Advanced Strategic Planning for Corporate Growth Training Course

Course overview

Corporate growth plans often fail not because leaders lack ambition, but because strategic choices are not translated into a tested growth logic, funded priorities, accountable initiatives, and measurable operating commitments. Senior managers must decide where to compete, which capabilities to build, which markets or customer segments to exit or enter, and how to protect the organisation from concentration, execution, and disruption risks. This course equips participants to turn broad corporate objectives into a defensible strategic plan that can withstand executive scrutiny and guide capital, talent, and portfolio decisions.

Participants work through the full strategic planning cycle: external and internal analysis, strategic issue definition, corporate portfolio choices, growth-option evaluation, scenario planning, financial modelling, and strategy execution design. They use tools including PESTLE, Five Forces, value-chain analysis, SWOT/TOWS, Ansoff Matrix, three-horizon planning, Balanced Scorecard, strategic KPIs, and risk registers. The course develops the ability to build evidence-based strategic choices, assess trade-offs, model assumptions, align stakeholders, and convert a multi-year ambition into initiatives, milestones, owners, and governance routines.

Delivery combines instructor-led briefings with executive case analysis, facilitated planning workshops, peer challenge sessions, and spreadsheet-based decision exercises. Throughout the week, participants develop a corporate growth strategy for a realistic business case or their own organisation, subjecting it to market, financial, capability, and risk tests. They leave with a structured strategic planning pack: strategic diagnosis, growth thesis, scenario assumptions, prioritised initiatives, scorecard, roadmap, and implementation governance plan ready for adaptation in the workplace.

The course is particularly suited to leaders and planning professionals who already contribute to annual planning, business-case development, portfolio reviews, transformation programmes, or growth initiatives and now need to lead more rigorous enterprise-level strategic planning.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a strategic diagnosis using PESTLE, Five Forces, value-chain, and capability analysis
• Define strategic issues and decision statements from ambiguous market and performance evidence
• Evaluate growth options using the Ansoff Matrix, three-horizon planning, and portfolio criteria
• Build alternative future scenarios with quantified assumptions, trigger indicators, and strategic implications
• Develop a corporate growth thesis linking target markets, customer value, capabilities, and investment choices
• Model strategic initiative economics using revenue drivers, cost assumptions, cash-flow logic, and sensitivity analysis
• Translate strategic priorities into a Balanced Scorecard, KPI architecture, and accountable initiative roadmap
• Present a board-ready strategic planning pack with risks, trade-offs, governance, and implementation milestones

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Strategy Directors and Heads of Strategy — who lead enterprise planning cycles and advise executive decision-makers
• Business Unit Directors — who must convert corporate growth ambitions into investable market and capability choices
• Corporate Development Managers — who assess expansion, partnership, acquisition, and portfolio opportunities
• Transformation Directors — who need to connect strategic intent with funded change portfolios and delivery governance
• Finance Business Partners and FP&A Leaders — who challenge strategic assumptions and evaluate investment implications
• Senior Product, Commercial, and Operations Leaders — who contribute market insight and own execution of strategic initiatives

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience contributing to business plans, operating plans, investment cases, portfolio reviews, or cross-functional improvement programmes. They should be comfortable interpreting basic financial measures such as revenue, margin, operating cost, cash flow, and return on investment, and should understand common planning concepts including objectives, KPIs, stakeholders, and risks. Working familiarity with Microsoft Excel is assumed for simple scenario and sensitivity exercises. Prior use of formal strategy frameworks, Power BI, Miro, or specialist corporate-planning software is not required. This is not an introductory management course; participants should be able to discuss decisions at business-unit or enterprise level.

Training methodology

The programme uses short instructor-led inputs followed by applied strategy work. Participants analyse a corporate growth case, interpret market and financial evidence in Microsoft Excel, map strategic choices visually in Miro, and critique competing recommendations in executive review simulations. Small groups develop scenarios, evaluate portfolio options, define scorecards, and stress-test initiative assumptions against risks and resource constraints. Daily debriefs connect each tool to live planning-cycle decisions. The final day is dedicated to refining an individual or team strategic planning pack and identifying the first stakeholder conversations, data requirements, and governance actions needed on return to work.

Course outline

Day 1: Strategic diagnosis and planning architecture

• Corporate strategy, business strategy, and functional strategy decision rights
• Strategic planning cycle design and annual planning integration
• PESTLE analysis for macroeconomic, regulatory, and technology drivers
• Porter's Five Forces for industry attractiveness assessment
• Value-chain analysis for cost, differentiation, and capability advantage
• SWOT and TOWS matrices for converting evidence into strategic issues
• Strategic issue statements and decision-focused problem framing

Workshop: Participants build a strategic diagnosis for a growth-constrained company and produce a prioritised list of evidence-backed strategic issues.

Day 2: Growth choices and corporate portfolio strategy

• Growth thesis design and sources of competitive advantage
• Ansoff Matrix applications for market and product expansion choices
• Three-horizon planning for core, adjacent, and transformational growth
• Market segmentation and customer-value proposition testing
• Capability gap assessment and build-buy-partner decisions
• Portfolio mapping using attractiveness and competitive-position criteria
• Strategic option evaluation using weighted decision matrices

Workshop: Participants assess competing growth options and produce a ranked corporate portfolio with explicit investment and capability rationale.

Day 3: Scenarios, financial logic, and strategic risk

• Scenario planning using critical uncertainties and driving forces
• Scenario narratives, signposts, and early-warning indicators
• Strategic assumptions mapping and assumption testing
• Revenue-driver trees and unit-economics modelling
• Sensitivity analysis for volume, price, cost, and timing variables
• Strategic risk registers aligned to ISO 31000 principles
• Contingency strategies and trigger-based response plans

Workshop: Participants create three plausible market scenarios, model their financial implications, and produce trigger-based strategic responses.

Day 4: From strategy to executable priorities

• Strategic themes and outcome-based objective setting
• Balanced Scorecard perspectives and strategy-map design
• KPI trees linking leading indicators to growth outcomes
• Initiative charters with scope, benefits, owners, and dependencies
• Resource allocation and strategic investment prioritisation
• Operating model implications for structure, processes, and talent
• Strategy governance forums, review cadences, and escalation rules

Workshop: Participants convert a growth thesis into a strategy map, KPI scorecard, and prioritised initiative roadmap with named owners.

Day 5: Executive communication and implementation control

• Board-ready strategy narrative and decision-paper structure
• Executive storytelling with evidence, choices, and trade-offs
• Stakeholder mapping for strategy adoption and sponsorship
• Strategic planning pack design in Microsoft Power BI and Excel
• Implementation milestones, benefits tracking, and corrective action
• Pre-mortem analysis for execution failure prevention
• Ninety-day mobilisation plans and planning-cycle handover

Workshop: Participants present and defend a strategic planning pack in an executive review simulation, then produce a 90-day mobilisation plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Miro, ISO 31000

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions