Learn a new approach to strategic planning based on the issues-analysis approach used by major strategy consulting firms.

The traditional strategic planning approach starts with mission & objectives, goes through a SWOT analysis and then attempts to formulate strategy and action plans based on this analysis.

There are, however, two main problems with this traditional approach:

• Insufficient guidance for the SWOT analysis:
  • no clear specification of what is the relevant information to collect and the relevant analyses to undertake;
  • tendency is then to over-collect and over-analyze information (resulting in wasted time and resources);
  • at worst, the wrong information is collected and analyzed (impairing the effectiveness of the strategy formulation process).

• Insufficient guidance for the strategy formulation process:
  • tends to be a “black hole”, executives often do not know how to use the information coming out of the SWOT analysis to formulate strategy;
  • supposed to be a “creative process” but experience shows that executives would welcome a lot more guidance in this process.

The result is often a less-than-satisfactory strategic planning exercise.

How You Will Benefit

This seminar introduces an Issues-Based Approach to Strategic Planning that addresses the shortcomings of the traditional strategic planning approach. The approach is based on the “Issues Analysis” technique used by major strategy consulting firms for consulting assignments.

Issues Analysis is a disciplined technique of translating a client brief into a set of logically-related questions (the “Issues Tree”) that then drives the data collection and analysis effort. The objective is to focus the strategic analysis and thinking very tightly on answering the right strategic questions for the client, which ensures efficiency and effectiveness of the consulting process. In this case, the strategic (SWOT) analysis is undertaken only after the Issues Tree has been developed.

The issues-based approach to strategic planning starts by identifying the right strategic questions to answer in strategy formulation and then applies the issues analysis technique to answering those questions.

The issues-based approach to strategic planning is particularly useful for public sector and non-profit organizations where the strategic questions to answers may not be the same as for commercial companies and the traditional concepts and tools of competitive strategy for commercial companies may not apply.

What You Will Cover

• What is strategy? An exploration.
• The traditional (SWOT) approach to strategic planning and the problems with this approach
• A new approach to strategic planning – the issues-based approach
  • What is the issues-based approach? What are its advantages?
  • The four key steps in the issues-based approach
• Strategy for commercial organizations
  • Three levels of strategy – corporate-level, business unit and functional strategy
  • Different questions to answer at each level, what are they? How to answer the questions?
  • Applying the issues-based approach to commercial organizations
• Strategy for public sector/non-profit organizations
  • Different strategic questions to answer from commercial organizations
  • How to identify the right questions to answer? How to answer the questions identified?
  • Applying the issues-based approach to public sector/non-profit organizations
• Some key analytical tools and frameworks for strategic analysis and strategy selection
• Where does mission and vision fit in?
• Formulating strategy at the functional level
• The strategic planning process using the issues-based approach
• Strategy execution - just as important as strategy formulation, the key requirements for success in strategy execution

Who Should Attend

Executives, division leaders and other senior executives involved in the formulation and implementation of strategy.

Additional Information

Seminar Schedule