Strategic Thinking: Finding and Developing Opportunities to Create Value

Course Number: 137-JC
Recommended Duration: 2 Days

Course Overview
Strategic thinking focuses on finding and developing unique opportunities to create value for an organization. It is a way of understanding the fundamental drivers of a business and challenging the assumptions and conventional thinking about them. It requires knowledge of the context within which the firm operates. This course provides participants with a framework for strategically analyzing opportunities, identifying key initiatives and aligning the corporate resources required for execution. The course is highly interactive and requires significant participant contribution during discussions and workshops. Instructor-facilitated discussions will require approximately 30% of the class time with the remaining 70% being allocated to workshops and group report-outs. To increase in-class learning potential, participants will be provided with pre-class reading and a list of terms. The workshops are designed to allow participants to work through the development of a strategic plan.

Objectives
As a result of taking this course, participants will understand how to:

Become more forward thinking in their everyday roles
Use strategic thinking skills such as identifying patterns, relationships, and trends, analyzing information, prioritizing initiatives, and making trade-offs
Promote the discovery of innovative solutions
Use the business context to shape and evaluate opportunities

Prerequisites: Pre-class reading assignment

Topics

What do we know?

Conducting an internal examination
Building a context map
Conducting an opportunity analysis

What insights can we generate from what we know?

Being innovative
Recognizing patterns, trends, and relationships
Examining and changing assumptions
Generating and selecting alternatives

What can we create from those insights?

Defining a vision
Linking to corporate values
Establishing driving principles
Stating the key initiatives
Building an action plan

How do we execute the required changes?

Identifying the challenges associated with change
Understanding the value of communications
Planning change activities