Leadership. Inspiring and enabling organisations to create and realise optimal value.

Being a leader that drives growth in today's complex world requires a clear sense of purpose, self-awareness, strategic thinking and a human-centred approach to innovation and change. This two-day course is designed to empower leaders to explore their leadership strengths and discover how to leverage them to drive commercial growth, customer-centricity, team performance, innovation and change.

Achieving growth requires a compelling and robust growth strategy that considers a breadth of internal and external factors and scenarios. Throughout the course, participants will explore a range of strategic tools that can be used to develop a compelling growth strategy. In addition, we will examine real-life case studies to learn about how different organisations achieved significant growth and positive change in complex contexts.

The key to growth is an unwavering commitment to meeting the needs of customers, business partners and employees. The course will explore human-centred design thinking concepts and methods to provide the tools required to solve problems, foster innovation, and improve the experience of key stakeholders.

To be successful, a robust growth and customer-centred strategy demands effective execution. Over the course's duration, we will identify a range of approaches, tools and methods that can be used to ensure that the growth strategy is effectively executed, supported by a robust plan for managing change, and securing the necessary agreement, support, and engagement of all key stakeholders.

Aims

Driving growth and customer-centricity in today’s complex market requires inspiring leadership, customer-centred problem solving, creativity and strategic thinking. This course aims to:

• explore your leadership strengths and understand how these can be applied to inspire and motivate others
• develop a range of leadership skills that are particularly helpful in driving commercial growth and positive change in organisations
• identify a range of tools and approaches that can be used to develop a compelling and robust growth strategy that is centred on the needs of customers and partners
• explore the theories and frameworks required to develop an effective change plan that ensures the necessary support and engagement from all key stakeholders.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• develop a deeper understanding of your leadership strengths and how these can be used to drive growth and build high-performing teams:
  • undertake a detailed questionnaire to reveal your leadership strengths
  • participate in a range of interactive activities to explore how your strengths can best be applied to stimulate growth and team engagement.
• use a range of strategy tools to inspire new thinking and create a compelling growth and customer-centred strategy:
  • identify a range of strategy tools and frameworks
  • explore the external market forces shaping your organisation's opportunities and threats
  • identify the capability strengths and weaknesses that can drive and hinder growth
  • identify the key components of a customer-centred strategy.
• understand the success factors that enabled growth in a range of different organisations:
  • explore a range of key case studies that enabled organisations to grow in complex conditions
  • consider how your personal strengths could contribute to a success story.
• build your understanding of human-centred design approaches and how they can help drive innovation and growth through a focus on the customer and other key stakeholders:
  • adopt a learning mindset to help define your product and service strategy
  • identify the core customer and partner problem to be solved
  • describe customer research methods and approaches
  • identify the internal capabilities, behaviours and methods required to drive growth and innovation
  • identify what it takes to develop a successful go-to-market strategy
  • identify ways to assess, measure and monitor your customer and partner experience.
• develop your change leadership capability through an exploration of leadership models and relevant case studies:
  • discuss and debate different leadership approaches, models and theories
  • identify the leadership attributes and styles that drive successful growth and positive change
  • identify the capabilities and behaviours that build successful and engaged workforces
  • explore different case studies and debate the factors that determined their success
  • experiment with different scenarios to explore how your strengths could be used to solve problems, drive growth and manage change.
• develop a robust change plan that enables you to secure the necessary engagement and support from all key stakeholders:
  • explore key change management frameworks and tools
  • identify the critical components of a change management plan
  • undertake stakeholder analysis
  • build a stakeholder engagement plan.

Content

Exploring your leadership strengths

• Strength-based learning
• Leadership strengths and your personal profile
• Leadership change capabilities
• Successful leadership approaches and styles
• Storytelling as a method for engagement and effective leadership

Developing a compelling growth strategy

• Exploration of a range of strategic tools (e.g. SWOT analysis, PESTLE, scenario planning and customer segmentation) and in what contexts these can best be applied
• Macro trends and key opportunities and risks facing organisations today
• Core capabilities required to execute on customer-centred growth and change strategies
• Processes for developing effective growth strategies
• Customer-centred cultures
• Case studies

Developing human-centred solutions and cultures

• Design thinking
• Innovation and problem solving
• The learning mindsets and cultural attributes that trigger innovation
• Customer research methods
• Customer segmentation frameworks, journey maps, personas and empathy maps
• Value chain analysis

Building change leadership capability to facilitate growth

• Leadership theories
• Leadership profiles and styles
• Techniques for managing people through change
• Case studies

Develop and execute a robust change plan

• Change management models and frameworks
• Change planning
• Stakeholder analysis tools
• Stakeholder engagement planning

Intended audience

This course is suitable for leaders seeking to build their leadership capability in a changing market context. It is equally valuable for individuals in both the private sector and the public sector, as well as those in purpose-driven organisations who aspire to lead in a manner that drives positive change and effective engagement among customers, partners, and employees.

Delivery style

Coursework consists of a combination of mini-lectures, interactive experiences and practical exercises. These exercises include collaborative group work based on case studies. There will be also an opportunity to consider your own organisation’s growth plan and customer strategy, while also examining the unique opportunities and challenges from a change management perspective.

Delivery mode

Face-to-face, two-day group workshop.

Materials

All course materials are provided electronically (via Dropbox). Printing services are not provided.