This seminar is designed to provide leaders and professionals with a set of transformational tools and techniques to help them maximize their own and their team’s creative potential in a strategic context. Its starting-point is self-discovery: participants will work on the inside first and then focus outwards to impact on the world of business.
The focus of the first week of this 2-week seminar will be on thinking in different ways. Participants should be prepared to move out of their comfort zone and experiment with new ways of creating and communicating an inspiring leadership vision.
The second week helps demystify the frequently-misunderstood concept of ‘strategy’. Whilst focusing on the analytical disciplines on which a a successful strategy is based, it centers on strategic planning as a value-adding process that harnesses the leader’s and the team’s ability to combine analysis with creative thinking and enables ideas and plans to be nurtured through to reality.
Demonstrating how to balance analytical and creative thinking in plans and decisions
Understanding how to discover and focus the creative capabilities of teams and individuals
Understanding the linkage between operational and strategic management
Aligning your own responsibilities and objectives with the strategy of your organization
Improving personal leadership and management competencies
Demonstrate innovative methods for harnessing others’ creative potential
Communicate your vision in refreshing and engaging ways
Define the concepts of ‘strategy’ and ‘strategic plans’
Understand and explain visionary thinking as part of the strategic process and apply strategic planning to your own management issues
Place your own part of the organization within the overall context of corporate strategy
Gain confidence in managing your own contribution to strategic implementation
This seminar uses a range of approaches to learning, including experiential group activities, individual visioning exercises, case studies, and syndicate discussions, to allow you to see and feel for yourself the power of the creative mind in a strategic context. Formal inputs are used to introduce a limited amount of underpinning theory. A key part of the learning process is sharing the differing experiences participants bring, as well as experimenting with a novel – and sometimes challenging – techniques. In the second module, the course leader will use case examples based on organizations with which he has been personally involved. There will be additional presentations on DVD from world-leading authorities in the fields of strategy formulation and strategic management. There will also be group work on a major case study.
Leaders at all levels who can develop and communicate a shared vision
Leaders who can engage and motivate their teams
Increased effectiveness against personal KPI’s through more effective use of team
Much better decision-making and time/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 judgment of its operating managers and the staff will have a better appreciation of the need and content of organizational change
Increasing career flexibility (vertically and horizontally)
Accelerated thinking speed and problem resolution for difficult dilemmas
Improved understanding of the impact of operational specialization on corporate strategy
Improved teamworking capabilities in analyzing and solving strategic problems creatively
Improved skills in ensuring the most effective impact of individual specializations
Greater motivation through multiple organizational levels
· Business Managers
· Team Leaders
· Process Leaders
· Functional Managers
· Project Managers
Leadership Reality Assessment
Leadership Vs Management
Understanding Our Brain Function
Myths of Creativity
The limitations of the rational
Divergent approaches to problem-solving
Letting go of logic
Analogous thinking modes
Convergent and divergent modes
Sigmoid Curve - Lifecycle Model
Continuous Improvement
Breakthrough step change
Self-awareness and the nature of the ego
Personal goal alignment
Adaption and innovation: personal preferences for creating meaning
Exploring attitudes to risk
Left- and right-brain thinking
Six thinking hats
Using differing thinking styles
Johari's window
The business plan process & creating a vision
Harnessing the power of the team
Organizational culture and its influence on innovation
Letting go of the ego
Working with different creative preferences
The 7 Step Creative Process
Models of communication
Viral visioning
Authenticity and trust
Creativity tools, techniques & strategy
Letting go of the vision
Leading without directing
Possible leadership beliefs
Motivation - Hierarchy of Needs
Overcoming organizational barriers to creativity and change
Nurturing a learning environment
Is Money a motivator?
Personality Profiling
Building a creative consensus
Engaging stakeholders creatively
Influencing and motivating through change
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 - macro-environmental factors, growth drivers, competitive forces, market dynamics
Benchmarking your own strategic position/competitor analysis
Analyzing customers
“Thinking backward from the customer”
Mini-case on importance of external analysis
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
A fusion of analyses into strategic choices - SWOT and the strategy matrix
Case examples of strategic choice
Mini-case on importance of internal analysis
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
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
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
