Columbia Business School

Overview

Creating and Executing Breakthrough Strategy helps you to gain a competitive edge by better understanding your customers, competitors, and industry trends. The program introduces you to the Strategic Learning process — a unique way of integrating strategic analysis, focus, alignment, and execution, and gives you practical guidelines for implementing new strategic directions.

Over six days, you gain a greater understanding of leadership in changing circumstances, so you can leverage corporate culture to your best advantage and overcome resistance. In addition, you benefit from the opportunity to apply your learning to an important personal case with the help and insight of faculty and your peers.

For a complete program schedule download the agenda.

Please Contact Us

Please contact our Learning Solutions Specialists at 212-854-3395 for a personal conversation to learn more.

Audience

Creating and Executing Breakthrough Strategy is designed for executives of all levels responsible for strategic planning, with primary responsibility for making the changes necessary to enable effective execution of strategy, or those with P&L responsibility who seek to become more strategic in their thinking.

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

Program Benefits in the Current Context

Creating and Executing Breakthrough Strategy is particularly adapted to the current context, when more than ever, companies need to sharpen their strategies in order to maximize their market share.

"This program takes participants through a rigorous exercise, called a Situation Analysis, to develop insights into the changing environment and the key implications that businesses must contend with today. The participants also learn a unique process called Strategic Learning, which enables leaders and their organizations to sense and respond to change on a continuous basis. Throughout the program, we facilitate discussions on the strategic implications of the unfolding financial crisis."
–William Pietersen, faculty director

Summary of Benefits

• Learn to conduct a Situation Analysis: a powerful method for creating insights into the external environment and your company's own realities
• Improve your ability to foresee change and its implications
• Identify deficiencies in the formulation of your organization's strategy and determine steps to address them
• Diagnose the current state of organizational alignment and create appropriate interventions
• Create a "Winning Proposition" that differentiates your organization and provides greater value to your customers and a political plan to facilitate the execution of your strategy
• Develop a concrete action plan for your specific implementation challenges
• Understand how to monitor the success of a strategic project

Upon completion of this program, you will earn six days towards a Certificate in Business Excellence. Learn more.

Faculty

William Pietersen Professor of the Practice of Management

Curriculum

Before the program begins, participants prepare by meeting with superiors and peers to discuss a strategic challenge and submitting a write-up. This pressing issue becomes the foundation for the participant's personal case, which is discussed and addressed throughout the program with other participants and with individual coaches.

Sample Session Titles

• Introduction to Strategic Learning
• Learning Styles
• Achieving Insights
• Strategy and Organizational Effectiveness
• Aligning Strategy & Measurement Systems
• Aligning Strategy and Culture

For a complete program schedule download the agenda.