan
• Identifying opportunities with portfolio management and gap analysis techniques

Linking strategy to actions

• Aligning strategy with six key organizational factors
• Identifying gaps between current and needed capabilities
• Establishing appropriate objectives and milestones
• Managing culture, human resources, skills, processes and structure for strategy execution
• Initiating programmes and projects for implementing strategy

Module 5: Executing Your Strategy for Success

Managing stakeholder expectations

• Establishing effective communication mechanisms
• Aligning culture to strategic direction
• Linking rewards to performance
• Managing the inevitable change

Maximizing results with applied processes

• Connecting people to the execution of strategy
• Establishing and maintaining communications
• Designing effective information systems
• Organizing to execute in line with strategy

Module 6: Monitoring and Controlling Implementation

Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Setting up metrics to measure performance
• Monitoring progress with dashboards
• Deploying Balanced Scorecards

Dimensions of strategic control

• Detecting changes in assumptions
• Coping with a dynamic environment
• Adjusting for unanticipated events