Introduction

This seminar is designed to provide leaders and professionals with a set of transformational tools and techniques to help them maximize their own and their team’s creative potential in a strategic context. Its starting-point is self-discovery: participants will work on the inside first and then focus outwards to impact on the world of business.

The focus of the first week of this 2-week seminar will be on thinking in different ways. Participants should be prepared to move out of their comfort zone and experiment with new ways of creating and communicating an inspiring leadership vision.

The second week helps demystify the frequently-misunderstood concept of ‘strategy’. Whilst focusing on the analytical disciplines on which a successful strategy is based, it centers on strategic planning as a value-adding process that harnesses the leader’s and the team’s ability to combine analysis with creative thinking and enables ideas and plans to be nurtured through to reality.

The highlights of the course are as follows.

• Demonstrating how to balance analytical and creative thinking in plans and decisions

• Understanding how to discover and focus the creative capabilities of teams and individuals

• Understanding the linkage between operational and strategic management

• Aligning your own responsibilities and objectives with the strategy of your organization

• Improving personal leadership and management competencies

Objectives

By the end of this program you will be able to:

• Demonstrate innovative methods for harnessing others’ creative potential

• Communicate your vision in refreshing and engaging ways

• Define the concepts of ‘strategy’ and ‘strategic plans’

• Understand and explain visionary thinking as part of the strategic process and apply strategic planning to your own management issues

• Place your own part of the organization within the overall context of corporate strategy

• Gain confidence in managing your own contribution to strategic implementation

Methodology

This seminar uses a range of approaches to learning, including experiential group activities, individual visioning exercises, case studies, and syndicate discussions, to allow you to see and feel for yourself the power of the creative mind in a strategic context. Formal inputs are used to introduce a limited amount of underpinning theory. A key part of the learning process is sharing the differing experiences participants bring, as well as experimenting with a novel – and sometimes challenging – techniques. In the second module, the course leader will use case examples based on organizations with which he has been personally involved. There will be additional presentations on DVD from world-leading authorities in the fields of strategy formulation and strategic management. There will also be group work on a major case study.

Organizational Impact

• Leaders at all levels who can develop and communicate a shared vision

• Leaders who can engage and motivate their teams

• Increased effectiveness against personal KPI’s through more effective use of team

• Much better decision-making and time/resource allocation - leading to better organizational and individual performance

• Introduction of strategic thinking into new levels of the organization

• Top management having more confidence in the ability and judgment of its operating managers and the staff will have a better appreciation of the need and content of organizational change

Personal Impact

• Increasing career flexibility (vertically and horizontally)

• Accelerated thinking speed and problem resolution for difficult dilemmas

• Improved understanding of the impact of operational specialization on corporate strategy

• Improved teamworking capabilities in analyzing and solving strategic problems creatively

• Improved skills in ensuring most effective impact of individual specializations

• Greater motivation through multiple organizational levels

Outlines

Day 1:

Leading Creatively

Creative Problem-Solving

• Leadership Reality Assessment

• Leadership Vs Management

• Understanding Our Brain Function

• Myths of Creativity

• The limitations of the rational

• Divergent approaches to problem-solving

• Letting go of logic

• Analogous thinking modes

• Convergent and divergent modes

Overcoming Personal Blockers to Creativity

• Sigmoid Curve - Lifecycle Model

• Continuous Improvement

• Breakthrough step change

• Self-awareness and the nature of the ego

• Personal goal alignment

• Adaption and innovation: personal preferences for creating meaning

• Exploring attitudes to risk

• Left- and right-brain thinking

Day 2:

Developing the Vision Creatively

• Six thinking hats

• Using differing thinking styles

• Johari's window

• The business plan process & creating a vision

• Harnessing the power of the team

• Organizational culture and its influence on innovation

• Letting go of the ego

• Working with different creative preferences

Communicating the Vision Creatively

• The 7 Step Creative Process

• Models of communication

• Viral visioning

• Authenticity and trust

• Creativity tools, techniques & strategy

• Letting go of the vision

• Leading without directing

• Possible leadership beliefs

Day 3:

From Ideas to Action: Creativity and Change

• Motivation - Hierarchy of Needs

• Overcoming organizational barriers to creativity and change

• Nurturing a learning environment

• Is Money a motivator?

• Personality Profiling

• Building a creative consensus

• Engaging stakeholders creatively

• Influencing and motivating through change

Strategic Thinking and Business Analysis

• What are strategy and strategic planning?

• Why are strategy and strategic planning important?

• What are the main conceptual frameworks?

• External analysis - understanding and analyzing business attractiveness - macro-environmental factors, growth drivers, competitive forces, market dynamics

• Benchmarking your own strategic position/competitor analysis

• Analyzing customers

• “Thinking backward from the customer”

• Mini-case on importance of external analysis

Day 4:

Internal Analysis and Fusion of Analyses into Strategic Options

• The interface of external and internal analysis

• Internal analysis: financial

• Internal analysis; non-financial

• The concept and practicalities of the “balanced scorecard”

• Diagnosing strategic problems and opportunities

• A fusion of analyses into strategic choices - SWOT and the strategy matrix

• Case examples of strategic choice

• Mini-case on importance of internal analysis

Strategic Plans and the Relevance of Alliances and Joint Ventures

• Review of the tools used so far

• The content of a strategy: avoiding “paralysis by analysis”

• Putting a strategic plan together – the 5-page framework

• A real-life example of a business strategy/strategic plan

• Strategies for alliances and joint ventures

• Example of best practice in alliances and joint ventures

• Introduction and briefing for the main case study

• First-phase group work on the main case study

Day 5:

Global Strategy, Teambuilding and the Management of Internal Communication

• The essence of globalization and global strategy

• Globalization – the strategic dimension

• Globalization – the organizational dimension

• Globalization – the human dimension

• How to build and manage a strategic planning team

• Communicating strategy through the organization

• Gaining your team’s commitment and buy-in to the strategy

• Second-phase work on the main case study

Strategic Implementation and Getting the Value Out of Strategy

• Final-phase work on the main case study

• Group presentations of the main case study

• Effective execution - converting strategic analysis and planning into action

• Linking strategy with operational objectives

• Implementation – getting practical things done

• Strategic planning of your own career

• Creating tomorrow’s organization out of today’s organization

• Conclusion - the corporate and individual value of strategic thinking