Strategy Execution (SE)

• Make the right project choices from the start
• Foster a culture of shared ambition to engage everyone in your initiative
• Create a water-tight execution plan
• Pilot your initiative to success, and learn skills to accurately assess a project’s impact

Learn practical strategic planning with this personalized online program

As an executive tasked with driving strategic change in your organization, you want a framework to maximize your chances of success. You need concrete techniques to help you move beyond good ideas and aspirations to execution.

Leading Strategic Initiatives provides the results-oriented insights into what it takes to implement major change effectively. You will learn how to build a compelling vision, enabling you to sell a program internally. You will discover how to identify the right team members, pick the best ideas and allocate time and other resources to help them achieve your initiative.

Armed with more developed powers of focus, you will also develop a robust toolset for overcoming complacency in yourself and others as the implementation stage proceeds.

Leading Strategic Initiatives - your learning journey

Throughout this 8-week online course, you will learn to drive strategic change in your organization, developing new knowledge and skills. You will then translate these directly into your own working context with a project.

Unit 1: Introduction & 7 insights of execution

• Formulate learning objectives and record an individual introduction for fellow participants.
• Discover the seven insights of smarter execution of strategic initiatives and complete a brief diagnostic to gain greater insight into any specific execution challenges you are facing.

Unit 2: Focus first

• Analyze the Kone case study to determine the factors that contribute to the success or failure of strategic initiatives.
• Consider the fundamental purpose behind your strategic initiative.
• What is your focus? Is it fully aligned with your organization’s overall strategy?

Unit 3: Pick the best

• Study the Nestlé Globe Initiative, which involved overcoming internal resistance to drive a substantial degree of change.
• Examine how the initiative’s leader built his team and engaged other stakeholders, and consider how these insights can be applied to your own team selection.

Unit 4: Set the course

• Learn how a powerful vision helped a Best Buy VP to lead a strategic initiative that built the business.
• Think about how to increase the sense of urgency in your organization about your initiative.
• Record an “elevator pitch” and develop a vision – a shared ambition for your organization.

Unit 5: Think it through

• Develop an execution plan for your initiative and assess its impact on the organization, based on interviews with selected stakeholders.
• Think about and plan a pilot before moving to the rollout phase.

Unit 6: All aboard

• Discover how to engage different groups of stakeholders, how to communicate with influence and how to overcome resistance.
• Conduct a stakeholder assessment, reflect on how to communicate your initiative to different audiences and design a high-impact event.

Unit 7: Play to win

• Reflect on your personal leadership and how you are leading your team.
• Test what you have learnt from the program and participate in an interactive simulation about implementing a strategic initiative that involves managing a team and a group of stakeholders.

Unit 8: Follow through

• In the final week, we will debrief the simulation, summarize the lessons learned and look at how you can monitor the progress of your strategic initiative moving forward.

Your Learning Coach

How we are helping you

You will have a dedicated learning coach, making sure you receive a highly individualized learning experience.

Your designated Leading Strategic Initiatives learning coach accompanies you through your 8-week learning journey. They provide support and feedback as you apply your learning straight away in the workplace, where it has an immediate impact.

Their input helps you translate your learning to your particular context. By spreading this feedback regularly throughout the program, you'll be sure to embed your ongoing learning directly in your daily work.

Your learning coach interacts with you via video, in writing and over the phone. You have calls, spread across the 8 weeks, at intervals that consolidate your learning.

Your learning coach helps you:

• Define your learning objectives
• Review your progress on a weekly basis
• Overcome your challenges
• Translate what you learn to your own context