This course exposes students to the skills and tools of strategy consulting, including structured problem-solving, communication, managing strategy projects and influencing.  The learnings from the course are broadly applicable; besides their relevance to consulting, they will be valuable in corporate strategy assignments, general management, business development and entrepreneurship.

The course is organized around the phases of a typical strategy engagement:  problem definition, problem structuring, data gathering & analysis, and recommendations development.  Students will get to learn and practice specific consulting tools and principles associated with each of these four phases, such as issue trees, hypothesis-driven problem-solving, interview guides and the pyramid principle.

The course emphasizes hands-on practice and real-time feedback.  Formal discussion of consulting tools and skills is supplemented by mini-cases and strategy cases based on real-life engagements.  Students will get a number of opportunities to exercise and hone the skills they are introduced to during the course.

The class will meet physically for 4 full days.   Class time will be focused on team exercises, team presentations, Q&A, live feedback, and role-plays.  Besides these 4 class days, students will also be asked to learn online via videos, reflection and discussion.  (This online program is being offered at a fee to Executive Education participants; as CBS MBA students enrolled in Driving Strategic Impact, you will not be charged for it).  A significant part of the lecture-content of the class will be completed in this online classroom, opening us up for more discussions, role-plays and team exercises in class.  There will be around 10 hrs of online work.  

This class will involve an in-class final exam on the final class date where you will be tested on your mastery of the tools and insights learned during the course.

Hitendra Wadhwa

Professor of Professional Practice

Hitendra Wadhwa is Professor of Practice at Columbia Business School and founder of the Mentora Institute. He teaches Columbia's most popular MBA leadership class on Personal Leadership & Success. He also teaches MBA and Executive Education programs on Driving Strategic Impact and Leading from the Inside Out, and has received the Executive-MBA Commitment to Excellence Award, the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence...

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