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The most important business tool

Strategic Planning

In a recent study by management consultants, Bain & Company, US and European companies ranked strategic planning as their most important business tool.

Yet there is ample evidence that many organisations do not do strategic planning the way it should be done. For those organisations that do plan, many simply duplicate and extend this year's efforts into next year's.

Henry Mintzberg, in his book, "The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning", argued that many organisations instead of doing strategic planning are actually doing strategic programming that is devoid of imagination and innovation.

For managers and executives who want to do effective strategic planning, this workshop will equip you with the tools to develop a strategic plan for your organisation.

The Workshop

The workshop starts off with the nature of strategic planning and why this process is so prone to failure.

Through identifying the negative influences on planning, participants will realise that it is essential that they get critical stakeholders and senior management to be involved in the process.

Preliminary Planning: Once senior management has agreed to be involved in the planning process, the next step is to run a preliminary planning session or a plan-to-plan session. This session will identify the senior managers to be involved, create a framework for communication and decision making, and a rough timeline for the process.

Setting Objectives: When the framework is created, identify objectives, mission, vision and values will begin.

Data Gathering: Once the objectives are identified, the next step is data gathering of sales figures, trend analysis, environmental scanning, customers' needs and requirements, strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities.

Strategies: The planning session will then move to the creating of strategies that will move the organisation to the objectives identified.

Action Plan: An Action Plan is then drawn up on the strategies that are to be implemented.

Benefits

At the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

  • Set up strategic objectives
  • Identify your organisation's strengths and weaknesses
  • Identify markets and competitions
  • Formulate possible strategies
  • Do a strategic plan for your organisation or department
  • Draw up and implement an action plan

Who should attend

Senior managers, corporate planners, department heads, professionals, business owners, entrepreneurs, school principals and heads of department who have to plan the future direction of their companies, organisations businesses and schools. 

What you will cover in this workshop:

  • Strategic thinking and strategic planning
  • Key components of strategic planning and strategic management
  • Identifying leaders and stakeholders
  • Setting strategic objectives and goals
  • How to create a shared vision
  • How to develop and write mission and vision statements
  • Trend analysis
  • Cultural assessment
  • Identifying competitors and their strengths and weaknesses
  • External factors and environment scanning
  • Using environmental scanning to define your market
  • Key success measures
  • Current state assessment
  • Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT)
  • Formulate strategies to meet objectives
  • Implementation strategies
  • Draw up an action plan

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.  Leonard Bernstein

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