Corporate Training By Zack Academy - How to Build Strategic Thinking Skills

Why Should You Take The How to Build Strategic Thinking Skills Workshop?

How to Build Strategic Thinking Skills is an intensive one-day training workshop that will open your mind to a whole new way of thinking about how you think through any challenge or problem you face. You will learn how to break down any business situation from a strategic perspective, identifying hurdles, opportunities, hot issues, and constraints. Then, you will learn to formulate effective strategies for addressing the dilemma you're up against and to create an effective strategic plan and execution strategy to ensure positive results.

Topics To Be Covered Include:

• Challenge conventional thinking
• Read the environment of today and anticipate the environment of tomorrow
• Weigh risks against the potential rewards
• Understand the drivers, strengths, and vulnerabilities of any situation or business condition
• Articulate your strategies so everyone understands
• Avoid costly mistakes using "what-if" thinking
• Align strategic decisions with critical goals

Syllabus

Strategic Thinking Essentials:

• Strategic Thinking Rule #1: Open minds are essential!
• Challenging conventional thinking
• What"s your vision? Seeing possibilities beyond the present
• Thinking big and broadly
• Automatic filters that affect your perception of the world and the way you think
• Reading the environment of today and anticipating the environment of tomorrow
• Zoom-in, Zoom-out: looking beyond the picture you see from where you stand

Strategic Thinking for Better Decisions:

• What do you need to accomplish? Focus on the goal
• Weighing risks against the potential rewards
• Intuition or hard fact? Why you need to consider both
• Building adaptability and flexibility into your decisions
• Choices must be made: establishing priorities
• How hiccups and mistakes can be a strategic thinker"s best friend

The Strategic Thinker"s Thinking Tools:

• The important role of information gathering in concepting new strategies
• Understanding the drivers, strengths, and vulnerabilities of any situation or business condition
• Identifying roadblocks and land mines that can throw you off track
• Protecting your "thinking time" — it"s hard to be your strategic best amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday life
• Questioning strategies: the best answers come from the best questions
• Articulating your strategies: communicating so everyone understands

Creative and Critical Thinking Skills:

• The differences among strategic, creative, and critical thinking — and why all 3 are important
• Creative idea generation — how to come up with lots of outside-the-box ideas fast
• An oldie but still a goodie for critical thinkers: SWOT Analysis
• Get out of "stuck in a rut" thinking
• Avoid costly mistakes using what-if thinking
• Paradigms: where to look for the next generation of breakthrough ideas
• Using the "Why 5 Tool" to determine what"s really important to you

From Strategic Thinking to Strategic Planning:

• Aligning strategic decisions with critical goals
• Critical steps of strategic thinking that guarantee your action plan succeeds
• Ground rules for making stronger decisions and plans
• Setting measurable, specific objectives
• Identify organizational barriers that may interfere with new strategic plans
• Keeping strategic planning simple: the hazards of confusing "comprehensive" with "complex"
• Resource needs planning: a critical part of any strategic plan
• The strategic planning team — and why it"s never a team of one!
• How to monitor your strategic plan"s effectiveness and recognize cues that signal