COURSE: GLOBAL & STRATEGIC VISION.
This course looks at strategy through the way we understand and respond to a changing world: how our mental models shape what we see, why the same facts can lead to different conclusions, and how technology, geopolitics and uncertainty influence strategic choices.
From there, the focus moves to diagnosis and decision-making — understanding where we are, where value can be created, what to prioritise, and which risks and trade-offs come with different directions.
Finally, strategy becomes action: turning a strategic direction into a business model, clear priorities, initiatives, measures and execution.
CONTENTS WE COVERED.
-
Explore the external environment and the changes shaping organisations, including economic, geopolitical, technological and social developments. Examine how customer behaviour, innovation and human psychology influence the way organisations identify opportunities, anticipate threats and understand the world in which they operate.
-
Develop an honest understanding of the organisation’s current position. Examine its resources, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses, while recognising how assumptions, overconfidence and internal dynamics can distort self-assessment. Explore competitive pressures and identify the capabilities that could form a genuine and sustainable advantage.
-
Move from understanding and diagnosis to making strategic decisions about the organisation’s future direction. Explore how organisations choose under uncertainty, evaluate trade-offs, establish priorities and balance short-term pressures with long-term objectives. Consider how psychology, assumptions and human behaviour influence strategic choices.
-
Translate a strategic direction into a coherent and workable business model. Using the Business Model Canvas, examine how an organisation identifies its customers, creates value, builds relationships, reaches its market and generates revenue. Explore the resources, activities, partners and cost structures required to make the model viable, as well as how technology enables new business models.
-
Explore the gap between having a strategic intention and turning it into meaningful results. Examine how organisations translate strategy into concrete actions through implementation plans, ownership, accountability and follow-through. Learn how roadmaps, KPIs and OKRs can support execution, while recognising how measurement, organisational habits and short-term pressures influence the achievement of strategic objectives.
COURSE PRESENTATION.
All the content from the sessions is available here — the full presentation with notes for each slide. Use it as a reference when exploring a strategic concept, revisiting a framework, reflecting on a business decision, or considering how to apply the ideas to your organisation.
ONLINE SESION WITH ME.
These sessions are an optional space to continue the work from the course. If you want to go deeper on a specific concept, think through a real situation you are facing, or need support putting something into practice, this is where that happens. The goal is to help you bring what you learned into your actual work — with more clarity, more confidence, and a clearer sense of how to apply it.
SOME RECOMENDATIONS.
Barrett is one of the most important neuroscientists working today, and her central argument overturns a widely held assumption: emotions are not hardwired reactions that happen to us. They are constructed by the brain — predictions generated from past experience, current context, and the concepts available to make sense of what we are feeling. For this course, her work is particularly relevant in understanding why anxiety about presenting is not fixed or inevitable. As the concepts you have about presenting change, the emotional experience the brain constructs around presenting changes with it.
The Secret Life of the Brain — Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Kahneman spent decades studying how human beings actually make decisions — and his conclusion is that we are far less rational than we believe. The brain operates through two systems: a fast, automatic, intuitive system that makes rapid judgments based on pattern and feeling, and a slow, deliberate, analytical system that requires effort and attention. Most professional presentations are designed entirely for the slow system — logical, sequential, evidence-based. But it is the fast system that decides whether to pay attention, whether to trust the presenter, and whether to act on what was said. Understanding both systems is essential for anyone who wants their message to actually land.
Thinking Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman.
Kim and Mauborgne challenge the assumption that companies must compete by following the established rules of existing markets. Their central argument is that organisations can create new market space by pursuing value innovation—simultaneously increasing value for customers while reconsidering the costs and assumptions embedded in traditional competition. For this course, their work is particularly relevant in exploring how innovation, technology and business model design can change the basis of competition. Rather than simply competing more effectively within an existing market, organisations can question whether the market itself can be approached differently.
Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne.
Rumelt is one of the most influential contemporary thinkers on strategy, and his central argument challenges a common misconception: strategy is not a collection of ambitions, objectives or inspirational statements. It is a coherent response to a critical challenge, built around diagnosis, guiding policy and consistent action. For this course, his work is particularly relevant in understanding why effective strategy begins with seeing reality clearly before deciding where to go. A strong strategic direction does not eliminate complexity or uncertainty, but it provides a focused approach to dealing with them.
Good Strategy / Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt.
Lafley and Martin present strategy as an integrated set of choices rather than a plan to achieve everything at once. Their central argument is that organisations need to decide where to play and how to win, while developing the capabilities and systems required to support those choices. For this course, their framework is particularly relevant in understanding why strategy involves trade-offs, priorities and deliberate decisions about customers, markets and competitive advantage. Strategic success depends not only on choosing a direction, but on ensuring that the organisation’s activities reinforce that choice.
Playing to Win - A. G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin.
How fast does a city move? Levine, a social psychologist, went out and measured it — walking speed on downtown streets, the accuracy of public clocks, how long a postal clerk took to complete a simple transaction — across thirty-one countries. What he found is that pace of life varies enormously, and that cultures differ in something more basic: whether they run on clock time, where the schedule decides when things happen, or event time, where activities finish when they feel finished. Neither is the correct one. The book is a useful reminder that much of what feels like an absolute rule about time is a local convention, and it underpins this course's look at how much of our urgency is learned rather than given.
A Geography of Time - Robert Levine.
This documentary approaches intuition as a form of knowledge grounded in experience, perception, and the rapid integration of information. Through various interviews and examples, it explores how intuition shapes decision-making and how people interpret their surroundings. Its relevance here lies in understanding the relationship between conscious and intuitive thought, and how, under pressure or high demand, the balance between the two can shift.
