Strategic Planning


 

IDI offers a one-, two-, or three-day course in strategic planning entitled The Strategic Decision Maker.  The course examines a range of strategic planning approaches and provides the student with a framework for selecting the best approach for each strategic planning environment.  The training will prepare the student to apply specific tools and techniques to accomplish effective organizational strategic planning.

The one-day course provides an introduction to strategic planning, including how to apply the basic planning paradigm of situation assessment, mission, goals, objectives, and metrics to strategic problems.  The student will learn the basic elements of five approaches:

• Integrated Strategic Planning (Bazoian)
• Cognitive Mapping (Eden)
• Stakeholder Analysis (Gregory and Keeney)
• Future Visioning (O’Brien and Meadows)
• TOWS Matrix (Weihrich)

The two-day course shows the student how to modify the basic strategic planning paradigm where values (goals and objectives) are not clear or are in conflict with each other.  The student will learn the elements of five approaches to make trade-offs among conflicting values:

• Value Focused Thinking (VFT) (Keeney)
• Business Process Reengineering (Hammer)
• Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan and Norton)
• Marginal Cost Benefit Analysis (Kirkwood)
• Strategy-to-Task (Quality Function Deployment) (Akao)

The three-day course shows the student how to fold into the strategic planning paradigm, not only multiple objectives, but the impact of future risk and uncertainty. Key concepts include multi-stage strategies, hedging and shaping strategies, and evaluation of risk.  The student will learn the elements of six approaches to plan in uncertain environments:

• Scenario Planning (Schwartz)
• Assumption Based Planning (ABP) (RAND)
• Structured Chaos Planning (Brown and Eisenhardt)
• Implications Wheel (Barker)
• Roadmaps (Albright)
• Decision Trees (Clemen)