Leading Business Growth

Course content

The course is delivered face-to-face over six, two-day workshops (spread across 7 months), which take place at our award-winning conferencing centres at the University of Warwick. Five cross-cutting themes will inform and shape the content of each workshop. These include key drivers of change that every business leader needs to understand and grapple with, as well as enablers of growth.

Workshop 1 - Leading Forward

9-10 January 2024

 

The forward challenge for business leaders is to address a context of exponential change, heightened uncertainty, increased complexity and new models of work in the digital age. Authentic, values-based leadership connects employees to purpose at all levels to maximise engagement and performance.

You will use advanced, evidence-based tools to analyse and evaluate your leadership practice. Identify and action new ways of leading forward to increase your personal and organisational impact as a leader for the future economy.

Workshop 2 - Driving Sustainable Growth

8-9 February 2024

 

In an environment where technology and the digital landscape is driving rapid change, competitive advantage is transient and short-lived. Business leaders need to embed strategic agility to turn threat into opportunity and deliver sustainable business growth, whether in home markets, or internationally.

You will be equipped with cutting-edge strategic thinking tools, and will identify the dynamic organisational capabilities that form the bedrock of strategic agility and growth in fast-moving markets.

Workshop 3 - Critical Decision-making

12-13 March 2024

 

Leaders make decisions that profoundly influence and shape the future of the organisation. Mining the full potential of big data and analytics to turn into strategic insight, as well as leveraging the world of behavioural science to fully understand the human factors at work, will lead to higher quality decision-making.

You will sharpen your strategic and financial decision-making, using critical sound reasoning, critical thinking and rigorous analysis. You will turn information into actioned knowledge, tracking through to advanced performance. 

Workshop 4 - Digital Adoption

16-17 April 2024


Being a digital business is about organisational change at every level. It is not one project but a collection of all the strands that together will ‘instil’ digital into your organisation at every point; from the customer interface to digitising processes, to the supply chain and generating new sources of value for the business.

You will identify the most current digital questions/strands for your business - how, when and where they will impact, and the nature of the response required.

Workshop 5 - Sustainable Future Organisations

22-23 May 2024


The future of work will be driven by learning and agility. Increasing collaboration and connectivity will wire your organisation to allow the easy flow of ideas and unlock pathways to quickly mobilise new initiatives.

You will strengthen your capability to build, lead and shape organisational culture, and will create behaviours and norms that enable innovation and enhance organisational agility.

Workshop 6 - Delivering Impact and Value

18-19 June 2024


You’ve got the knowledge, the tools, now is the time to put your new learning into practice. As well as working on you as a leader, at the core of the programme will be your work with faculty and colleagues to refine, develop and deliver responses to your strategic challenge.

Progression of initiatives will be driven by the learning from workshop themes continually revisited in an applied context, your peer learning group engagement, and your personal leadership growth, to create impact within your business.

 

This final event will bring together the strands of innovation, productivity, digital, resilience and leadership essential for sustainable growth. You will share the focus of your strategic challenges and identify the templates for future success, which you have built.

 

Innovation
For your business to thrive, innovation and improvement is crucial. How do you build organisational capability around innovation, an entrepreneurial mindset to carve out new markets, and achieve success in a highly competitive and rapidly changing landscape?

Productivity
Generating productivity growth is a primary goal for the best managed companies. Investing in technology, process innovation and skill building, while embracing leadership and management best practice to achieve a high-performance workplace, are all keys to competing successfully.

Digital
What opportunities does technological progress in the fields of artificial intelligence, blockchain, open APIs, big data, and platforms present for your business? How will this force incumbents and new entrants in your industry to rethink value creation and business model innovation?

Resilience
In a dynamic marketplace, the ability of an organisation to respond rapidly to new challenges and seize opportunities is key to sustained success. Does your business demonstrate the strategic adaptability, operational agility and leadership mindset that creates organisational resilience in the face of constant change?

Leadership
How do we lead more effectively? How do we lead in a new kind of business environment? How has leadership itself changed? What does that mean for us individually and collectively as leaders?