Leading Strategic Execution

Tuesday - Wednesday
8:30 am - 5:30 pm

Strategies are only as effective as their implementation. Strategies and plans are vital to any organization, yet those strategies and plans typically hit roadblocks in execution. Managers need an effective implementation plan to deal with these roadblocks, and the necessary skills to lead people in execution.

The course establishes a foundation of leadership behaviors that are essential in execution.  It then engages you in creating an alignment & execution plan.  Finally, you will simulate a strategy execution review meeting where you will practice all the skills learned in the course.

Leading Strategic Execution is one of the three courses in the Leading for Competitive Advantage Series. The other courses in the Series are:

• Leading Change: Critical Success Factors
  May 21 - 22
• Strategic Systems Thinking: Creating Competitive Advantage
  July 10 - 11

After the course, you will:

1. Understand how you can practice, and master, the seven leadership behaviors that are essential for execution;
2. Know how to complete an alignment & execution plan, with goals and scorecards; and
3. Identify roadblocks to implementation and actions you can take to overcome these roadblocks.

The course is appropriate for anyone in a management or supervisory position who needs to participate in the execution of company and departmental strategies.

I.    The Seven Essential Leadership Behaviors of Execution
      A.    Know your people and your business
      B.    Insist on realism
      C.    Set clear goals and priorities
      D.    Follow through
      E.    Reward the doers
      F.    Expand people’s capabilities through coaching
      G.    Know yourself

II.    Identifying Alignment Issues
       A.    Framerwork for identifying different sources of misalignment
       B.    Fixing misalignment using alignment mechanisms

III.    Creating Scorecards
       A.    Framework for creating strategic scorecards
       B.    Results vs. activities
       C.    The balanced scorecard approach
       D.    Two types of indicators:
            1.    Lagging indicators
            2.    Leading indicators

IV.    Assigning Responsibilities
       A.    Champions
       B.    Cross-functional partners
       C.    External partners
       D.    Key team members

V.    Overcoming Implementation Roadblocks
       A.    Issues or deficiencies that remain unresolved by a certain milestone
       B.    Possible problems that could arise to prevent each milestone
              from being achieved
       C.    Changes to plans that are needed because of new assumptions,
              new events, new capabilities
       D.    Mismatch between strategies and capabilities
       E.    Lack of skills, capabilities to execute strategies

VI.    Crafting an Alignment & Execution Plan
        Worksheet for execution of a strategy

VII.    Monitoring Execution
        A.    Review results that should be achieved in this period
        B.    Analyze variance between planned and actual results
        C.    Decide on necessary action steps to correct the variance
        D.    Preview results & potential problems for the next period
        E.    Engage the whole team in participating in execution

is one of Asia’s leading personalities in global competitiveness, organizational strategy, and management development. He is also the President of Strategic Directions, Inc.