Course Overview
The objective of the "The MBA for Finance Professionals" is to define where you are now and build a robust game plan to get you to where you ultimately desire to be professionally; a crucial step to creating a meaningful future for yourself and your organisation. Moving from being a financial score-keeper to strategist is just one of the objectives of the course. This intensive and thought provoking programme goes well beyond conventional theory and focuses on the key topics, strategies, and techniques needed in order to achieve excellence in today's business world.
Henry Mintzberg in one of his recent books "Managers Not MBAs" (2004), highlights the importance of balancing "art; craft; science" and the fact that leadership and management need to combine and balance 'art' (insight and inspiration),'craft' (experience) and science (analysis). Many MBA programmes are excellent at the analysis element, but often the key is being able to integrate it with experience and inspiration. While highlighting the need for focus, a solid understanding of management techniques and the confidence to achieve high levels of performance, the programme will address all these issues in depth in a uniquely experiential way.
"The MBA for Finance Professionals" provides essential skills that a grounded business and finance professional needs in order to succeed. The learning experience lays out a firm foundation of the essential elements of a major MBA programme but without getting bogged down in unessential text book theory. Having completed it you will be able to see whether an academic MBA is suitable to you.
The "5 Day MBA" will help you to reflect, become aware, understand, create and implement an action based framework that equips you to make profound and immediate impacts. Without thinking time and space to get ready and take aim, the speed of business life moves us to firing often without fully appreciating whether the deeper purpose is being fulfilled. This unique course is the only one of its kind that tackles this issue head on.
The programme is directed by an expert business practitioner and executive guide, who will be on hand to provide intensive coaching based on your personal and business needs.
Audience
All executives, senior managers, managers and team leaders with a finance background who want to improve their own management and business performance. The programme will also prove invaluable for managers and executives from a variety of backgrounds and skill bases, provided that they have a solid foundation in finance. It will be extremely beneficial for those who are in or moving into more general management or leadership roles where the ability to read the bigger picture and add abilities in strategy, finance, marketing and people management will greatly aid their progress. At the grass roots, the programme is about developing the managers and business leaders of the future.
Skills Gained
The programme will provide all the participants with practical management skills to promote excellence and motivational understanding within their own teams. They will learn the importance of creative flexibility with focus as well as developing a well-balanced approach to business. An action framework will equip them to improve their operational and strategic performance immediately. In addition, the programme also focuses on the key influencing and Inter-personal issues essential for success in today's marketplace, but which are often neglected in most conventional management development programmes.
Course Outline
GETTING TO GRIPS WITH INDIVIDUAL DYNAMICS
- Understanding what drives you; your values, beliefs and personal identity
- What is personality and how does it affect our behaviour?
- Developing a dynamic SWOT analysis for self analysis
- Covey's - '8 Habits of Highly Effective People'
- Laws of Personal Affluence - The power of intent
- Understanding your level of consciousness
- The importance of having/doing/being and getting them in the right order
- Creating a personal vision, mission and sense of deep purpose
- Creating passion and energy through vision and action alignment
- Identifying the key areas for personal action
21st CENTURY GOVERNANCE
- What is corporate Governance and is it important?
- Review of global governance reform
- 'Enterprise Governance' as a model for strategic change
- Developing a corporate code of conduct in a global market
- Corporate behaviour guidelines and 'walking the talk'
- Accepting the inevitable involvement in organisational politics
- Ethically influencing your organisation
- Techniques for countering unethical and self serving behaviour
THE DYNAMICS OF LEADERSHIP, TEAM-BUILDING & COACHING
- The key characteristics of a good leader
- How leadership differs from management
- The difference between strategic leadership and leadership
- Assessing your leadership type
- Delegation and empowerment
- Leaders and the role of coaching, delegating, directing, and supporting
- Assessing and developing these critical skills for modern managers and leaders
- Developing the practical skills of a business coach
- Building, developing and retaining high performance teams
- Creating a 'Learning Team'
- Dealing with performance issues
- The importance of personal accountability
- Developing team mission and capabilities
- Identifying key performance measures
UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING
- Organisational structures and their impact on successful development
- Understanding Cultural Transformational Tools (CTT) and 'whole systems' thinking
- Analysing your personal, corporate and leadership culture
- Developing a team and organisational vision, mission and purpose
- How to align and link team and business visions with organisational strategy
- Reviewing the importance of creating a meaningful workplace with passion
- Moving organisations from 'Good to Great' and then 'Build them to Last'
- Reviewing successful world-class leaders
- Building a 'Learning' organisation' - The crucial links between people and strategy
- Appreciating the Crossan four 'I' Organisational Learning Framework
- Review of tools for creating organisational dialogue not debate
- Strategic Storytelling to communicate the spirit and soul of a business
- Proactive development of organisational development and HR policy
- Bringing the right mixture of skills together to achieve outstanding results
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MASTERING THE PRACTICALITIES OF CORPORATE AND BUSINESS STRATEGY
- What exactly do we mean when we talk about strategy?
- The crucial difference between strategic planning and business planning
- The dangers of budgeting in the planning process
- Pioneers of modern business strategy
- Schools of Strategic Thought: prescriptive; descriptive and configuration
- The pivotal role of strategy in organisational success
- Why Leadership thinking is a key strategic mindset
- Why we must focus on strategy first and tactics second
- Why strategy is always a catalyst for bringing about change
- Understanding some of the common strategic frameworks and concepts
- Reviewing the 'Value to Values' (V2V) and 'Strategic Evolution' Frameworks
- Formulating robust strategies - a practical approach using 'spiral circuits'
- Understanding the difference between skills, competencies, core and distinctive competencies for people and organisations
- Creation, implementation and measurement of strategy and tactics
- Benchmarking for strategic success
- Making strategy real - the secrets of successful strategy execution
PRACTICAL STRATEGIC TOOL SET REVIEW
- Strategy Activity Tree (SAT)
- Dynamic SWOT Analysis
- P.E.S.T.L.E environmental scan
- McKinsey seven S's
- Porter's five forces
- Porter's Matrix
- Value Chain Analysis
- Strategy Mapping
- Strategic Options Grid
- Root Cause Analysis
- Wishbone Analysis
- Force Field Analysis
- Balances Score Card
- Risk Management
UNDERSTANDING STRATEGIC MARKETING - INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY
- Understanding how marketing strategy relate to the organisation
- Further analysis tools Boston Growth Matrix, Ansoff Matrix, Directional Policy Matrix, GE/ McKinsey Matrix and Product life cycle analysis
- Identifying risk for future action and successful market choice
- Leveraging competitive advantage from your distinctive competence
- Developing company position statements
- Producing strategies and tactics to develop your marketing mix
MASTERING FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
- Understanding the difference between being a controller and a director
- Key financial ratios and the extended Dupont model for communicating to business managers
- The difference and importance between accounting results and economic value - The key part for managers of organisations
- Update on key valuation techniques
- Key actions and mindsets to 'managing for value'
- Budgeting, 'Beyond Budgeting' and 'Budgeting without Numbers'
- Linking strategic analysis to projected financial results
- Linking finance to the balanced scorecard (BSC)
THE KEYS TO MANAGING CHANGE
- The role of communication in modern organisations
- Connecting with different types of personalities in order to motivate them
- Active listening skills
- Create genuine empathy, self-awareness and an ability to effect change
- Building and keeping an environment that nurtures high performance
- Developing the steps to effective programme and project management
- Defining the linkage between change and strategic development
MASTERING HIGH LEVEL PRESENTATION SKILLS
- How to connect with any audience - large or small
- Avoid death by PowerPoint
- How to move your audience to take action
- How to deliver "unpopular" news
- How to deal with Q&A - including unplanned or hostile scenarios
- The secret tools of influence that add power and impact to your message
YOUR PERSONAL ACTION PLAN
- Review your steps to personal development
- Committing to making a change in the future
