Strategic Thinking Training

Leadership and management training open courses in Manchester, Birmingham, Gloucester, Milton Keynes, Swindon, Oxford, London, Nottingham, West Midlands, Edinburgh – Scotland

Strategic thinking is concerned with your Long- term goals and their associated plans.
Successful action may be defined as: “that action which achieves the object of a goal”.
In order to achieve a goal one needs a definite plan.
Goals and their associated plans are prerequisites to success.

Goals / plans can be split into two categories

1. Short range goals and their associated plans
2. Long range goals and their associated plans

The key terms here is LONG RANGE.

Strategic thinking is thinking long range, not short range.

The vast majority of people DON'T think long range: they think short range.
The higher up you go on the organisational ladder: the longer range your thinking should be.

Example:

• The junior manager thinks about how to get to the end of the week.
• The senior manager is thinking 3, 5, 10, 20 years into the future.

This is strategic thinking.

Strategic thinking is different to everyday thinking because:

• The future is not known in much detail.
• The future is malleable: it can be whatever you make it.

And yet:
You know that technology will advance and introduce new opportunities and threats.
You know that the methods that have brought you prosperity in 2012, will not be sufficient to secure your prosperity in 2017

So strategic thinking is Creative, pre-emptive, purposeful and intelligent thinking.
We need to cover the following subset topics

What is the overall purpose of your organisation?
Answer: to add (exchange) value to the customer.

But HOW, the means by which, you do that can vary over time.
How might your organisation evolve over time?
We can assume that certain conditions that operate now will still be operating for the foreseeable future:

Certain trends are likely to be consistent in the future:

1. Increasing global population
2. Increasing speed of information transfer
3. Increasing use of biotechnology in agriculture and medicine
4. Increasing pressure on the price of energy
5. Increasing democratization of the world.
6. The fundamentals of human nature: Everyone is the same: we all want: health, happiness, family, security, material wealth.

How can your organisation benefit from this list?
Where do you want to be 10 years from now? 

How to build plans by creating a categorical mind map
Work back from the future, to the present. 

What are the material, and technological resources that will be needed?
How will they be obtained?

What are the skills and knowledge that will be needed?
How will they be obtained?

What attitudes and business philosophy will be needed?
How will it be communicated?

What will be the business context that will be needed?
How will that be prepared?

To be wary of pessimism
To be a rational optimist

Exercises:
Exercises in building long range goals
Exercise in building categorical mind maps
Exercise in building plans from the maps 

Summary presentations
Action plans and close

The training method follows this general pattern:

1. The trainer gives a clear explanation of the point in question.
2. The trainer then demonstrates the principle and gives specific examples.
3. Then, the delegates practice by doing an exercise with each other.
4. The delegates practice by doing exercise with the trainer.
5. All points are supported with full written notes to take away.
6. Delegates are asked to write down an associated action, for each point made.
7. (At the end of the day, we have about twenty such actions, from which the delegates choose six which are the most personally meaningful).

Note: we do not believe in placing people in any situation of embarrassment by demanding that they 'perform' in front of the whole group. So you can relax: come on this course and be at ease; ready to learn new skills!

Please call The Corporate Coach Training Group today on 01452 856091

For all your training enquiriesbr> please call: 01452 856091

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