In today's business environment, companies are facing critical strategic challenges:

• How to strengthen their organization's strategy and decision-making capabilities from top to bottom
• How to identify and deliver full value from their best performing products and businesses
• How to reinvent those areas of their business which are stagnant and facing increasing margin pressure

The program's framework will enable you to select the appropriate process for specific decisions, and enable your organization to build in (rather than inspect for) decision quality. Creating and executing exceptional strategies both on the individual business level and at the portfolio level will be discussed. These discussions will also describe how this same approach can be applied to other portfolio decisions, such as those required in R&D, or for a portfolio of products and services within a business unit.

 

Objectives

• Improve your ability to identify and deliver full value with a proven, flexible, decision-focused strategy development process
• Learn and practice decision tools for structuring decisions, creating choices, assessing information, identifying objectives, and evaluating strategic alternatives
• Enhance your capability to think and execute strategically for both individual business and portfolio strategies

Topics

• Understand why your organization and its people have a difficult time taking intelligent risks that would increase the value of the organization
• Measure the quality of strategic decisions
• Understand strategic decision processes, and which should be used in which situation
• Structure decisions for maximum effectiveness and efficiency
• Build unbiased forward-looking business assessments
• Quantify the limits of your knowledge, and how you can minimize biases in your assessments
• Develop excellent strategies when multiple players, with multiple objectives, are involved
• Determine the methodology and tools for incorporating risk into strategic evaluations
• Plan for successful execution during the strategy process
• Make the leap from individual strategic decisions to portfolios of decisions at all levels
• Discuss the role of leadership in creating and executing exceptional strategies

This program is designed for executives who desire to expand their capacity to think strategically in order to drive value creation, competitive advantage, and ultimately impact their company's bottom line. Managers moving into a position that will require strategic and executional thinking would also be good candidates.

Leo Hopf, Carlson Executive Education Fellow

Location
Executive Education
Carlson School of Management
University of Minnesota
321 Nineteenth Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0438

Results-Oriented Teaching Approach

The teaching approach provides a mix of lecture, discussions, and working sessions. Small group exercises and one-on-one consultations with faculty and other participants will give you an opportunity to apply the tools and concepts to strategic decisions you are currently facing.

A comprehensive workbook is provided for use during the program to track application ideas and to reference after returning to work. In addition, you will receive a PowerPoint file with electronic templates for the exercises covered during the breakout sessions.

You will leave the session with new ideas and concepts and an understanding of how these can be applied to the strategic problems you face. You will have several "takeaways" which can be used immediately, as well as long-term ideas that can be implemented over time.

Quantity Discount
A discount of 15% will apply to registrations of 3 or more people from the same company registering as a group for the same specific program. Please note that this offer is contingent upon all registrants enrolling in the same program having the same start date. Program cancellations and program transfers affecting the minimum number of people enrolled in the program for which the discount applied will void the discount.