Most public organizations focus on the 3-5 year financial plan which is based on measures of hindsight, some inputs of insight but no foresight. Strategic foresight is used by strategic leaders to gain a longer view on traditional strategic planning based on forecasting and futurecasting. Many of today's organizations who seem to miraculously understand today's market actually used strategic foresight and subsequently aligned their organization to these results. Strategic Foresight is the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways. Strategic leaders who do not use foresight are unable to see trends and forecasts seen by leaders who do. This session introduces the concept of strategic foresight and demonstrates tools useful in adding foresight to your leadership capabilities. You will be introduced to the following tools and methods: Causal-Loop Analysis, Delphi Method, Driving-Force Analysis, Environmental Scanning, Foresight Maturity Model [FMM], Future-Fitness Portfolio, Futures Wheel, International Futures Model [IFs], Mental Models, Mind Mapping, Principles of Forecasting, Scenario Planning, Shaping Tomorrow, System Dynamics, Systems Thinking, World Values, as well as other leading tools. Many leaders who have added strategic leadership to their leadership capabilities have propelled their careers as leaders and their organizational capabilities by establishing foresight practices within their organizations.

In a political environment strategic thinking and planning is foundational to success and remaining relevant. Yet many inherent systemic issues encourage reactive and shortsighted behavior. By developing the systems and thinking to move towards vision driven planning The City of Red Deer became an organization with a shared vision, focused areas of emphasis, and an implementation plan. During this session, attendees will discover some of the tools used and lessons learned in implementing vision driven planning within an organization.

Most people in senior leadership positions have been indoctrinated in the traditional delivery skills of analyzing, planning, detail-oriented implementing, and disciplined executing. These skills encourage leaders to do the status quo more efficiently. Rethinking and resetting requires a whole different set of behavioral and cognitive skills that are characteristic of innovative leaders. Innovative leaders challenge the status quo. They more frequently engage in the behavioral skills of questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting, which are the catalysts for the cognitive skill of associational thinking. This presentation will address the research behind these ideas and the individual and organizational pragmatic approaches and actions that can be used to put them into day-to-day use. Examples from contemporary innovators and innovative organizations will be used as illustrations.

Many observers of the meltdown of 2008 and the recession that seems to linger more than three years later have wondered "where was the board?" While some might focus on transparency, compliance or risk management, the broader question is the role of directors in the strategic decisions that set the stage in the first place. Clearly, financial services, transportation, energy, media, retail and health care are industries calling for a "reset". Beyond these, though, nearly every industry, sector and region of the world seems to be pursuing strategies and even business models whose days are numbered. Any board's meaningful engagement around questions of identity and direction can be its finest hour. This highly participative program offers a grounded, experience-based view of the corporate and nonprofit board's role in the development of strategy, undergirding that view with concepts, tools and processes that can be put to work immediately.

Organizational overload is a problem confronting people across all industries and sectors. People have too much to do and too few resources to accomplish it. The problem is overwhelming managers' abilities to think and act strategically. At the same time, a clear and compelling strategy is not only a casualty of organizational overload, but also a cure for it. In this session, attendees will learn how organizations manufacture their own overload and how strategic planning, coupled with other interventions, can rebalance workload.

The world for executives in Business to Business (B2B) companies is critically different from the world of their Business to Consumer (B2C) counterparts. All too often B2C strategies and tactics are applied to B2B companies, which leads to disappointing, even disastrous results. B2B requires a completely different playbook. During this session, attendees will explore innovative ideas that position marketing to drive business transformation and growth in a B2B environment, and learn how to:

• Increase Marketing's credibility among Leadership teams
• Align organizations to the market
• Engage companies' most valuable customers, and
• Generate powerful results through sales and marketing collaboration

The B2B Executive Playbook
By Sean Geehan
Clerisy Press (November 2011)
Available at Amazon or B&N

If you have ever facilitated a strategic planning session, you know how tough it is to get agreement on a mission statement, to separate goals from objectives, to get consensus on the right strategies, and to prevent the team from undertaking too much. Using the widely acclaimed Drivers Model as the basis, this workshop presents The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy which provides planners with all the how-to's for facilitating each component of a strategic plan. The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy provides executives, leaders and facilitators with a step-by-step resource for guiding their team through all phases of the strategic planning process – from gaining the team's buy-in to do planning and identify strategic issues, all the way through organization alignment, implementation, monitoring and making adjustments.

In recent times, company after company has been caught unprepared for a significant shift in demand for their products or services. In the words of author and scenario planning expert, Peter Schwartz, many if not most of these shifts were "predictable surprises." Scenario Planning allows an organization's leaders to consider -- in advance, while alternatives can be thoughtfully evaluated -- how they will navigate the strategic risks that face their business. In addition to providing a case study, this interactive session will use 1-2 examples solicited from session attendees to demonstrate a framework for using alternative future scenarios to manage strategic business risk.

This interactive session will take content that is not publicly available from Shell, discuss their scenario planning process, and how it is currently dealing with global energy problems that Shell and the industry face. Attendees will know the lessons that can be learned for their practices and their organizations from what Shell has excelled in for the past several decades. This session will provide practical advice that every strategic planning and strategic management professional can use right away.

Integrating business strategy and quality systems begins with addressing culture and the fundamental building blocks of organizations – PEOPLE and how they think. When thinking is addressed first, these tasks become less difficult. How do you create a culture that supports the best service possible for any organization? During this session, attendees will learn the answers to such questions as: How do you get Alignment throughout the organization? How do you rethink, reset and execute for results? How do you re-energize an existing strategic plan? How do you achieve agreement between different cultures on one plan? Why can't people just get aligned? What is the cost of misalignment? How can you see strategic alignment before execution?

In the New Normal, what used to take months and years, now occurs in days and hours. This compression of time means that the decision windows are closing faster than ever. Because of information technology, global competition and interwoven financial markets, decisions are more and more complex. As a leader and planner, how do you manage these critical and inescapable challenges? To win, you must increase both the speed and quality of your Decision Cycles. This interactive presentation will explore the six best practice examples that accelerate and improve Decision Cycles. These best practices can be adapted and applied in any organization.

Not-For-Profits' who have not previously created a strategic plan – or managed strategic initiatives – require a clear way to manage, articulate and visualize their strategy. During this session, attendees will learn a unique approach for developing actionable strategic guidance and initiatives within a not-for-profit. This session will also provide attendees with a different and expedited way to promote strategy, techniques for advancing strategy, and approaches for communicating and adopting strategy.

Many organizations are under pressure to "transform or die", to continuously innovate to survive, and to incorporate rapidly changing technology into their products and services. These organizations know they need to improve their strategic planning and performance management processes in order to focus their energies, but they are in "reaction mode" and cannot take their foot off the gas long enough to overhaul their planning and management framework, much less to "think deeply" about big long-term strategies. In spite of the pace and pressure, they can still access and harness the power of strategic thinking using two modern tools of management science -- the strategy canvas and the strategy map. These two tools, coupled with a robust performance measurement capability, have the ability to transform organizations into more strategy focused, high performance entities, ready and capable of responding quickly to new opportunities and new threats. This interactive presentation will teach participants how to build strategy canvases and strategy maps using real client examples from the Balanced Scorecard Institute and the Strategy Management Group.

Business models have become the new frontier of innovation, strategic transformation, and value creation. In fact, of the 19 new Fortune 500 companies in the last decade, 14 are the result of a business model innovation and not because of a breakthrough technology or product innovation. In a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit more than 50% of executives predicted that business model innovation will be even more important for success than product or service innovation This interactive workshop will familiarize strategists with tools to effectively reinvent the business model of their organization and clients.

The Department of Defense is responsible for effectively using taxpayer dollars to field systems which enhance national security. System Program Offices are constantly striving to find ways to improve performance, and are in the middle of a major reset in their management processes. Effective strategic planning has been proven to improve program office effectiveness and is conducive to successful program management outcomes. However, many program offices do not effectively use strategic planning methods and many program managers are not sufficiently trained in strategic planning and management skills. This presentation presents results of recent original research to determine how strategic planning most effectively supports successful defense acquisition program management. Imperatives and impediments will be identified.

Social media has emerged as a popular and cost-effective new means of communication and engagement within communities. Many organizations are including social media initiatives in their strategic plans as they Re-Think, Re-Set and Execute for Results. During this highly interactive panel session, attendees will have the opportunity to gain information and discuss with the panel experts the ins and outs of using social media to better communicate an organization's strategy and/or achieve its strategic objectives. The panelists include Ed Dillenschneider, Chief of Strategic Planning and Management, at the Headquarters United States Army Corps of Engineers, Washington DC, and Robert Rich, Assistant Secretary, Strategy Development, Office of the Secretary & General Counsel, American Chemical Society. Our discussion will include examples of successful and not-so-successful uses of social media communications in strategic planning. The presentation will include an overview of social media options and information on how to connect to other strategic planners on social media for information-sharing and job searches.

During this session, attendees will receive answers to the following questions: How do we deal with strategy implementation and innovation in crisis situations of rapid change? How do we creatively reboot thinking processes to get beyond old procedures and expectations? How can design thinking and dynamic capabilities propel strategic innovation and a sustained revolution of implementable change pedagogy? When formulating strategy in rapid change environments it is critically important to have rapid change frameworks in place throughout the organization. Defining and rewarding innovation is paramount. Strategy is a provisional paradigm. Unremitting controlled reboots are necessary on an iterative basis.

Social technology has hit the enterprise by storm. Many predicted it as a fad, but it is quite the opposite. Adoption in marketing and customer service was only the first wave, and forward thinking companies are quickly seeing the advantages of implementing these tools and technologies in powerful ways throughout the entire company. It requires a reset in strategy, management and execution, and is quickly becoming a point of competitive advantage for those organizations that figure it out first. Social technologies are accelerating the way companies set and optimize strategy. Its imperative that companies do it right the first time, and the best practices in this presentation will help the audience accelerate their learning with real case studies from companies that are already doing it right.

Remember the "Key enablers" to deliver successful Strategic Business TransformationsFood Distribution businesses have been historically geographically organized but to capture the full potential of operational excellence and provide (LOB) Line of Business customer value; there was a need to break the traditional model and organize by customer across all geography. To do this the biggest impediment was daily communications across geographies. This presentation demonstrates how important solving the primary limitation "communications" enabled our strategic plans to be successfully implemented. Today the business is 100% customer centric and all internal functions leverage technology to operate with centralized leadership, process effectiveness and efficiency resulting in double digit revenue and profit growth while driving up our customer KPI performance.

The concept of the "Community Balanced Scorecard" is rapidly gaining recognition as a valuable approach to engaging and aligning large numbers of community partners. The Community Balanced Scorecard aligns their efforts to work collaboratively and addresses problems that are so large that no organization can be successful alone. This presentation will clarify the need for improved techniques and tools and then describe the use of strategy maps, a framework of perspectives and themes, cascaded Objectives, From-To Gaps, "Community Compacts," and on-line initiative tracking. Participants will learn how everyone in the community benefitted when the healthcare provider (motivated by new IRS requirements), the local health department (motivated by new accreditation standards), and a wide range of community organizations learned how to work as a team.