Entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to rapidly scale their business must have strong strategic acumen. Develop your company’s crystal clear strategy over five fast-paced 120-minute virtual workshops, interspersed with five self-directed team exercises.
Session 1: Uncovering context
Among leadership teams, each individual has a perspective on the current context. Understanding these perspectives is as important as understanding the context itself. This session will foster open conversations about participant’s assessment of the internal and external factors that are important to them, and to the organization. Strategic questions and assumptions will be uncovered through this dialogue.
Session 2: Vision
Organizations that drive successfully towards their vision are those whose visions are clear, concise and aspirational – and can thus build teams who live and breathe it. This starts at the top. It happens often with entrepreneurs that the vision is clear in their own minds, and no where else. Among entrepreneurial teams, the difference in what is perceived to be THE vision for the organization can be startling. This session focuses on each team member’s vision for themselves and for the organization. The outcome of this session will be the elaboration of common elements of a cohesive vision for the organization.
Session 3: Crafting Strategy
Strategy is often thought of as related to product, or market, leadership. Yet there is so much more involved in determining an organization’s success over the long term. Strategy can be defined – and developed – as a plan, a pattern, a position and/or a perspective. Professor Henry Mintzberg, world-renown strategy thinker and author of over 20 books including the Rise & Fall of Strategic Planning and Managers, not MBAs, authored the CoachingOurselves module which will be used as the framework for this session. Participants will emerge from the workshop with an expanded view of how strategy can be developed for their organization.
Session 4: Ecosystem Strategy
Entrepreneurs and small business owners must think, lead, and communicate in terms of ecosystems and communities, NOT in terms of products and markets. Discover how your vision fits into that of a broader ecosystem, and how to approach it for mutually beneficial growth. Its likely that the ecosystem does not have a stated vision of its own. Should it? What are the benefits of thinking of strategy as part of an ecosystem? In this session, you and your colleagues will discuss how to:
- identify current and potential ecosystem partners;
- start conversations with potential ecosystem partners;
- develop a common “why;”
- lead within an ecosystem;
- develop an impactful “what” and “how” within it.
This proprietary content and approach was developed following active participation in the 2019 Drucker Forum, The Power of Ecosystems.
Sessions 5: Design
This session will wrap up the previous four by pulling together what emerged from the discussions into a series of strategic initiatives. Discussions about how the team wants to drive and govern them beyond these interactions will result in a concrete way forward for the team.
Fee: $29,500 for a leadership team of up to six people.
Contact me at lesley@lesleyantoun.com to discuss your particular business needs.
Lesley Antoun Consulting 