Course Overview
Strategic planning enables an organisation to shape and guide its overall business objectives. Through effective strategic planning, an organisation creates a framework for developing, adapting and aligning organisational vision, mission and goals to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. In this course, you gain the knowledge needed to formulate, execute and monitor the strategic planning for your organisation based on proven analytical techniques and models.
Course Workshops
- Participants work in small groups to apply strategic planning tools and techniques. Workshops include:
- Determining mission, vision and core competencies
- Identifying opportunities and threats with SWOT analysis
- Assessing strengths and weaknesses of your internal environment
- Formulating an effective strategy for competitive advantage
- Conducting a gap analysis between current and needed organisation characteristics
- Crafting an action plan to implement strategy
- Designing dashboard metrics to monitor progress
Audience
Managers, senior executives, business analysts and those involved in planning and/or implementing strategic initiatives.
Skills Gained
You Will Learn How To
- Formulate strategic plans to help your organisation advance and grow
- Detect the strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats (SWOT) that drive strategy
- Identify strategies to better position your organisation for long-term competitive advantage
- Translate strategy into action
- Execute strategy and deliver results through people and processes
- Establish strategic planning, monitoring and controlling mechanisms that ensure positive results
Course Outline
Fundamentals of Strategic Planning
The need for strategic planning
- Benefits of strategic planning
- Defining the strategic planning steps
Defining components of a strategic plan
The "Who" and "What" of a strategic plan Communicating and implementing the strategy
Addressing your organisation's mission and vision
- Identifying your organisation's core competencies
- Differentiating your organisation in the marketplace
Detecting Opportunities and Threats
Operating in micro and macro environments
- Analysing how competitive and other environmental factors shape strategy
- Identifying the key activities in the value chain
Assessing external forces
- Analysing your operating and external environment
- Initiating a SWOT analysis
Recognising Strengths and Weaknesses
Applying a resource-based view analysis
- Mapping your internal value chain
- Identifying competitive differentiators
- Evaluating culture, human resources, skills, processes and structure
Auditing internal capabilities
- Profiling and benchmarking capabilities
- Identifying strengths by business function
- Recognising vulnerabilities
- Expanding the SWOT analysis
Identifying Strategic Options
Evaluating factors for choosing strategy
- Mapping strategies to product or market life cycle
- Aligning strategies with capabilities of the organisation
- Choosing strategies to meet stakeholder expectations
Selecting appropriate strategic models
- Identifying sources of competitive advantage
- Implications of mergers and acquisitions
- Leveraging the power of expansion strategies
- Pursuing global strategies for sourcing, operations and marketing
Formulating Your Strategic Plan
Assessing the feasibility of alternatives
- Analysing and evaluating the options
- Ensuring participation and buy-in
- Satisfying stakeholder requirements
Conducting gap analysis
- Assessing organisation characteristics relevant to strategy execution
- Determining gaps between current and needed characteristics
- Closing the gaps through targeted practice
Linking strategy to actions
- Responsibilities of strategic plan formulation
- Designing the operating unit plan
- Establishing appropriate milestones
- Managing culture, human resources, skills, processes and structure for strategy execution
- Initiating programmes and projects from strategy
Executing Your Strategy for Success
Establishing effective communication mechanisms
- Aligning culture to strategic direction
- Synchronising skills and knowledge with needs
- Linking rewards to performance
Maximising results with applied processes
- Connecting people and their skills to the execution of strategy
- Establishing and maintaining communications
- Designing effective information systems
- Organising a structure to execute strategy
- Shaping your organisation's culture
Monitoring and Controlling Implementation
Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Setting up metrics to measure performance
- Monitoring progress with dashboards
- Dashboards for visual presentation of KPIs to help decision makers take action
- Sensing and responding to change
Dimensions of strategic control
- Detecting changes in assumptions
- Coping with a dynamic environment
- Adjusting for unanticipated events
