Train Your Leadership Team In The Strategic Skills To Guide Your Business Into The Future

SPECIALIZED TRAINING

In addition to my coaching services, I also deliver specialized training. Below is a detailed description of my most popular training for Ontario companies, Strategic Planning.

Additional types of training include:

Presentation Training

Sales Training

Manager Training and

Culture Training

For further information on these trainings and how they can be customized for your circumstances, contact me at warren[at]warrencoughlin[dot]com.

Training in Strategic Planning And Execution

You have done an admirable and impressive job in managing and evolving your business during the pandemic. 

The challenge and opportunity is to plan now for growth and scale as more fascinating opportunities come your way.

You’ve wisely recognized that one of the challenges and obstacles to success in scaling is playing “whack-a-mole”…trying to do too many things at once and not doing any well enough. 

One key to successful and controlled scaling is control over the fundamental levers and focusing on what matters most at each stage.

The process outlined below is designed to help you gain this control and focus without unnecessary stress.

 
Because the team size is small but with big ambitions, this will require heightened clarity on individual areas of responsibility among the leadership team, more coordinated execution and higher degrees of accountability.

It will likely also require renewed attention to staffing up and maintaining the culture.

Benefits of This Training

Before outlining the details of the proposed training, it’s useful to ensure we are clear about the desired benefits of any training:

Elevation of Strategic Thinking of Senior Team:

Strategic thinking is unique. It requires an ability to think distantly about the organizational objectives, and closely, considering available resources and time. It demands an ability to objectively, dispassionately diagnose problems and opportunities and to creatively, enthusiastically design solutions. This thinking won’t only improve the executive level performance for internal operations, but will help in guiding project work as well.

Installing a Strategic Planning Process: 

Strategy is successful when it is consistent. If the only thing that happens is that people learn a new way of thinking, it’s unlikely to have enduring impact if there isn’t a system or process in which that thinking can find its expression. This training will help you develop that process. 

Career development: 

The team members you’ve identified for this training represent the future of the enterprise. By developing their skills, they will have a stronger sense of their own career trajectories and will be much more capable of accepting higher levels of responsibility

Secondary career development:

One of the most exciting outcomes of the introduction of strategic thinking into an organization is its osmotic effect. The thinking seeps into all that you do, so even the most junior members of the team adopt the approach and are able to elevate their own performance.

Time Saving:

This will happen on two fronts.

First, when a team is clear, united and focused on a narrow and agreed upon range of objectives, with defined activities, deliverables and deadlines, a lot of extraneous unnecessary work is eliminated. This creates greater productivity and efficiency.

Second, because the firm will have an executive team capable of guiding its strategic direction, leadership will be free to focus on the high value business development work that is necessary for the long-term growth of the business.

The Process:
To realize on these benefits, the following approach is recommended.

You need at least 2 members of the team for training.

To qualify, you must be an employer in Ontario, and there must be a clear job benefit flowing from the training.

The Ontario Government has a program that, if you qualify, will cover 5/6 of the costs of this training.

You can (and should) participate at no additional cost, but the funding only applies to employees or those who become employees after or during the training.
 

The phases of the training are as follows:

• Introduction to Strategic Planning Practices: We’ll review the foundational model of operational strategy, a concept known as the business chassis common to all businesses, the 7 stages of successful strategy execution, from analysis through to execution and evaluation.

Examination of Iterative Thinking and how it’s essential to effective planning.

Introduction to SWOT analysis and how to avoid common traps and mistakes.

Application of iterative thinking to the distillation of a SWOT to a “mini-SWOT” with potentially more focused analysis.

An introduction to each of the key elements of a business that an executive team is accountable for and the types of issues that need to be explored so that the SWOT analysis isn’t just a shallow pass, but something that surfaces the real issues rather than just symptoms.

These include:

Foundations of Vision, Mission, Purpose and Values.

Product: what we offer, what we could offer, what makes it attractive.

Promotion: the details of the Unique Selling Proposition (USP), marketing and marketing strategy, sales, sales planning and sales management.

Process: what systems need to be identified, documented and trained allocated between those that directly serve the customer and those that support the operations of the business as well as associated KPI’s.

People: this includes recruitment, induction, training, performance management, compensation, career development and culture.

Planning: what are the approaches and cadences for planning.

Principles: following the values of the organization.

How to distill multiple options and competing priorities using both a Risk Assessment Matrix and Strategic Prioritization Matrix.

 
Structuring strategic planning: How to incorporate capacity analysis into planning to ensure that what gets planned is achievable within the planning timeframe. This will involve an examination of constraints theory and effective vs ineffective approaches to results-focused delegation.

Strategic Execution. 78% of strategies fail in execution. We’ll review a process of execution involving a taxonomy of different types of meetings, how they should be scheduled and how to main integrity to the process when events happen that conflict with items on the strategic plan.
Debrief and reinforcement of learning.

Training period:

The training period is 6 weeks with trainings done 2x/week.
Having said that, I’m flexible to accommodate your schedule.

Training Location: 

We will conduct the trainings via Zoom. I have participated in trainings and conferences during this time and it is possible to do this in a highly engaging way, using breakout rooms, breaks and virtual white boards.


Conclusion:
You and your business have done an extraordinary job of navigating these difficult times. For you to fully take hold of opportunities that will continue to arise you need to create a leadership team equipped with the skills, tools, processes and experience to guide the strategy of the firm.

with more than 100 satisfied clients You are in good hands, SO SCROLL DOWN, READ THE Full CASE STUDIES AND BOOK A TIME ON THE CALENDAR.