High Impact Strategic Planning

As a manager, your organization’s success depends on effective strategic leadership.

This course puts the critical pieces of the strategy puzzle together in a straightforward way that increases process understanding and the ability to implement a set of proven analytic and design tools. Case studies and participants’ own organizational examples are used to illustrate and deepen the lessons.

This course is designed to help you understand the challenges and opportunities that define the moment, what needs to be done, and how to mobilize people and resources with purpose and urgency.

***IMPORTANT NOTE – It is recommended that this course be taken prior to “Best Practices in Strategy Execution“.

Learning outcomes

• Learn about the purpose, origins, and alternative approaches to effective strategic planning.
• Learn how to apply the seven core steps of an integrated best-practice strategic plan.
• Learn what conditions are necessary to implement such a plan.

The workshop is divided into the following three segments:

1. Strategic context: Examine the purpose and possibilities for strategic planning by considering a range of professional approaches and the rationales that lie behind each of them. A review of the ten most influential strategy models provides a comprehensive starting point.
2. Core method: Learn to apply the seven step high impact strategic planning process as a way to effectively manage the strategy process. A set of best practice methods is introduced for each of the seven steps.
3. Cutting edge practices: Explore exciting new practices in strategic planning, including business model design and applied dialectical reasoning.

***Please note that this course can be customized to your organization’s needs and can be delivered onsite or at the Ron Joyce Centre in Burlington.  For more information, click here.

Program Faculty

Alex Lowy consults widely as a strategic advisor and educator, helping organizations around the world address major dilemmas in a systematic and effective manner. His clients have included technology firms (HP, IBM), banks (CIBC, BMO) resources companies (Shell) and government (Province of Ontario, City of Toronto, Metropolitan Toronto Police Force). He is an adjunct faculty member at four business schools (DeGroote in Hamilton, Schulich in Toronto, Saint Mary’s in Halifax and Memorial in Newfoundland) where he teaches business strategy and critical thinking skills to executives. He writes extensively on the topic of strategy and decision-making, with articles in such journals as Strategy & Leadership, Business 2.0 and Group & Organization Studies.

Alex is co-author of several best-selling business books including The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix (Jossey Bass, 2004, with Phil Hood) and Digital Capital (Harvard Business School Press, 2000, with Don Tapscott & David Ticoll). His most recent book, No Problem, was published in 2007, and is being taught in business schools in Canada, the USA and Malaysia.