The Course Content
Day One: Introduction and Background
Introduction – planning as leadership
Business Planning as a cross-business process – “Train hard, fight easy!”
Bottom-up and Top-down planning approaches
Resources and facilities required for successful planning
Financial Planning and Business Planning
The importance of practical delivery – “where the rubber meets the road!”
Day Two: The Planning Workshop – Walk-through of the “Fishbone”© Method
Using the Fishbone© approach to shape the problem for an imaginary client described in student case study material
Appraisal of the plan start point
Formulation of the desired end-state
Analysis of the “terrain of travel”
Planning for Effectiveness
Planning for Efficiency
Day Three: Using the Planner’s Toolkit
Porter’s Five Forces analysis
SWOT and Force-field analysis
The Boston Matrix
The Ansoff Matrix
The Communications Matrix©
The Balanced Scorecard
Day Four: Plan Delivery through Projects
PRINCE2 programme/project management
Plan delivery and governance
Engaging and motivating the organization’s resources
Business Planning as part of Total Quality Management and “Lean”
Measurement and Display
Building a planning culture
Day Five: From Concept to Practical Reality
Communicating the plan to stakeholders
Stepping stones, trip-ups and milestones
Resourcing the projects
Monitoring and celebrating success
Continuous improvement of the process
The “proof of the pudding”