Analytical and Strategic Thinking Training

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Australia Wide: Melbourne. Sydney. Adelaide. Perth. Canberra. Parramatta. Geelong. Gold Coast. Brisbane.

Strategy is planning and all about vision, decision-making. It is essential for companies and businesses. It guides actions that help them succeed, and helps them overcome any obstacles. Although it is commonly believed that only high-ranking executives or administrators are required to think strategically in a company, this is not true. A team of employees who can think strategically is just as capable of creating good strategies. This course will help your team to learn strategic thinking.

Even a simple employee can be a powerful leader in a company with their foresight and analysis. It is difficult to emphasize enough the importance of strategic thinking within a company. It helps to build bridges and prevent fires and propels the company towards greater success. All it takes is some prediction and thinking about what's happening around you. These techniques will help your team members to get information flowing, think carefully and prepare for the worst. This course will help you to develop leaders and employees who can think strategically for your company's benefit. This course is well suited for sessions on leadership, critical thinking, and decision-making. Contact us to learn more about our training courses and other services. We are helping companies and teams become their best selves. Your team might be next. Register today.

Analytical and Strategic Thinking Training Outline

Gather Intel

We show participants how to gather information correctly. Information is the crux of decision making and planning. Knowing the right things can lead to a much more informed decision or plan, and therefore, much better results. Listen carefully in meetings, and don’t be afraid to ask questions if you need some more information. Remember that information is power, and you can’t always get it by being quiet and taking only what you heard; ask if there’s something that you don’t understand. For example, you can gather information about the company product, and start thinking about the information you have. What features, advantages and disadvantages can you note? Is there anything you can do to improve the product and its sale strategy? It is much easier to think strategically in a company when information flows freely, and people are constantly encouraging use of this information to better the company, because that means people are thinking of exactly how to do certain things; that is exactly how strategy works.

Think, Don’t React

Just because you take action against a certain problem in the company, it does not mean it was the best action to take or plan to follow. Strategic thought flourishes in the company that rewards well-thought out plans that play for long-term benefit, instead of short-term gains. A primary thought to keep in mind that successful companies don’t explosively gain wealth in a short amount of time. Successful companies run marathons, not sprints, and play the endurance game; the question is, who can last the longest, and produce the most long-term benefit? Remember that the point is to get the most concrete results over time, with as little threat to it as possible. That’s how battles are fought, and success in them gauged. The general who wins the fight with fewer casualties is more successful than the one who won, but lost his whole army. For example, Opal’s company is about to enter financial danger, and they’re thinking of cashing in their various investments now to save themselves. However, Opal gathered intelligence on their investments and realised that these investments are fresh, and wouldn’t yield enough money to save the company. Instead of doing that, she suggests that they change tactics in their marketing and sales to get more income, and continue that pattern for a while if it succeeds. If it doesn’t, at least they spent a little more time for the investments to grow, and it might just give them the money they need then. This is an example of an employee thinking, instead of reacting and giving a short-term solution. She thought of what might happen if they did the first thing that came to mind, and realised it was more dangerous than taking the risk of changing marketing tactics. This is strategy at work, and it’s all about thinking about the elements at play and responding to them appropriately instead of reacting to them. We show participants just how to do this.

Plan Within Your Plans

Oftentimes, your company will devise certain strategies to deal with foreseen problems, but what happens when your prefabricated strategy and response suddenly doesn’t work? This is where flexibility in strategy and foresight come into play. Murphy’s Law dictates that if something can go wrong with a plan, assume that it will. It sounds pessimistic, but with that in consideration, this motivates one to devise countermeasures to every eventuality and possibility conceivable, or at least, within the resources provided. You may have a plan, but it is almost always a good thing to have a backup plan. Backup plans require a deeper level of foresight. Basic foresight is when you can see a problem ahead of time, and devise a well-reasoned response to it. This is the most basic skill of problem solving and strategic thinking. However, advanced strategic thinking means thinking deeper than the first response to a problem. It means having a second, third, and even fourth possible response when the first one fails. Successfully creating backup plans requires logical analysis of the problem, and what can possibly go wrong with certain responses to it, then devising a response for that eventuality. For example, Nick may plan for his company to be selling burgers that day, a new item on the menu. However, he think that something can go wrong with this, and prepares a supply of his company’s basic menu just in case. Later, he is vindicated and the burgers don’t arrive. It could have been a situation where he didn’t have any food to serve at all, but he thought ahead, and planned within his plan. We go through many more examples.