Day 1: Systems Mindset and Environmental Foresight

Thinking in Systems

• Identify elements relationships and reinforcing loops
• Separate events from patterns and structures
• Expose unintended consequences of proposed interventions
• Map a system surrounding complex business

Signals and Trends

• Gather weak signals from diverse sources
• Separate persistent trends from temporary noise
• Estimate speed and reach of shift
• Craft signal board for one sector

Framing Strategic Questions

• Frame questions challenging established organizational assumptions
• Widen the frame before seeking solutions
• Select the appropriate analysis level
• Reframe a conventional strategic question

Day 2: Strategic Diagnosis and Sources of Value

Organizational Environment Analysis

• Identify forces redistributing value across systems
• Interpret regulatory technological and behavioral effects
• Compare responses of competitors and partners
• Create an environmental change map

Capabilities and Advantage

• Assess capabilities to copy or replace
• Expose gaps blocking intended performance outcomes
• Distinguish strategic assets from available resources
• Construct an enterprise capability profile

Operating Model Economics

• Identify revenue or public value sources
• Analyze cost demand and benefit drivers
• Track value movement across stakeholder relationships
• Apply an integrated value map

Day 3: Creating Choices and Strategy Logic

Strategic Option Generation

• Develop alternatives with distinct success logic
• Define arenas for focus and exclusion
• Balance ambition against current capability realities
• Build three deliberately contrasting strategic options

Strategic Quality Tests

• Test consistency between diagnosis and choice
• Assess distinctiveness defensibility and practical feasibility
• Expose dependence upon one critical assumption
• Critique a strongly preferred option

Theory of Success

• Formulate causal chain for intended value
• Identify capabilities enabling the strategic choice
• Define assumptions requiring ongoing validation
• Set out a concise strategy narrative

Day 4: Planning, Portfolios, and Measurement

Translating Choice into Objectives

• Define outcomes for the strategic horizon
• Set milestones proving directional progress
• Prevent objectives becoming lists of activities
• Compile a connected strategic objective map

Initiative Portfolio Construction

• Select initiatives that complement one another
• Estimate value effort and execution exposure
• Sequence work by dependencies and capacity
• Balance a portfolio under financial constraints

Measures and Assumptions

• Choose outcome metrics and leading signals
• Connect every assumption with monitoring evidence
• Set thresholds triggering strategic redirection
• Configure a strategic assumption register

Day 5: Integrated Strategy Defense Laboratory

Scenario Stress Testing

• Apply contrasting shocks to strategic choices
• Estimate breaking points and available flexibility
• Identify robust moves across multiple futures
• Rebalance portfolios under an adverse scenario

Plan Robustness Review

• Test consistency across resources and timing
• Identify decisions that remain unresolved
• Examine ownership clarity for expected results
• Run a structured strategic peer review

Strategy Committee Simulation

• Present diagnosis choice and success logic
• Defend fundamental exclusions and strategic tradeoffs
• Answer challenges involving scenarios and capabilities
• Record modifications to the final plan

• Systems and foresight maps exposing shifts and consequences
• Option laboratories requiring explicit strategic exclusions
• Portfolio and assumption tools connecting plans with evidence
• Strategy committee simulation testing the robustness of choices