Course Objective

• Formulate and execute strategic plans to meet objectives
• Apply strategy planning processes at an organisational and department level
• Assess the business environment through SWOT analysis
• Identify strategic options for long-term competitive advantage
• Implement strategies to deliver results

Course outline

Fundamentals of Strategic Planning

Defining strategy

• Components of strategy
• Discovering why strategies fail
• Clarifying your organization's mission, vision and core competencies

The benefits of strategic planning

• The need for strategic planning
• Assessing tools and processes for strategic planning

Developing the Strategy

Ensuring organizational capabilities are appropriate for the strategic environment

• Analyzing how competitive and other environmental factors shape strategy
• Determining the impact of operating and remote environments
• Assessing the external environment for individual departments
• Identifying your customers and their needs

Assessing external forces

• Analyzing your operating and external environment
• Initiating a SWOT analysis
• Prioritising opportunities and threats
• Categorising the external environment with checklists

Auditing internal 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 organization
• Choosing strategies to meet stakeholder expectations

Selecting appropriate strategic models

• Identifying sources of competitive advantage
• Implications of growth and diversification strategies
• Global strategies for sourcing, operations and marketing
• Formulating Your Strategic Plan
• Considering strategic planning approaches
• Issue-centric, Entrepreneurial and Holistic planning

Assessing organisational readiness

Building the plan

• Key components of a strategic plan
• Operational sing the strategic plan
• Identifying opportunities with portfolio management and gap analysis techniques

Linking strategy to actions

• Aligning strategy with six key organisational factors
• Identifying gaps between current and needed capabilities
• Establishing appropriate objectives and milestones
• Managing culture, human resources, skills, processes and structure for strategy execution
• Initiating programmes and projects for implementing strategy

Executing Your Strategy for Success

Managing stakeholder expectations

• Establishing effective communication mechanisms
• Aligning culture to strategic direction
• Linking rewards to performance
• Managing the inevitable change

Maximizing results with applied processes

• Connecting people to the execution of strategy
•  Establishing and maintaining communications
• Designing effective information systems
• Organizing to execute in line with strategy

Monitoring and Controlling Implementation

Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

•  Setting up metrics to measure performance
• Monitoring progress with dashboards
• Deploying Balanced Scorecards
• Dimensions of strategic control
• Detecting changes in assumptions
• Coping with a dynamic environment
• Adjusting for unanticipated events

Who Can Benefit?

Managers, directors, supervisor business analysts and anyone involved in planning and/or implementing strategies for business units and organizations.