Coaching Business & Corporate Strategy: Fundamentals
What you'll learn
- Develop a diverse set of tools and frameworks used for a strategy creation
- Refine your understanding how to compete on the market
- Understand how different factors influence a strategy
- Understand different approaches in a strategy creation
- Structure your own coaching or consulting sessions
Requirements
- Prior knowledge about strategy and management coaching is not needed - yet, it would be very helpful.
Description
Let’s demystify Strategy and Management coaching!
This is a comprehensive approach to understand Strategy Context, its Content and the Process of its creation. Simply, we believe the Business or Management Coaching requires a Content since requires expertize and first-hand experience relevant for managing organizations, and sometimes, includes giving advice – simply, it requires a coach who understands a business language, perspectives of an Executive or Entrepreneur, organizational processes, systems and similar. Only by building on that kind of strong foundations, a Business coach or a Strategist might gradually develop his own style and fine tune the skills and techniques needed for a long term success.
That is why we have structured this course around three Sections:
- How do you compete (on the market)?
- What does your strategy creation process look like? and
- How you are going to coach them (meaning your tribe)?
In the Section where we discuss how you compete, we are going to set the stage for strategy conversations. We are combining theory and business philosophy packed around many useful tools and frameworks that consultants use in their daily practice – and this should help a coach (or a consultant) to structure his sessions and ask relevant questions for the Strategy related Context and Content. For example, we are going to explore generic strategies, applying different business models, how Design Thinking philosophy can help us with innovations, what does Blitzscaling means and should you experiment with it and when, and similar.
In the next Section where we discuss different approaches to strategy creation – we are focusing on habits of a strategist regarding how he is approaching his strategy creation process – the Coach’s role is to challenge that and broaden the perspectives or possibilities. Here, we are going to present 10 different approaches like Classic, Strategic planning, Positioning, Entrepreneurial, Learning, like a Pirate, and similar. The point is to explore and distinguish different possibilities for the strategy creator.
In the last Section, we are going to help you better understand how to apply coaching skills into the Strategy related topics. We are going to present here:
- Some basic rules of a coaching, including the logic behind great coaching questions;
- Explain how to apply the most common coaching frameworks (GROW, STEPPA, OSKAR, etc.);
- Give you hints how to cope with the most demanding coaching issues; and
- Give you an example of a well-structured coaching questions applied in a “Strategy Stress-Test”, developed by a Harvard Business School Professor;
But remember, all those coaching rules, frameworks and hints will be used to structure your entire coaching conversations (sessions or meetings), while all the tools and frameworks related to strategy topics (like business model canvas, generic strategies, BCG matrix, etc.) will be used for some specific sub-topics within that dialog, meaning areas you would like to explore in more details, and then jump-back to the main coaching story.
On top of all of that, if you would like to explore strategy topics in more detail, you will be able to find a lot of additional tools and frameworks for different factors influencing strategy like: company life-cycle, market analysis, resources and capabilities, corporate culture, leadership style and similar. Although all these topics are very important for a strategist, we decided to leave it within an Appendix section in order not to ruin the flow of the Course for those of you with a bit of advanced knowledge about core strategy topics.
Yet, all others will be able to find there great materials as well, at least as a sort of remainders.
Who this course is for:
- Business coaches, consultants, managers, entrepreneurs and investors willing to deeply explore strategy and management coaching
Instructor
I have approx. 15 years of diverse experience working as a consultant and as a corporate professional dealing with strategy and related topics:
- As a consultant (10 years), I have transitioned from an Analyst to Executive Director, working with companies at different stages of development; the work was focused on M&A activities, strategy, financing, and similar, including companies from gambling, transportation, construction, banking, agriculture, and many other sectors;
- As a corporate professional (5 years in oil & gas industry), I worked on strategy formation and its formulation (for different organizational parts, or divisions, and on the consolidated strategy), while also in strategy implementation through preparation and approvals of investment projects of strategic importance;
- Now, I am working on establishing my own practice which gives me an entrepreneurial perspective on business as well;
I was lucky enough to refine my skills by working with other experts on numerous projects related to strategy:
a. Top executives from industry leaders: oil & gas, gambling, transportation, banking, etc.
b. Top consultants from Roland Berger, Kearney, or McKinsey;
c. Investment bankers from Lazard, Morgan Stanley, or Nomura;
d. Private Equity representatives, lawyers, etc.
Regarding my education, I completed the following studies:
- MSc in Organization and Management (Economics, Belgrade University, 2010) – final dissertation: Organizational redesign as a means for shareholders’ value creation;
- BSc in Finance, banking and insurance (Economics, Belgrade University, 2004) – final dissertation: Kinds and characteristics of investment funds;
And, I like practicing tai chi chuan, hiking and bowling.