Vigilant Leadership

Are you monitoring, managing and profiting from changes in the environment?

Recent events have highlighted the repercussions of missing important changes in the environment. No organization has gone untouched by the turmoil of economic conditions over the past two years. While surviving companies have responded with cost cutting and alignment measures, many still struggle to identify a path forward, and the appropriate timing to managing their business success in continued uncertainty. Vigilant leaders spot opportunities and threats before their rivals. They sense and act on early warning signs of trouble earlier and spot new chances of market success before others.

Leaders with this ability demonstrate competence at listening, observing and dealing with ambiguity. They look for signals that don’t fit existing norms or patterns within their industry. They channel their innate curiosity to uncover disruptions and take best advantage of them.

This unique seminar will engage a select group of senior leaders in the importance, practice and process of vigilant leadership. Led by strategy expert Dr. Roch Parayre, participants will have the opportunity to engage in critical dialogue with other executives seeking to improve and capitalize on this capability.

This 2 day programme provides key insights on how to lead your organisation through economic turmoil.

Day One
Introduction

Setting the stage to build vigilant leadership
The need for Vigilant Leadership
Characteristics of long-lived organisations
Balancing Learning and Performance
Focus on framing strategic problems

Adaptative Strategic Planning
How to embrace uncertainty
The case for planning under uncertainty
The adaptive planning process
Understanding potential change in the external environment

Development of Future Scenarios
Industry Examples
Introducing the Methodology
How to build useful scenarios
Discussion of the key uncertainties affecting your industry
Scenario building
What are the potential recovery scenarios in your industry

Day Two
Strategic Stakeholders

Who do we serve and how will their needs change?
Indentifying unique stakeholder groups
Review of potential needs, opportunities and requirements across scenarios

Strategic Implications
What is required for the future?
Testing core assumptions about industry patterns and organisational models
Identifying Key Success Factors (KSFs):
What an organisation must have in order to survive and thrive across scenarios and stakeholder groups
Implications for participants

Increasing Vigilance as an Organisation and a Leader
Indentifying signals to better prepare for future shocks and disruptions
Considering the Killer Competitor to test strategies and investments
Adopting a portfolio for contignencies
Leadership diagnosis: how vigilant are you as a leader?
Supporting an ecosystem and culture for maintaining vigilance in your organisation

Key Topics

Participant Benefits:

	An opportunity to wrestle with cross industries macro-environmental issues
	Learn the lessons from some successful and not-so-successful company approaches
	Learn insights, tools and methods that suggest near-term actions for individual leaders
	Increase level of vigilance and risk management capabilities
	Improve preparedness and stewardship of the organization
	A unique networking and peer learning opportunity with a group of seasoned senior executives

Dr. Roch Parayre is a Senior Partner and a scenario-planning expert with Decision Strategies International Inc. (DSI) and a Senior Fellow in the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

He teaches executives at CEDEP, at the Wharton School, at Duke Corporate Education and for the Institute for Management Studies. He is an expert in the areas of scenario planning, decision analysis, the psychology of decision making, and creativity & innovation. He was previously on the faculty at the Cox School of Business at SMU, where he won numerous MBA teaching awards. He holds a Ph.D. in business strategy from the University of British Columbia, and a Master's degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University.