Strategic Thinking

Learn how to strengthen your strategic thinking skills and encourage it in others. Through case studies and practical thinking exercises, you’ll stimulate your strategic thinking, learn to recognize patterns that impact strategy and enhance your abilities to generate new insights and ideas. Come to your next strategic planning session with the best possible strategic ideas—and help your business move forward in an increasingly competitive world.

Who Should Attend:

Individual contributors, managers, directors and other leaders who need strategic thinking skills to gain better business insights and identify trends that can contribute to a more successful business strategy.

How you will benefit:

• Explore ways to challenge your assumptions and view your business in a new light
• Learn and apply different thinking methods to avoid groupthink
• Control reactive fixes to problems even in an uncertain business environment
• Generate new ideas and evaluate future scenarios before your competitors do
• Know when to embrace necessary risk, even if resources and information are limited
• Learn to create better short-term goals that support long-term strategy

What you will cover:

• Introduction to strategic thinking: a new way of thinking and looking at the world
• Identifying trends and patterns in the macro environment
• Reviewing the business and industry environment; assessing your current organization
• Practicing strategic thinking calisthenics
• Generating ideas and creating plans with a big-picture perspective
• Building an action plan to expand the strategic thinking skills of yourself and colleagues

Course Outline:

Learning Objectives

• Leverage New Skills to Support Your Strategic Thinking Every Day
• Apply a Process to Envision Your Organization’s Desired Future
• Recognize the Influences Within and Outside Your Organization That Could Support or Derail Your Future Goals
• Identify the Changes Necessary to Reach Your Future Goals
• Expand the Number of Perspectives That Influence Your Moves Forward
• Create a Plan for Building Skills and Testing Your Ideas

Context of Strategic Thinking

• Define Strategic Thinking and Recognize How It Can Be Used in Your Day-to-Day Work
• Compare and Contrast Strategic Thinking to Analytical Thinking, Critical Thinking, and Inductive and Deductive Reasoning
• Identify the Characteristics of Strategic Thinkers

Strategic Thinking Process and Skills

• Explain a Model for Strategic Thinking in Day-to-Day Activities and Work Applications
• List Skills and Tools That Can Be Used to Support Strategic Thinking

Assess the Current State

• Identify the Influences and Relationships at Different Levels of an Organization That Can Impact a Strategy
• Recognize and Identify Patterns of Interaction and Development That Are Likely to Influence the Effectiveness of a Strategy
• Incorporate Multiple Perspectives on a Possible Strategy, and Assess Different Influences on the Potential Success

Envision a Desired Future State

• Envision a Desired Future State
• Recognize and Use Thinking Skills That Support Imagining New Ways of Relating to the Market and Customers

Build Your Path on Paper

• Identify and Sequence the Multiple Steps to Move from the Current State of the Issue/Opportunity to the Desire Future State
• Anticipate the Reactions/Responses of Others in the Larger Systems Impacting Your Situation
• Identify and Conduct Experiments and Tests That Point Your Way Forward

Implement Your Strategic Knowledge and Skills

• Assess What You Gained from Applying Strategic Thinking Tools to Your Project
• Anticipate Pitfalls You May Encounter as a Strategic Thinker
• Create an Action Plan for Development of Strategic Thinking Skills