Driving Strategic Impact: Mastering Management Consulting Skills

Driving Strategic Impact is organized around the core skill of structured problem-solving, which takes participants through five phases of a strategy project: defining the problem, structuring the problem, conducting analysis, developing recommendations, and communicating for impact.

These core skills are supplemented with additional sessions on managing strategy projects, working with diverse teams, and influencing skills. In this way, Driving Strategic Impact offers an effective and multi-faceted approach that can be implemented as soon as participants return to work.

Our approach is built on the following building blocks:

• Strategy consulting toolkit: A set of tools, frameworks and best practices laid out in easily usable formats, such as checklists, templates, or step-by-step approaches that you take back with you for future use.
• Real-life case study: Lee will present a sanitized case study of a real strategy consulting project she led while at McKinsey. You will be asked to solve this client’s problem using the consulting toolkit. At each stage, you will be able to compare your solution with other participants, and then compare with the outcome of the real project. This exercise allows participants a hands-on view of the end-to-end process of strategic problem-solving.
• Consulting scenarios: Specific consulting situations where you will be asked for ideas on how you would approach these situations. We have especially designed these to challenge your thinking and make you see how our instinctive approaches to solving problems often lead us down wrong paths. Discussions will follow each scenario and reveal specific tools that you can use to address similar situations in real life. This will allow you to gain tangible, hands-on understanding, and key insights in an experiential manner.
• Role-plays: Exposure to consulting scenarios that simulate typical client-consultant interactions. These role-plays allow you to test your own understanding of situations and to learn ways to prepare for these situations with clients where your credibility and impact is at stake.
• Consulting stories: True-to-life stories to effectively understand and internalize a point. Associate Dean Angela Lee, faculty director of the program, will share candid stories from her consulting experience to bring the learnings from the program to life. Rich insights and inspiration can be gained from these real world informal recollections of the high and low points in a consultant's journey.

Please contact our Learning Solutions Specialists at +1 212-854-3395 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.

Sample Session Titles

• Problem Definition and Problem Structuring
• Making Smarter Decisions with Imperfect Information
• Deriving Insights from Data
• Synthesizing Ideas & Developing a Storyline
• Managing Strategy Projects
• Building Trust-Based Relationships

For a complete program schedule and curriculum of the in-person program, download the program agenda.

Driving Strategic Impact is designed for mid- to upper-level executives who work in corporate strategy, internal consulting, business development, strategic account management and product management, who are charged with resolving strategic issues within their organization or for external clients.

Technical or functional professionals who frequently inform and guide strategic decision makers within their organizations will also find this program valuable.

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.