Skills Enhancement on Strategic Planning, Development and Implementation in the Public Sector

Course Overview:

Effective strategic planning is primary to the future success of any organization. This starts with defining a clear strategic vision – setting out the leadership team’s strategic intent for the organization and its various businesses. This then needs to be translated into an agenda for action – not merely a ‘strategic plan’ but a set of guidelines or a road map setting out where the business needs to go and empowering managers at all levels to make the multitude of decisions that they need to make in the clear understanding of where the business is heading.

In this course, both strategic leaders and first-line professionals will participate in how to develop, implement and structure the changes necessary to make a new strategy, vision or mission work efficiently in today’s dynamic environment. It will focus on the development of the core strategies and plan to make the organization reach its vision or targets and then will drill deeper into the organization to develop techniques that get the workforce “on board” with the changes and have them participate in working out the problems and implementing the new strategies.

Course Objectives:

At the end of this course, the participants will be able to:

Build an organizational vision direction and purpose
Implement the organizational strategy at a departmental level
Evaluate the impact of the wider environment of strategy
Determine the key features of their organizational culture to determine if it is supportive of the organization's direction
Identify opportunities to innovate in the organization
Build a compelling message for those they lead
Understand organizational culture and how it impacts performance
Improve the interpersonal relationships
Identify the behaviours which build trust and influence
Establish a “grounded” change management plan to meet the needs of the global environment

Course Coverage:

Topic 1: Leading on The Creative Edge:

Developing Creative Potential in People and Teams
Understanding Creative People
Convergent & Divergent Thinking Skills
Motivating Creative Individuals at Work
Incubating ideas
Interacting creatively
Converting expenses to assets using creativity

Topic 2: What is Strategy? Why is it important?

Principles of strategic management and business planning
Strategic fit of organizational structure, business processes, and culture
Combining analytical, creative, and innovative thinking in strategic management
How to build, manage and develop a strategic planning team
Getting employees to think strategically
Developing a Vision of Tomorrow’s Organization

Topic 3: Understanding The Strategic Environment:

Understanding the strategic leadership agenda – intellect, management, and behaviours
Recognizing and interpreting forces in the strategic environment
Understanding strategic inflexion points and strategic scenarios
Analyzing and prioritizing strategic issues
Formulating strategic vision and expressing strategic intent
Developing a strategic roadmap

Topic 4: Understanding Strategic Models and Paradigms:

The strategic journey – common models and frameworks for strategic thinking (from Ansoff to Hamel via Porter and Mintzberg)
Recognizing strategic horizons and using the 7S framework
Recognizing and developing the characteristics of strategic agility
Understanding and leveraging strategic competencies and skills

Topic 5: Effective Strategic Implementation:

Strategic implementation tools and Frameworks
Structures and Systems for strategic agility and Performance
Monitoring and adjustment
Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management

Topic 6: Driving Strategic Performance & Success:

Transforming the organization to enable strategic success
Balancing the focus on performance and strategy
Spreading leadership capabilities throughout the organization
Maximizing organizational learning and knowledge transfer to embed strategic success

Topic 7: Budgeting, Planning, and Business Strategy:

Strategy models
Business Strategy related to financial strategy
Planning and budgeting models
Linking Budgets to business and financial strategy
Build Managing
Delegating budgets effectively
Beyond Budgeting

Topic 8: Communication – The Challenge of Getting Everyone On The Same Page:

How do we communicate the plan?
Using multiple channels to get the message across
Leveraging people’s learning styles to communicate more effectively
Communicating strategy through the organization
Using Your Emotional Intelligence
Dealing with resistance effectively
Setting up a Rewards system
Celebrating success – but not stopping the momentum

Topic 9: Avoiding The Pitfalls of Strategic Planning:

The strategy life-cycle and the problem of strategic drift
Getting innovative thinking into the organization
The potentially negative dimensions of success
How to avoid “paralysis by analysis”
Overcoming the inability to evaluate fresh ideas, denying the truth, and thinking inside the box
The critical importance of team building and teamwork

Topic 10: Strategic Implementation and Getting the Value Out of Strategy:

Effective execution - converting strategic analysis and planning into action
Linking Strategy with operational objectives
Implementation – getting practical things done
Strategic planning of your career
Creating tomorrow’s organization out of today’s organization

Targeted Groups:

Head of departments
Strategic Planning department
Managers at all managerial levels
Supervisors and Team leaders
HR Staff
Employees who want to gain new crucial skills to improve their career path