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Strategy
and Strategic Planning
What is strategy? What is strategic management?
“A strategy is a cohesive entity of programmes, projects and policies that concentrate and fuse corporate resources to enable an organisation to gain and sustain its competitiveness and capabilities for self-renewal.”
“Strategic management is the planning and delivery of the programmes and projects by harnessing resources that, within a measured timespan and in accordance with agreed performance criteria, will enable an organisation to fulfil its business objectives.”
The main features of the seminar are:
- Introduction to leading-edge thinking and best practice in strategic analysis
- Developing ourselves from operational to strategic managers
- Case studies for class work and discussion
- The international dimension of strategy
The central objectives of this seminar are as follows.
- 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 carefully chosen and highly stimulating case studies - and to distil 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 management process generally
- To give you a lot more confidence in managing your role strategically within your organization
The training process is based on a carefully planned mix of highly focused tutor input - with practical illustration of tools and concepts; group work on small-scale case studies; interaction and group discussion; and group work on a major case study. The seminar manual will serve as a toolkit for subsequent everyday use. There will also be presentations on DVD given by acknowledged world-leading authorities on the subject. Above all, the principles and approaches to strategy and strategic management will be illustrated by real-life cases in which the tutor has been personally involved.
- Much better decision-taking and time and resource allocation - leading to better organizational and individual performance
- Introduction of strategic thinking into new levels of the organization
- Top management having more confidence in the ability and judgement of its operating managers
- Staff will have a better appreciation of the need and content of organizational change
- Use of a well proven planning process
- More effective implementation by managers
- Increasing career flexibility (vertically and horizontally)
- Accelerated thinking speed and problem resolution for all difficult dilemmas
- Improved understanding of the impact of operational specialization on corporate strategy
- Improved teamworking capabilities in analyzing and solving strategic problems
- Improved skills in ensuring most effective impact of individual specializations
- Greater motivation and proactivity
This seminar is designed for experienced professionals from any industry and any specialization who wish to learn how to take a ‘bigger picture’ view of business issues – as they relate to strategy and the strategic planning process. Typically you will have some experience of operational 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.
This seminar is appropriate for participants who wish to enhance their skills in all or any combination of the following competencies.
- Visionary thinking
- Creativity
- Strategic influencing
- Strategic leadership
- Problem-solving
- Prioritization
- Implementation
- Change management
- Imagining the future
- Business analysis
- Strategic team working
- Strategic presentation skills
Day 1: Strategic Thinking and Business Analysis
- What are strategy and strategic planning?
- Why are strategy and strategic planning important?
- What are the main conceptual frameworks?
- External analysis - understanding and analyzing business attractiveness - macroenvironmental factors, growth drivers, competitive forces, market dynamics
- Benchmarking your own strategic position/competitor analysis
- Analyzing customers
- “Thinking backwards from the customer”
- Mini-case on importance of external analysis
Day 2: Internal analysis and fusion of analyses into strategic options
- The interface of external and internal analysis
- Internal analysis: financial
- Internal analysis; non-financial
- The concept and practicalities of the “balanced scorecard”
- Diagnosing strategic problems and opportunities
- Fusion of analyses into strategic choices - SWOT and the strategy matrix
- Case examples of strategic choice
- Mini-case on importance of internal analysis
Day 3: Strategic plans and the relevance of alliances and joint ventures
- Review of the tools used so far
- The content of a strategy: avoiding “paralysis by analysis”
- Putting a strategic plan together – the 5-page framework
- A real-life example of a business strategy/strategic plan
- Strategies for alliances and joint ventures
- Example of best practice in alliances and joint ventures
- Introduction and briefing for the main case study
- First-phase group work on the main case study
Day 4: Global strategy, teambuilding and the management of internal communication
- The essence of globalization and global strategy
- Globalization – the strategic dimension
- Globalization – the organizational dimension
- Globalization – the human dimension
- How to build and manage a strategic planning team
- Communicating strategy through the organization
- Gaining your team’s commitment and buy-in to the strategy
- Second-phase work on the main case study
Day 5: Strategic implementation and getting the value out of strategy
- Final-phase work on the main case study
- Group presentations of the main case study
- Effective execution - converting strategic analysis and planning into action
- Linking strategy with operational objectives
- Implementation – getting practical things done
- Strategic planning of your own career
- Creating tomorrow’s organization out of today’s organization
- Conclusion - the corporate and individual value of strategic thinking
Oxford Management Centre
John
Eccles House
Robert Robinson Ave
Oxford Science Park
Oxford
OX4 4GP
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1865 338088
Fax: +44 1865 338100
email info@oxford-management.com
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