Education

Strategic Thinking

We facilitate strategic thinking and dialogue for senior leadership teams and boards.

Our sessions focus on clarity of language and quality of commitment — helping leaders challenge assumptions, deepen strategic exchange and align on choices.

  • Strategic Individual
    This programme is aimed at high potential managers seeking to improve their strategic performance en route to senior leadership positions.

    Contents:

    • Thinking styles of strategic people
    • Zooming in and zooming out
    • Reflection and dialogue skills
    • Surfacing assumptions
    • Using metaphorical thinking
  • Strategic Team
    This programme is aimed at complete management and leadership teams aiming to enhance their collective strategy performance, across strategy formulation, planning and implementation.

    Contents: 

    • Team diagnostic and compositional assessment 
    • Problem framing 
    • Becoming strategically alert 
    • Constructive enquiry and dialogue 
    • Forming collective commitments 
    • Team routines and meetings 
    • Shared incentives 
  • Strategic Organization
    This programme is aimed at leadership teams and boards responsible for organizational design and raising strategy performance across all people and business units. 

    Contents:

    • Unlinking strategy from structure 
    • Building an opportunity-first organization 
    • Increasing strategic flow of people, ideas, and capital 
    • Building strategic agility from the edges 
    • Continuous planning processes 
    • Open strategy process 
    • Corporate venturing as intentional instability 
    • Artefacts to foster a culture of strategic thinking 
A contemporary off site meeting illustrating strategic thinking a diverse group of senior executives dressing in business casual clothing engaged in thoughtful discussion, surrounded by whiteboards, flip charts, a projector with a depth-of-field effect emphasizing focus and clarity. The atmosphere conveys intelligence, collaboration, and forward-looking strategy. --v 7 Job ID: ffbbcb07-94dd-4523-8943-1251aa55d864

Stage 1 – Strategy Challenge Workshop

  • 2 days, offsite, senior team
  • Sharing data findings
  • Dialogue and key issue identification
  • Structuring and prioritisation of key issues
  • Strategy formulation
  • Key initiatives and roadmap/portfolio implications
Business people having a meeting in a digital marketing agency. Group of business professionals discussing a project in an office. Teamwork and collaboration in a creative workplace.

Stage 2 – Implementation

  • Strategy sprints
  • Strategic initiatives measurement
  • Team and function sub-strategy development
  • Strategy assumptions checking and recalibration
  • Strategy update
  • Pivoting

Workshop Host

  • Julia Sloan

    Dr. Sloan is a leading authority on the cognitive aspect of strategic thinking, recognized for pioneering the application of complex cognitive theory to everyday practice in global business and public policy. Her work draws on more than two decades of expatriate corporate experience across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, aligning business agendas with prevailing economic, cultural, and social issues.

    More details

  • Want to learn more about thinking strategically?

    Strategic thinking has become a core competency for business leaders globally. Over-used and under-defined, the term is often used interchangeably with strategic management. This textbook delineates and defines strategic thinking as a conceptual cognitive capability.

    Buy the book

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