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Our Training Program

Training Program Overview
Two Hours On the Front Lines
One Day On the Front Lines
Every Day On the Front Lines

One Day on the Front Lines of Strategy

Our one-day workshops are interactive sessions that teach the core skills of strategic analysis and response. They illustrate in tangible ways how strategy works in a dynamic environment. Like our two-hour presentation on Sun Tzu’s Art of War, our strategy workshops address your organization’s specific issues, but they offer a longer format that allows attendees to get real work done in addressing specific shared challenges and responsibilities. Our strategy workshops are designed for a minimum of 25 attendees and a maximum of 500.

In these workshops, we not only teach the rules of strategy but use them to clarify your organization’s strategic mission, compare competitive positions in the market, evaluate the current leadership and methods used, and develop potential moves to stronger positions. These workshops start with a discussion of strategic analysis and, through interaction with the workshop participants, create an in-depth analysis of your organization, your marketplace, and competing organizations.

In a workshop, most of the discussion comes from the attendees. We guide the discussion to meet two specific goals:

• The first goal is to educate the attendees on how to develop a strategic position using the tools from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

• The second goal is to clarify your organization’s current strategic position and prioritize the best ways to advance your position over the coming year.  

• The third goal is defined by the group itself and includes the following:
      Group agreement on desired results
      Achievement of those results
      Group agreement to follow up on those results
     

A part of each day is spent on learning how to analyze strategic positions. This requires going through the key elements that define your organization’s position in your marketplace, especially relative to your competition. We start with mission and then evaluate all other aspects of the organization in terms of how well they unite the organization around its mission.

A part of each day is also spent discussing desired results and how the rules of strategy are related to the group’s specific challenges. During this part of the workshop, we try to identify the group’s priorities and the dangers and common mistakes that organizations make in trying to advance a position.

Finally, a part of each day is spent in work teams, achieving the desired results and developing the “work product” desired from the event.

The style of these workshops is Socratic and the direction is flexible. We ask questions of the workshop participants about their organization and its strategic position, and use everyone’s answers to explain which aspects of a strategic position are critical and why. This questioning starts painlessly by offering multiple-choice answers that attendees anonymously vote on. As the discussion focuses on specific issues,  individuals explain why they consider one issue more important than another given the organization’s specific strategic situation. The group then decides which topics require more discussion and work.

During the workshop, the group decides on the results desired from the workshop. At a specific point, larger groups might be broken down into smaller work teams and assigned specific tasks related to that desired result. The group then reassembles, with the various teams relating their results. The group then agrees to follow up on those results within a specific time frame.

Example

Consider the following example of how desired results are identified and achieved during a workshop.

During the first day, we always cover the strategic role of philosophy and how it relates to the other key elements of a strategy: climate, ground, leadership, and methods. During this discussion, the group might realize that one of its goals should be to develop a clearer idea of the organizing philosophy.

After deciding how much time to spend on the issue, given other priorities, the larger group might then be divided into competing smaller teams charged with developing competing descriptions of the organization’s unifying mission. During this time, the trainer visits the work teams to answer any questions they might have. After the work teams finish, the resulting work products are read, critiqued, and defended. The whole group then assembles and usually combines to create a formal statement of philosophy.

As the workshop advances, other goals are identified and addressed. For example, teams might relate the now clearer organizing philosophy to the organization’s changing climate, market, individual leadership, or organizational methods. In the case of a clearer philosophy, specific methods often must be changed to conform to that philosophy.

Goals

In the end, the the workshop should

1. produce a useful strategic analysis and direction for progress;

2. provide a powerful shared vocabulary for executives to discuss changing strategic issues on an ongoing basis;

3. educate attendees so they can analyze the specific strategic positions of their own departments or divisions;

4. instill in attendees the desire to continually improve their understanding of strategy, using the written and on-line training material provided; and

5. produce a commitment from attendees to follow on the results from the workshop.

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