Preview of Visual Strategic Planning: Getting Your Head Around a Hot New Planning Methodology

Course Description

This is a free preview (14 minutes) of the Visual Strategic Planning: Getting Your Head Around a Hot New Planning Methodology course. The description of the full course (57 minutes) is provided below.

When long-term planners start talking about a planning horizon of 9 months, we need to rethink traditional approaches to planning. Visual strategic planning cuts through our information overload and hyper-busy environment.

While the idea of visual strategic planning is no more complex than: ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, successful implementation depends on making sure that the visual strategy models used are ’simple but not simplistic’.

This course covers the advantages of visual strategic planning and some tricks in its implemention. Hands-on examples are worked through and there’s discussion of how it can be used to communicate strategy, drive organisational alignment and improve measurement and reporting. The change management challenges in its implementation are also discussed.

After taking this course you'll be able to: 

• understand the advantages of using visual strategic planning
• better judge whether now is the time to implement aspects of it in your organization
• see the way in which it can contribute to organisational alignment, measurement and reporting  
• use aspects of visual strategic planning in some of your projects
• understand the key issues in managing risk around its implementation

This course is for professionals within the following business functions: 

• Board members
• Business owners
• Strategic planners
• Managers
• Project managers
• Risk managers

1. Introduction - 15 minutes

   1. Introduction
   2. What the organisational literature says about visual strategic planning
   3. Strategy areas where visual strategic planning can add value

2. How to draw a visual strategic plan - 15 minutes

   1. Making thinking about strategy easier
   2. Breaking up a visual model to make it easier to understand
   3. A visual strategic plan for a software company

3. Extending visual strategic planning to customer experience mapping and competitive analysis - 9 minutes 

   1. Developing a customer experience map using a visual strategic planning approach
   2. Some visual strategic planning techniques used in competitive analysis

4. Achieving organizational alignment -  8 minutes

   1. How visual strategic planning can make organizational alignment more transparent
   2. Using visual strategic planning to achieve alignment in practice

5. Measurement and reporting with visual strategic planning - 8 minutes

   1. How visual strategic planning ensures that measurement follows strategy
   2. Visual strategic planning, Wall Street and 2007
   3. Visual strategic planning and reporting

6. Conclusion - 2 minutes

   1. Conclusion