Creating Breakthrough Strategies: 4 Steps to Winning

Outside-In thinking — the ability to shift your mentality from an internally driven “make and sell” approach to sensing external environments and responding to customer needs — is a key to success, particularly in today’s turbulent competitive environment. And yet most organizations lament that they are not good at it. Why is it so hard to pull off?

The key to success is to create an adaptive enterprise capable of generating winning strategies and renewing those strategies as the environment changes. As a result, the ability to learn faster than your competitors will be your only sustainable competitive advantage.

Creating Breakthrough Strategies: 4 Steps to Winning offers a set of practical tools to achieve this kind of organizational agility. The program introduces you to Columbia's proprietary Strategic Learning Process, developed by Professor Willie Pietersen. The process offers a unique 4-step model that has been battle-tested and is being applied successfully by many global companies and not-for-profit organizations to create and implement winning strategies repeatedly over time.

The Strategic Learning Process

Strategic Learning is an insight-to-action process. The four linked action steps move in a cycle: 1) Learn about the external environment and your organization’s own realities; 2) Focus by making choices about where you will compete and how you will win; 3) Align your people and your business system behind your strategy; 4) Execute faster and better than your competitors.

That takes the firm back to the Learn step, thus creating an ongoing cycle of learning and renewal.

During the program you will benefit from the opportunity to apply your learning to an important personal case with the help and insight of faculty and peers.

For a complete program schedule, download the agenda.

Please contact our Learning Solutions Specialists at +1 212-854-3395 for a personal conversation to learn more.

Driving Strategic Impact gives you hands-on practice and real-time feedback via in-class exercises, real-life strategy cases and a dynamic exchange between participants and the instructor.

Summary of Benefits

• Establish an understanding with sponsors and key constituencies on the need for a strategy project, and the appropriate approach and resources to be deployed
• Concretely define the scope of a strategy project to enhance the prospects of a successful outcome
• Rapidly identify core business issues and focus your problem-solving effort in the right direction
• Efficiently gather the right information to build a relevant fact base, extract information from internal and external sources, and synthesize it to drive key conclusions
• Develop recommendations that provide the highest value to the organization among feasible alternatives
• Develop a compelling storyline to organize and communicate your findings and recommendations
• Use a range of influencing tactics to win support from key stakeholders
• Develop trust-based relationships with your sponsors, clients, managers and colleagues

Upon completion of this program, you will earn three credits towards a Certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits. Learn more.

On the first day, participants will be asked to begin to articulate a personal case that identifies a strategic challenge they are facing. This pressing issue becomes the foundation for the participant’s personal case, which they discuss and address throughout the program by applying the Strategic Learning Process.

Sample Sessions

• Strategic Learning Overview
• Winning at insight through your Situation Analysis
• Making strategic choices and developing your Winning Proposition and Key Priorities
• Mobilizing the power of organizational alignment
• Mastering the Golden Rules for Effective Implementation
• Leading change and renewal
• How it really works! (Hear from a senior executive on the realities of successful application of the process)

The program also features industry guest speakers and/or case studies that showcase the application of the Strategic Learning Process.

For a complete program schedule download the agenda.

Creating Breakthrough Strategies (Live Online): 4 Steps to Winning is designed for executives of all levels responsible for strategic development, with primary responsibility for making the changes necessary to enable effective execution of strategy, or those with P&L responsibility who seek to become more strategic in their thinking.

Columbia Business School alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for this program. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.