The Course

Coming up with a great strategy is one thing, but actually implementing it successfully in order to get outstanding results is quite another. This is why the real challenge in strategy is in execution. Professionals require the skills and competencies to go from strategy formulation to day-to-day tactical execution while ensuring the achievement of results that align with the strategy.

The Goals

• Understand the planning and execution framework at all levels of the organization.
• Understand the need for planning and control to achieve strategy, operational goals, and tactical results.
• Understand and apply the basic principles and concepts of planning and decision-making at all levels of the organization.
• Recognize and apply the concepts and principles of strategy, operational planning, and tactical execution.
• Creating and maintaining the organizational structures, processes, and systems to ensure tactical, operational, and strategic success.
• Develop an ability to understand context, seize opportunities, and apply initiative in the face competition, obstacles, and rapidly changing situations, all to achieve the higher-level outcomes of the organization.

The Delegates

• Line and functional managers, team leaders and supervisors in organizations of all sizes
• Professionals responsible for strategy, marketing, business development, production, operations, HR, and/or product development
• Intermediate and advanced level managers, team leaders and supervisors within all sectors, private and public, profit and not-for-profit

The Process

The course is a mixture of speaker input, facilitated discussion, syndicate work and practical exercises, with an emphasis on delegate involvement throughout.

The Benefits

Delegates will learn:

• The essential differences and commonalities of strategy and tactics.
• The unsung importance of operations, or operational art, that is, the systems, processes, and techniques to transform strategic goals into tactical success.
• Operational level campaign planning, the techniques and processes for creating the organization, structure, systems, human capital, and other resources to support the tactical front-line in achieving success in alignment with the strategy and strategic objectives.
• Measuring progress and results and comparing them to objectives at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.
• Exploiting unexpected tactical successes at the operational and strategic levels.
• Fundamentals of planning, execution, and progress/results measurement.
• Nested hierarchical planning, mission analysis, and mission leadership.

The Results

Organizations will benefit through the following results:

• Managers with a better understanding of how organizational leaders and managers plan and execute strategy, operations, systemic and structural changes, in order to gain tactical level results.
• Better understanding and appreciation of the needs of strategic, operational, organizational, and tactical leadership and management.
• Improved integration of operations, structure, organizational systems and processes, and tactical execution into the overarching framework of strategy and strategic objectives.
• Appreciation of context and evolving situations to apply and encourage initiative and responsible leadership of scarce resources at all levels.

The Course Content

Day One : From Vision to Results: The Planning and Execution Framework

• Understanding the distinctions between strategy, operations, and tactics
• How planning and execution work
• How vision, mission, and planning relate to morale, cohesion, and unity of purpose
• Nested hierarchical planning
• Mission analysis and mission leadership
• Measuring progress and results

Day Two : Strategy: Setting the Vision and Direction

• Understanding vision, mission, objectives
• Corporate-level strategy
• Competitive strategy and positioning
• Offensive and defensive manoeuvres

Day Three : Operational Campaign Planning: Turning the Strategy into Actionable Plans

• Using nested hierarchical planning and mission analysis to create a campaign planning framework
• Understanding and applying key operational concepts: centre of gravity, main effort, concentration, economy of effort, major thrust(s), and supporting thrust(s)
• Working with limited resources: deciding what to do and why to do it
• Building a campaign plan to implement a strategy
• Successful manoeuvering and positioning

Day Four : Operational Systems and Processes: Setting the Conditions for Successful Execution of Strategy

• Strategy mapping and the components of organizational systems and processes
• The financial perspective
• The customer perspective
• The internal perspective: operations management, customer management, innovation, and regulatory & social processes
• The learning and growth perspective: developing and integrating human, informational, and organizational capital

Day Five : Tactics: Getting Results and Leading in the Face Competition and Obstacles

• Breaking objectives into manageable goals and tasks
• Giving direction efficiently and effectively
• Using and encouraging initiative, flexibility, and adaptation within overarching strategy, operational plans, and organizational structures and systems
• Managing for results
• Feedback and adjustment