Columbia Business School

Overview

Over the last few decades, top-tier strategy consulting firms have cultivated a unique set of skills that consistently help them deliver high-impact solutions to complex strategic issues. Driving Strategic Impact (Online) gives participants the opportunity to acquire this skillset to become more effective at addressing strategic issues and having greater impact within their organization and with their clients.

Driving Strategic Impact (Online) is organized around the core skill of structured problem-solving which takes participants through four phases of a strategy project: defining the scope, structuring the problem, gathering and analyzing data, and developing recommendations. This core training in structured problem-solving is supplemented by additional modules on communication, managing strategy projects, and influencing skills.

The online program offers a distinctive set of video-lectures, delivered with a flexible learning schedule, and self-reflection exercises that maintain engagement among participants and faculty members.

Program Design

The program runs for 10–12 weeks. Participants go through two to three sessions each week. Each session has around 60 minutes of video lectures and 30 minutes of reflections and group discussion. There also are rich opportunities to connect, share, discuss, and practice with other participants. All participants can interact with faculty members in live sessions where they discuss participants' experience, ideas, and questions.

Program Options

The Essentials Edition gives you a strong foundation in the tools, frameworks, and best practices in strategy consulting. You will walk away with a toolbox for structured problem solving, strategy project management, communication, and influencing.

The Executive Edition is designed for professionals who are keen to gain additional experiential learning on how to become trusted advisers to their sponsors, clients, managers, and colleagues. It provides the same content as the Essentials Edition, and supplements this with role-plays around data gathering interviews, influencing tactics and building trust to help you put your learnings into practice and gain feedback from your peers. You will also attend live webinars with Professor Hitendra Wadhwa, the program's faculty director, on how to cultivate the right mindset to become a strong strategic problem-solver and ultimately, a trusted adviser to your client.

For more information on these two versions of Driving Strategic Impact (Online), please visit http://strategyconsultingskills.com/scs-individual/online-program.

Audience

Driving Strategic Impact (Online) is designed for mid- to upper-level executives who work in corporate strategy, internal consulting, business development, strategic account management and product management, who are charged with resolving strategic issues within their organization or for external clients.

Technical or functional professionals who frequently inform and guide strategic decision makers within their organizations will also find this program valuable.

It is also a convenient option for teams within an organization to learn together. We can train your internal facilitators in conducting a blended learning program that integrates online, high-quality video lectures with in-person team discussions, and exercises.

Alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for programs lasting up to seven days. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.

Benefits

Driving Strategic Impact (Online) provides a number of learning benefits. Each week, participants learn at their own pace by watching video lectures, doing reflections, and interacting with other participants — all on their own schedule. They can deep-dive on, or fast-track, course content based on their individual interests. They also can form collaborative relationships with other participants online that will continue to stay active beyond the program.

The program gives you hands-on practice and real-time feedback via in-class exercises, real-life strategy cases and a dynamic exchange between participants and the instructor.

Summary of Benefits

• Establish an understanding with sponsors and key constituencies on the need for a strategy project, and the appropriate approach and resources to be deployed
• Concretely define the scope of a strategy project to enhance the prospects of a successful outcome
• Rapidly identify core business issues and focus your problem-solving effort in the right direction
• Efficiently gather the right information to build a relevant fact base, extract information from internal and external sources, and synthesize it to drive key conclusions
• Develop recommendations that provide the highest value to the organization among feasible alternatives
• Develop a compelling storyline to organize and communicate your findings and recommendations
• Use a range of influencing tactics to win support from key stakeholders
• Develop trust-based relationships with your sponsors, clients, managers and colleagues

Upon completion of this program, you will earn one day towards a Certificate in Business Excellence. Learn more. Participants also receive a Certificate of Completion from Columbia Business School Executive Education.

Faculty

Hitendra Wadhwa Professor of Professional Practice in Marketing

Curriculum

Sample Sessions

Problem Definition

• Typical mistakes managers and teams make when launching strategy projects
• How to concretize the scope of a strategy project
• Key questions that you should resolve prior to project launch, and where to look for answers to these questions

Data Gathering & Analysis

• What kind of data you should collect to address specific issues
• How to prioritize your data collection efforts to allow you to balance effectiveness with efficiency
• How to pressure-test your analysis to make sure it leads to valid conclusions
• How to stay focused on the highest-impact areas of data analysis without "boiling the ocean"

Developing Recommendations

• How to pick which strategic option to recommend from among all feasible alternatives
• Typical questions that you are likely to encounter from seasoned executives — and how can you ensure that your bases are covered
• What you can do to make sure your recommendations are supported — and ultimately, implemented — by the organization

Problem Structuring

• How to break down a complex strategic problem into a set of well-defined sub issues, analyses and tasks
• How to make sure that you have not ignored some major area of analysis
• How to rapidly penetrate to the core of a strategy issue so that you can focus your work on the most critical areas
• Why it is important to set the right expectations upfront about your approach with key executives

BioCo Case: Market Sizing & Segmentation

• Sanitized version of real-life strategy project
• Used throughout the program to illustrate applications of program concepts and tools

Managing Strategy Projects

• Critical early behaviors that can make or mar the success of strategy projects
• How to plan your interactions with key executives throughout the course of the project to ensure their ultimate buy-in
• How to manage team members, such as line managers or corporate staff, who aren't full-time strategy professionals

Synthesizing Ideas & Developing a Storyline

• Why structuring your thoughts is crucial even in "casual" one-on-one meetings
• How to present complex information–data, conclusions, recommendations — in a clear, persuasive and efficient manner
• How to streamline your internal communications within your project team

Building Trust-Based Relationships

• Why building trust with key parties is important in the course of strategy projects
• The "building blocks" of trust
• Behaviors that build trust–or erode it

For a complete program schedule download the agenda.