Making Your Board a Strategic Asset

Director Development

Strategy

One of the primary aims of a Board is to set the strategic direction of the organisation. Sounds simple enough?Except that businesses constantly get into difficulty and very often this is against a backdrop of frothy economic conditions. Was the Board inept? This hard to believe as many directors tend to be intelligent, hardworking and ethical individuals.

There are many reasons behind company failures but so often the bread crumbs do indeed lead to the Boardroom. Wrong strategy, bad and uninformed assumptions, lack of vision, flawed strategy process, and not enough time devoted to strategic conversations are variables that come to mind. In our work, we also experience that Boards sometimes have the wrong type of strategic conversations.

The following is a list of topics that could be covered

What is strategy?

Good vs bad strategy

What makes a good strategist?

The Board’s role in strategy setting and implementation

Assessing the decision making process

The strategic framework

Environmental scan

Stakeholder capabilities

Competitive landscape

Capabilities assessment

Generating strategic options

Vetting the strategic options

The use of models

Achieving competitive advantage

Strategic choice and shareholder value

When ethics and business collide

Acquisitions and disposals

Joint ventures and alliances

Innovation management

Service quality as a differentiator

Measurement devices and tools

Implementation obstacles

Making strategy work

Why strategies fail

Managing a crisis

Turnaround strategies