Strategic Thinking and Planning

Course Overview:

An organization without a strategy is like a ship without a rudder. How can organizations continue to provide exceptional value to stakeholders and customers if they are not clear on where they are heading and how they will get there? The answer is they can’t. This is where the role of strategy becomes essential. A strategy is about setting ambitious goals. Understanding the surrounding current and future environment. And providing a sense of direction for the organization.

In this course, we will cover the 7 steps of the strategy management process, starting with the ‘thinking’ components of strategy, moving into the ‘planning’ components and ending with ‘execution’. At the end of the course, participants will be able to implement or improve the strategic process at their organizations to reach their vision and achieve their mission.

Learning Outcome:

  • Apply strategic thinking to analyse their current environment and determine their organizational ambition
  • Employ the strategic management process to best achieve the desired ambition
  • Assess and choose strategies that create a sustainable competitive advantage for the organization
  • Determine strategic objectives, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ‘SMART’ targets for the organization
  • Convert strategic plans to operating plans through creating strategic initiatives and sequencing activities
  • Participate in the performance management cycle to ensure proper execution of chosen strategies

Course Features:

  • Course is appropriate for executives, Managers and leaders that are involved in planning and formulating strategic business plans.
  • Material included in the courses cost.
  • To achieve certification, participants shall achieve 80% in CHOOLS exams.
  • Course could be customized for organization requirements including company LOGO.

Why Choose Chools?

Access to:

• Top 100,000 Ebooks.
• 250,000 Management slides and presentations.
• 1 million excel templates.
• 60,000 business documents.

• 15,000 top books in abstract forms.
• 40,000 audio podcast.
• 550 audio library books.
• 50,000 video libraries.

• 1500 training courses.
• 2.6 million Journals and articles.
• 137 Lean Six Sigma toolkit.
• Leadership assessments.
• Quiz, Exam prep, Q&As, Case-studies.

Course Outline:

  • Strategic thinking and planning

o     The strategic management process

o          Strategic thinking versus strategic planning

o          Benefiting from strategic management

o          Evolution of strategic models

o          Moving from strategy to organizational planning

  • Analysis of the environment

o          The 5 Cs of strategic analysis

o          Porter’s 5 forces

o          Creating and capturing value

o          Conducting a ‘SWOT’ analysis

o          Plotting a ‘SWOT’ analysis

o          Fundamentals of ‘PEDESTL’ framework

  • Vision, mission statements and values

o          Using vision and mission statements

o          Definition of vision

o          Definition of mission

o          Formulating vision and mission statements

o          Embracing organizational values

o          Communicating the vision, mission and values

  • Assessing strategic choices

o          The 3 primary goals of competitive strategy

o          The strategy pyramid

o          Porter’s generic competitive strategies

o          IKEA’s cost leadership

o          Innovating in the industry value chain

o          Developing a competitive advantage

o          Cirque du Soleil value curve

  • Strategic objectives, KPIs and targets

o          Ensuring strategic alignment in the organization

o          Developing effective strategic objectives

o          Using the Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

o          Creating Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

o          Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

o          Characteristics of the right KPIs

o          Developing different types of KPIs

o          Setting ‘SMART’ targets

  • Developing operating plans

o          Cascading from vision to action plans

o          Criteria for effective action plans

o          Developing strategic initiatives

o          Operational KPIs and the triple constraints

o          Developing departmental plans

o          Managing the execution of strategy

o          KPI dashboard reporting

o          Barriers to strategy execution